Opening Plenary: Writing your own recovery: How women are shaping their stories.

• Introduction/Moderator: Ivana Grakalic PhD, Program Director, Div of Neuroscience & Behavior, NIAAA.
• Speaker: Ann Dowsett Johnston, MSW, Author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol.

For more than a decade, women have been closing the gender gap in risky drinking, going toe-to-toe with their male counterparts in alcohol consumption. The pinking of the alcohol market, the pandemic, and many other factors led to this reality. For decades now, alcohol has been the modern women’s steroid, enabling her to do the heavy lifting in a complex world. That's the tough news. The good news? Women are also starting to reassess their relationship with alcohol, choosing to recover out loud, to name the problem and confront the consequences. Never before has it been so easy to find an alcohol-free option, or a recovery group for support. Will women embrace a recovery model, or continue to drink at historic highs? We stand at a hinge-point in history.