Sonia Johnson, a feminist writer, in commenting on AA and similar groups, puts it this way, "A lot of us know women in our communities who have been in recovery groups for years... whose lives revolve around their addiction... who align themselves with the most negative aspects of their lives by defining themselves AS it. "I am an alcoholic, I am a co-addict... I am an incest survivor."

In such groups, says Johnson, to be a "good" and accepted member one must always assert one's illness, one's pain and one's inability to recover.

"We women alcoholics," says Kirkpatrick, "have more severe and complicated problems than male alcoholics; we have a higher rate of recidivism [relapse]; we are more physically deteriorated by the time we get help, because we drink longer before we are identified, and we are usually dually addicted."

The double standard, according to Kirkpatrick, is particularly damning for women since the female alcoholic is condemned not only for her dependence on alcohol but for her immorality.

"A man can get up at an AA meeting and talk about the time he got bombed out of his mind and woke up in a motel room to find himself with two beautiful women. Everyone will think it was too bad he was drunk, but there's also a feeling of, 'Hey, how about that, two gorgeous broads.' If a woman got up and told about the time she woke up in a motel room, drunk with two gorgeous men, people would be appalled."

Men are usually confronted with their alcoholism earlier by their bosses, wives, or friends. On the other hand, says Kirkpatrick, women have to overcome their own denial syndrome and then try to prove to everyone else that they are indeed addicted to alcohol.

Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick spent almost a year in a psychiatric hospital where she received many kinds of drugs and shock therapy. Her alcoholism was never mentioned. When she left the hospital, she wasn't only an alcoholic, she was also addicted to tranquilizers.

A staggering 40 percent of admissions to mental hospitals are alcohol related and most of these are women. After discharge, many of these women subsequently end up addicted to both tranquilizers and booze.

If a woman recognizes her addiction and then goes to her family doctor there is a good chance that he will not take her addiction seriously. An estimated ten percent of doctors are addicted to alcohol or drugs themselves.

The problem, says Kirkpatrick, is that male physicians often don't like women alcoholics and this makes it difficult for them to treat them properly.

There has also been an alarming increase in younger women drinkers. A recent study of 598 treatment centers across Canada and the U.S. showed that 50 percent of women seeking treatment were between age 18 and 34 years.

Dr. Colette Lundy, a sociologist at Carlton University in Ottawa specializes in women and addiction. She says that to treat women alcoholics, there must be an awareness of the social and political world in which women live, and it must be stressed that there is both an outer and an inner reality that must be considered. The outer reality consists of political, social economic and legal structures, many of which discriminate against women. In treating women alcoholics, she says, one must be prepared to look at more than just the abuse of alcohol or drugs and look at a whole series of other issues including domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Other aspects of alcoholism that are often ignored is proper nutrition and vitamin supplementation which are crucial to lasting recovery.

One of the founders of AA was said to have admitted in his later years that one of his biggest mistakes was leaving sugar, nicotine, and caffeine in AA.

Dr. Janice Phelps, author of THE HIDDEN ADDICTION AND HOW TO GET FREE, believes that addictions are caused by an interplay of biochemistry and genetics. She has observed that addicts of every kind have a problem with sugar metabolism. Phelps believes that the underlying depression that she sees in all addicts is an inherited, biochemical, and pervasive depression that must be treated before an addict can recover.