The media in Britain recently reported, with what read like surprise, on excessive drinking among retired professional women. Because it is only in recent times that we have had a significant number of women retiring from the professions, this appears to be a new phenomenon. But I don’t think it’s a new occurrence among men, especially among men who have had busy jobs and then retire, or among older men who live alone.
What’s interesting, and it ties in with those reports of drink problems among retired professional women, is that being well educated and in the higher socioeconomic groups are among the characteristics of people who develop alcohol problems in older age.
As the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (Cardi) put in a report on the subject, the categories of older people most likely to have alcohol problems are “men living alone, people who are socially excluded and those in higher socio- economic groups”. Men are twice as likely as women to drink too much.
The concept of what is called late-onset alcoholism is not widely talked about, but it is a recognised issue among some older people. Causes can include chronic pain or disability, bereavement, job loss, reduced ability to take care of oneself, loneliness, or other emotional and medical issues.
Later onset alcoholism often starts with drink problems in people’s 40s and 50s. A feature of alcoholics in this group, according to Cardi, is that they tend to be well educated and that some stressful life event has caused them to start drinking, or has worsened their level of drinking.
On the positive side – and this is important to remember if you are caught in late-onset alcoholism – you are twice as likely to recover as are those whose alcoholism developed early in life. It helps that late alcoholics tend to be in better health than the early-onset alcoholics, and also that they have fewer psychological and emotional problems.
Source: Padraig O'Morain, Irish Times, 07/04/15
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