The doorbell didn’t work but the door was open so I stood just inside calling “Hello, hello,” feeling like an interloper. No one answered so I cautiously stepped in, peering around a corner for an office when a girl came through the front door and whooshed by me. “Who are you?” she challenged. “I don’t know you.” I told her I wanted to drop off flyers for a sexual assault group. “This is a halfway house for alcoholics. You lost or something. Nobody wants to talk about rape here. We have other things to worry about.” I told her alcohol and sexual assault are related. That’s when she said, “Get out. We don’t need what you’re selling.” I left.
That was 2008, 11 years ago. and it was only a vague idea anyway, the thought that maybe women with addiction problems would be more vulnerable to sexual assault. In my life, every time I got drunk, I got into trouble and it was usually sexual in nature so it seemed a natural connection to make but in 2008 no one else I knew was talking about it. It wasn’t on society’s radar so I dropped the idea.
I went to Al-anon meetings then and some of the Al-anon people encouraged me to go to AA meetings but the AA men frightened me. AA men sometimes came to Al-anon meetings but they always wanted to run things. They were angry and had control issues. I had control avoidance issues so those men and I clashed. They never seemed to get to Step 9 when they would actually have to take some action, like apologize and attempt to make things right.
Ancient raku bowl repaired with gold
Eventually I had the meeting but it didn’t attract enough people to keep it going. The image I used for this post is a holdover from that time. I see it as a metaphor. It’s a photograph of a bowl repaired by the Kintsugi technique, a technique for repairing broken raku pottery with gold so it could continue to be useful. It’s interesting to know that in ancient times pottery was more valuable than gold. The culture then didn’t regard gold a precious metal as we do now. Gold was too soft to be of much use. Pottery, on the other hand, was useful. Kintsugi technique root words are kin for gold and tsugi for broken. This metaphor affected me deeply. I felt I was tsugi, broken, discarded and of little value. Kintsugi repaired me with the gold of wisdom. It’s all in how culture looks at it. It’s all in how I look at it. It’s how I think of innocence and wisdom. Innocence is the perfect bowl but with each break and subsequent repair comes wisdom so it, the bowl, and me, the woman, grow more valuable.
Today is a new day and I’m thinking about starting up a group again. We’ve had #MeToo and studies are beginning to be done linking alcoholism and rape. Should I try the drinkers of the world again?
50 percent of people seeking treatment for substance use disorder also have a diagnosis of PTSD.1Berenz, Erin C. and Coffey, Scott F. Treatment of Co-occurring Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Use Disorders, Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2012 Oct; 14(5): 469–477. doi: 10.1007/s11920-012-0300-0, Available in Google Scholar
Now to me the most likely reason why female alcoholics have PTSD is probably physical, mental or sexual abuse of one type or other. There are doubtless scads of women out there who tried to drink away the shame of having been beaten by their father, their boyfriend or their husband or of having been raped by their brother or neighbor. For a long time, the words of an ex-boyfriend reverberated in my brain. “You’re a slut, a little slut,” he said. I thought my name had been changed. I thought the word, slut, was an endearment, his special name for me. I think he recognized the need embedded in me by previous abusers. It was his way of verbally controlling me. Stupidly, I loved him. I really did love him but fortunately I figured it out. I was drinking too much, more and more as our relationship jelled so when I made my move, when I quit him, I quit drinking also. It was hard, one of the toughest periods of my life, and although I definitely do not want to go through it again, I’m supremely glad I did it. I never really loved again after that. The romance was over. I knew too many of their tricks. I never trusted again.
Evidence shows that women suffer a 50% to 100% higher death rate from alcohol than men.
I’ll have to look into the why of that later. Am I happy now? Yes, I’m happy. I have everything I want and need in life. I like men. I still like men but this culture can take the way they treat us and go to hell. Men suffer too. Both genders suffer from broken hearts, from betrayals. I think men suffer more from guilt and women more from shame. That’s an opinion without a footnote.
Numerically speaking men suffer more traumatic events than women so it seems crazy that women are twice as likely to develop PTSD. Illogical but true. Men also drink greater quantities of alcohol than women but women are 2.4 times more likely to be alcoholics.2Kachadourian, Lorig K, Pilver, Corey E and Potenzab, Marc N, Trauma, PTSD, and Binge and Hazardous Drinking Among Women and Men: Findings from a National Study, Journal of Psychiatric Research, 8/1/2015
I don’t think the answer lies in quantities of this or that, in the number of traumas or the amount of alcohol; it lies instead in quality. Rape is invasive, digging into the body and mind of a woman. It’s the ultimate betrayal. The penetration of rape engenders shame and it’s hard to drink away shame. You can drink and feel more powerful, less anxious, or less guilty. But shame is a very sticky substance.
Once upon a time my ex-husband asked me why I never got drunk. I said I couldn’t get drunk when he was drunk. “What if something happens? What if one of the children need us?” I asked him. Annoyed by what seemed like such a stupid question, I told him that his getting drunk made me more vulnerable at parties. We lived overseas and went out at least 3 nights a week. I told him that men would come on to me and I had to be sober to deal with it. I said they felt they could get away with it because he was drunk. He shook his head knowingly and looked deeply into my eyes. I thought maybe things would change but no. That’s the other side of the alcohol and rape issue. Women become more vulnerable when they drink. Men become bolder. Alcohol kills the civilization in them.
I guess you could say that alcohol affects rape both coming and going. In fact, alcohol is clearly related to one’s risk of sexual assault and is actually present in a large proportion (one-half to two-thirds) of sexual assault incidents.
Yes, that’s one-half to two-thirds of sexual assaults.3https://www.alcohol.org/effects/sexual-assault-college-campus/
Wow, I think. That’s a lot. That why I was going on about the drinking culture that exists at colleges and universities today. That’s why I wrote my last post, White, Male and Privileged: The Paradox of the Modern Fraternity.
There are two main ways that alcohol, rape and sexual assault are linked. The first affects both the rapist and the victim and the second affects only the victim.
Sexual Assault in America is closely tied to alcohol and drugs. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act raising the legal drinking age to 21 was passed in 1984. In my recent post about fraternities, I wrote about the connection between rape and fraternities in particular DKE fraternity once attended by Brett Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh graduated cum laude in history from Yale in 1987, 3 years after the law was passed.
It wasn’t until after the 1984 drinking law was passed that Yale’s fraternities took over the social function for the university. Yale’s fraternities weren’t always the party houses they are now. Prior to 1984, the year when the drinking age was raised to 21, Yale students attended Student Affairs Committee get togethers. It was an environment that tended to include all who attended Yale rather than only those belonging to fraternities and invited guests.
1984 marked the beginning of a cataclysmic change in greek culture, a change that has led it to the alcohol-fueled environment that unfortunately has created a rape culture and a dangerous environment for women.4From Twenty-One or Younger ALEXA STANGER & LARA SCHULL 8:08 PM, SEP 16, 2018, published in Yale DailyNews https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/16/twenty-one-or-younger/
Wish me luck on getting a group together. Maybe I’ll find one already going. Happy Thanksgiving and be careful out there.