Although I realize you don’t have firsthand knowledge of women’s monthly cycles, I feel confident that you will be able to answer my query, o wise one! Does alcohol affect you differently depending on which week of your cycle you’re in? A girlfriend of mine told me that you will get drunk easier closer to ovulation and also will be more susceptible to a hangover. She also said that researchers think that speech patterns can be affected during different stages of the cycle (i.e., you have a greater chance of stumbling on words, stuttering, etc). I’ve done a little home research on the alcohol consumption part of this question, and I’m starting to think she is correct. Do I have a valid excuse for getting tipsy or stuttering? –Lea-Anne Levasseur, Saint Catharines, Ontario
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No offense, Lea-Anne, but you don’t have to be female to have firsthand knowledge of a woman’s monthly cycle, any more than you need a driver’s license to have firsthand knowledge of a car wreck. I’d say the real question, alcohol aside, is: Does the menstrual cycle cause some women to exhibit behavior that in ages past got them sent to live for a week in a hut? Spoken like a true male chauvinist pig, you may say. Perhaps, but wait till you hear about Sandie Craddock, the barmaid from hell.
So never mind alcohol, stuttering, and so on for now. Can the menstrual cycle make a woman just plain nuts? Up to 85 percent of menstruating women report having one or more symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, but the list of PMS complaints is so nonspecific–fatigue, irritability, forgetfulness, etc–that probably 85 percent of men would qualify were it not for the monthly timing angle. Things get more interesting when we restrict the discussion to premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a condition affecting the 2 to 10 percent of women who suffer cycle-related emotional and behavioral upset so severe as to be disabling. PMDD isn’t currently an official mental disorder–the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the formal guide to insanity, lists the condition in an appendix and suggests it needs more research. Some psychiatrists have denounced the idea that menstrual hormones can cause mental illness, saying it’s an excuse to discriminate against women and dismiss their other mental-health concerns.
