"Drinking in the shadows meant I no longer had a filter or limits": they talk about the taboo of female alcoholism

"A woman who drinks isn't very pretty." Pamela H. has heard phrases like these far too often in her life. Now 43, she knows it was precisely this insidious little music of shame that kept her silent about her alcoholism for far too many years.

As a teenager, this Montpellier (Hérault) resident slipped gently into alcohol, quietly, almost without realizing it. At 17, it was to party, like everyone else, then the glasses became landmarks until, for years, she began to drink in silence. Because when you're a woman, you don't drink. Or at least, not in broad daylight.

"I mostly drank alone. In the evening, sometimes first thing in the morning. White alcohol because it looked like water. I made sure no one saw it," she told BFMTV.com.

"I was coming home from work: a good day? Well, a small glass. A bad day? Well, one glass, then two, then three, then a bottle. Then a bottle of wine wasn't enough, so it escalated and I ended up drinking hard liquor like vodka, even during the day," recalls this former sales manager, now sober for 10 months.

"We must break the vicious circle of shame!" bangs Pamela, who now wants to "talk about it" to break the silence of the women affected. While alcoholism affects one in ten women in France, or between 1 and 1.5 million women, Laurence Cottet notes that the problem remains largely invisible due to the taboo surrounding the issue, although the lines are beginning to shift.

Several personalities, including actress Muriel Robin, recently revealed that they were alcoholics in a documentary "Alcohol in the feminine: they break the taboo" broadcast in mid-May on France 5. Model Noémie Lenoir then admitted that she still suffers from this addiction: "I am an alcoholic and I will be for the rest of my life. And it's not something to be ashamed of. It's not something to be proud of either , it's an illness," she summed up.

These "liberating" remarks are welcomed by Laurence Cottet, herself a former alcoholic who became a patient-expert in addiction and president of the association 'Addict-elles' - which provides daily support to women with alcohol problems.

"Back in my day, when I was sick, it was so rarely talked about that I felt like I was the only one on Earth with this problem. In those cases, you hide away at home like you're in a rat hole and you die from it."

Consumed by shame, Rachel had also taken to drinking in secret, hiding her bottles. This 52-year-old woman confides, for example, that during aperitifs, she would leave to drink so that those around her would think she was being sensible. "The result was visible, but I didn't want anyone to see me," notes this woman, who has managed to keep her head above water for several months thanks to the Facebook support group "Stop Alcohol & Addictions."

"The way others looked at me pushed me to hide in order to consume," Rachel explains, explaining that this shame "prevented her from being transparent about my consumption." "It only made the situation worse, because drinking in the shadows meant that I no longer had a filter or limits."

As a woman and mother, Rachel explains that she has always had in the back of her mind the idea that her behavior was "frowned upon": "when he drinks, a man is seen as a bon vivant, a woman much less so because she is very often responsible for raising the children, working, and running the house. Which is obviously irreconcilable with excessive alcohol consumption."

A gendered analysis also shared by Laurence Cottet, for whom women embody "a sort of sacred figure meant to set an example in their homes." "Society's view of women who drink is much harsher, much more violent than that of men." One only has to look at the vocabulary used to describe both:

"On one side, we'll have the drunkard, the depraved, the debauched, the easy woman," she notes. "On the other: 'the one who enjoys life,' the 'joker on duty,' or even the expert, the wine or whisky connoisseur."

Stéphanie, a 48-year-old former alcoholic who has been sober for 10 months, has long felt that alcoholism wasn't considered a real illness . "Ten or 15 years ago, it was seen as a weakness or a vice. We thought it was a choice. And when we fell, lost our bearings or our children were taken away from us, as was my case, we simply heard: ' Serves her right.'"

According to her, society prefers to "look the other way" when it comes to female alcoholism. Over the past 20 years, the forty-year-old has seen everyone around her turn away from her. "I experienced isolation from my friends who stopped making contact, and then from my family, my partner, and my children. It made me feel even worse because you can't talk to anyone about it anymore, and you withdraw," says this resident of Yenne (Savoie), who fell into the spiral after her mother's death.

"When it's like that, we feel bad, and when we feel bad, we drink even more."

This woman recounts the lies, excuses, and other shaky strategies she could invent to feign "normality." "We were singled out, we were watched," she nevertheless recalls. "I said I was buying red wine to make beef bourguignon. But hey... beef bourguignon was four times a week."

"Even when I hadn't been drinking, people looked at me badly. Every time I went out, when I was on the phone, people listened to my voice to see if I'd been drinking or not," says the Savoyard woman. "People moved away or ignored me, and I didn't always understand why. When I was having one of my children's birthday parties, I invited friends over... and no one came."

Although all of that is now behind her, Stéphanie still feels bitter about being ostracized and still being pigeonholed because of her alcoholism. Bitter, she regrets that some people didn't try to reach out to her, still looking at her with contempt and judgment. Two months ago, for example, she had the sad surprise of discovering on Facebook that her son had gotten married, and that she hadn't been invited.