A few years ago “Janice” was in a mid-level corporate job, successful and steadily climbing the corporate ladder. On the outside she was the picture of confidence and poise. On the inside she hid a dark secret.

Even though Janice was a successful rising star on the outside, on the inside she was full of self-doubt, insecurities, and fear. She feared “never being good enough”, and “never getting ahead”. These fears and feelings of inadequacy led to a “lack of ability to deal with myself.”

These feelings often led her to drink. At first, it was just one drink after work, but soon she found she was seeking comfort in alcohol.  It wasn’t long until the relief would start even as she anticipated drinking; and at the first sip she would feel calm and eventually blissfully numb.

When she came to me for help, she was proud of herself when she only had “one bottle of wine” a day. She also confessed to keeping a few airplane bottles in her purse for those “really stressful days”. As it so frequently does, it turned out that just about every day was a really stressful day.

Now that she is sober, she understands that her drinking escalated because of what she calls the “tranquilizer effect.” The stress and fear would come, and alcohol numbed the pain. Janice was what is known as a high functioning alcoholic. Successful, unhappy and numb.

The truth is that many women drink too much, and it isn’t just rising stars.  Men are still more likely to die of alcohol-related causes than women are, but alcohol dependence and alcohol related deaths are rising at a faster rate in women than in men. During the first year of the pandemic, women increased their “heavy drinking” day…days where they had more than four drinks, by 41 percent, compared with 7 percent among men.

Some would say that this is an anomaly caused by the pandemic, and that may be partly true. But high-risk drinking was already increasing before the pandemic. The pandemic only made it worse. Men born in the early half of the 1900’s were three times more likely to have problematic drinking habits. Today, the numbers are almost equal between men and women, and college age women report “binge drinking” at a much higher rate than their male counterparts.

This is a trend that has been documented now for about thirty years, with women between 30 and 40 showing the highest rate of rise. The studies also show that women drink to cope, and men drink to socialize. Most of my female alcohol clients report something like “I have too much on my plate”, or like Janice, “I never feel that I am good enough”.

Janice went through a painful detox and came back to me to deal with the feelings of inadequacy and fear. Like so many others, she was juggling life at home, life at work, expectations of others and most critically, her own expectations.

While in hypnosis, she discovered that her high set of expectation for herself was ingrained in her from a very early age. Her well-meaning parents, professionals themselves, set a very high bar, and were very hard on her when she didn’t meet that bar.

She continued setting that bar for herself in college, in her relationships, as a mother and as a corporate officer. She had “too much on her plate”, could never reach the bar she set for herself in any part of her life, and lived in fear of failing. Alcohol numbed that fear.

Through hypnosis she was able to understand that setting a high bar had led to her success and to her downfall. She was able to stop her self-destructive cycle and now understands that improvement is the goal, not perfection.

She is able to understand what happened and specifically forgive herself for the way she had hurt herself for many years, and now Janice lives a successfully sober life. In her words the most painful and cleansing part of the process was “forgiving myself for all the verbal abuse I subjected myself too”.

Janice is now the owner of her own company, and has been sober for two years. She is confident and poised, inside and out. As a part of her business, she is funding an outreach program for women just like her. She understands the growing stresses that women take on with families and careers, and how it is leading more and more women to drink.

She credits a lot of people for her sobriety today and it was a privilege to be a part of her recovery. Janice, like most people with drinking problems, didn’t succeed on the first try. She came to me as a last resort when everything else had failed.

Hypnotherapy was the solution because it allows us to work on the limiting beliefs and habits in the subconscious where they are rooted. This is something the other programs she had tried could not do.

As women integrate more actively into the business and professional world outside the home, we are seeing a corresponding rise in drinking problems. This should not be a surprise, they are exposed to the same pressures as their male counterparts, and often have other responsibilities and expectations above and beyond their careers.

Alcohol is a rapidly rising issue in this post-pandemic world. And while it seems to be affecting women more or differently than men, the rates of high risk drinking are rising for both. If you need help putting alcohol in the past permanently, hypnosis can help you deal with the underlying issues that drive the beliefs and behaviors. Like Janice, you can put the past behind and create a new future.