We live in a culture where the first question you're usually asked at an event is, "Red or white?"

Carrie Bradshaw and her rounds of cosmopolitans and Bridget Jones with her glasses of chardonnay; female drinkers are funny. They suffer through hangovers, swear they are going to cut back but and then renege.But many women find that their drinking isn’t funny at all.  In the U.S. and Western Europe, growing numbers of women struggle with alcoholism; in some places, women's rates of alcohol abuse have achieved parity with men's. Ann Dowsett Johnston, the author of Drink, the Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, will be talking about what's driving the increase in female binge drinking and alcoholism. She is going to share with us what she's learned, from research and from her own alcoholism, about advertising, addiction and the challenges facing women who seek treatment. Ann is the winner of five National Magazine Awards, she previously investigated the connection between women and alcohol in a 14-part series she wrote for The Toronto Star.