New research shows that too many women are drinking too much—and it's often habit (wine o'clock), not addiction, that's to blame. Here's a look at our current (complicated) relationship with alcohol, and how to make it a healthy one.
I Drink to Unwind.
Dinner isn't made yet, but the sink is already full of dishes. There are bills to pay, and as my buzzing phone has just reminded me, I have e-mails to answer and more work to tackle after the kids go to bed. I grab the open bottle of wine in the fridge, pour myself a glass—and suddenly feel like I've just hit the pause button on an otherwise never-ending day.

Sound familiar? "Drinking makes many women feel like we can do the heavy lifting in an ever evolving, complex world," says Ann Dowsett Johnston, the Toronto-based author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol. "There's this feeling of "I'm doing it all—why shouldn't I have something for myself?" "

Two-thirds of American women consume alcohol regularly (having at least one drink within the past week), with most citing wine as their beverage of choice, according to a 2013 Gallup poll. That number has stayed fairly constant over the past two decades, but something more significant has changed: An increasing number of us are overimbibing. Almost 25 percent of women drink heavily (four or more drinks at once or more than eight drinks in a week) some of the time, according to a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And heavy or "binge" drinking (consuming four drinks or more per occasion) rose 18.9 percent among women between 2005 and 2012, whereas men saw an increase of 7.3 percent during that same period.

"Drinking and drinking problems have increased in every generation of women born after World War II, including boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials," says Katherine M. Keyes, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. Women in their early 20s are most at risk, but undergraduates at keg parties are hardly the only ones overdoing it. Affluent, fit adults over the age of 50 may be particularly prone to heavy drinking, according to a 2015 study published in the medical journal BMJ. "Higher socioeconomic status is associated with a higher risk of alcohol abuse in men and women," says Keyes. Many people, regardless of income, associate drinking with glamour and prestige. (Think Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald or the Jolie-Pitts, producing their own wine.) But it may be that those with more income and leisure are more prone to (and accepting of) heavier drinking.

Why We Drink
Television shows like Sex and the City and the Real Housewives franchises and Amy Schumer and her fishbowl-size wineglasses make getting drunk seem, well, perfectly normal. But it wasn't so long ago that most girls didn't go wild. "When a woman drinks," wrote novelist Marguerite Duras, a self-described alcoholic, a quarter century ago, "it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in a woman.… It's a slur on the divine in our nature."

Today heavy drinking is not only accepted—it's expected. Maybe that's because it has come to represent a badge of female empowerment. "I thought drinking was shorthand for being a socially liberated female," says Sarah Hepola, the Dallas-based author of the best-selling book Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. "Like many women, I felt like I had value when I could throw back drinks and keep up with the boys."

Marketing has played a role, too. Take a look around a liquor store and you'll see shelves filled with margarita-flavored malt beverages, berry-flavored vodkas, and wines with names like Cupcake and Mommy's Time Out. Such female-friendly products didn't exist even 20 years ago, says Johnston, "but the beverage industries realized women had money to spend on alcohol." Hence, a new "gateway" industry was born—one that enticed women to drink.