In my last post, I explored addiction and genes and stumbled across gender differences and cocaine use. I was really intrigued be the gender angle, so I decided to explore it some more. In my last post, I discovered, that Men tend to feel the euphoric effects of inhaled cocaine more immediately than women most likely due to the fact that women tend to absorb inhaled cocaine more slowly than men. While I wasn't able to find anything else on this particular topic, I did find some other things in relation to gender difference and addiction.
According to an Sex Differences in Drug Abuse, a study manuscript on the NCBI website written by Jill B. Becker and Ming Hu gender differences are present for all stages of drug abuse. Currently, drug abuse rates are lower among men than they are among women, but they are on the rise. Men are 2 to 3 times more likely to have substance abuse problems, but women tend to increase their rate of consumption more quickly than men do. Once addicted, women find it more difficult than men do to quit. Apparently, this holds true across the board for illicit drugs, alcohol and nicotine. The study states that women escalate use more rapidly, become addicted quicker and tend to seek treatment earlier than their male counterparts due. This makes me wonder if this is connected to the hormone difference that I read about previously. Maybe women absorb more slowly in general and this is why their use escalates more quickly? I also explored the hormone angle, but more on that later.
On University of Virginia website, I found an article by Melissa Maki, Examining Gender-based Differences In Addiction. This article says that woman are more vulnerable to the rewards of the drug, meaning they are more likely to become addicted once they use the drug. This vulnerability is linked to hormones, mainly estrogen, which increases the rewarding effects of the drug. Ironically, this is the same hormone that in my last post was linked to the slowing of the absorption of inhaled cocaine due to it's control of nasal mucus thickness. Hmmmmmmm....
Now, back to the first source, according to this study, the subjective effects of stimulants vary across a woman's menstrual cycle. Several of the positive effects (i.e. euphoria, desire, increased energy) are more potent at the follicular (when estrogen levels are low at first and rise slowly; progesterone levels are low) stage relative to the luteal (when estrogen levels are moderate and progesterone levels are high) phase. Everything else I read basically supports this theory.
I feel like there is a lot of information out there, but I feel that it all mostly says the same thing. I feel like I have so many more questions after i read some of the material I find, than I did before I read it. I also wonder if any of these scientists or doctors or researchers read any of this other information out there. I think that they would, but it seems counterproductive to keep researching the same thing that has been researched already a million times over. I feel like, at some point, somebody has to read this stuff and have similar thoughts and questions that I do and want to go a different direction. I feel like I am getting more and more frustrated with this because I feel like i'm going in circles. Maybe I am going about it all wrong? Before the next, final post, I am going to have to sit down and try to make sense of all of this and see if it gets me anywhere.
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