General Z Women Binge drinks, stimulants of more abuse: research

General Z women are abusing stimulants and drinking more than their male counterparts – and any other age group have found new studies.

Nearly 37% of women aged 18-25 reported to exhibit surplus, such as Adderall and Rital in the past year, more than twice reported by women older than them, according to a study published last month in Jama Psychiatry.

Only 25% of women aged 26 to 34 years reported improper use, according to the study. Women 35 to 64 years old, whom researchers said have seen the greater increase in stimulating recipes, are abusing them the least – 13.7%.

Men were not far from women in drug abuse, which have become so popular since 2020 that there have been national shortages. Among men aged 18-25 years who are prescribed medicines, 36.1% reported misuse compared to 36.3% of men aged 26 to 35 and 22% of men aged 35 to 64 years.

Of the 83,762 men and women aged 18 to 64 included in the study, only a quarter of them reported drug misuse, including taking them without being described or obtained higher or more frequent than ordered.

While older women often open pills to manage everyday life with families, many young women suffer “feelings of inadequacy” not to meet social, physical, career and relationship standards, experts say.

“There is pressure to have perfect grades, perfect body, to be super popular on social media and seems to have understood it all,” said Stacey Ross, a mental health specialist in Burimi.net, for The Post.

“Some feel like they should be constantly, and that misuse of stimulants seems like a quick solution to stay there,” Ross said.

The study’s authors said the findings highlight a need for prevention and intervention.

They looked at the two types of medicines most commonly used to treat ADHD and help concentrate and readiness: amphetamines, which include Adderall and Vyvanse, and methylfenidate such as Ritalin and Concerta. Amphetamines, which stimulate the dopamine reward system more than methylfenidate, were found to be abused three times higher.

Women were bad -historically and diagnosed with ADHD, but the gender gap is closed, especially since the pandemia, according to experts.

Alarming findings are reported that young women are also drinking men for the first time.

A study published last week in Jama from 267,843 men and women 18 and older found that 31.6% of women aged 18-25 reported excessive drinking – consuming four or more drinks in one case – more than any other group.

The study compared men’s and women’s habits for two periods of time, 2017 from 2019 and 2021 to 2023. He found that men’s drinking levels dropped nearly 8 percentage points, from 37.7% to 29.9%. But women did not see such a decline, falling only 4.8 percent from previous years.

Experts say severe alcohol use has become more acceptable to women and that they are increasingly targeted through marketing and social media campaigns, especially those with higher socio-economic status.

“For women, there is pressure to be ‘fun’, ‘cold’ or ‘quiet’ and very often, it means drinking,” Ross said.

Worrying findings come in the midst of an increase in liver disease associated with alcohol and mortality between young and middle -aged women than men.