According to Dr. Sheila B. Blume, a psychiatrist who directs programs in alcohol and gambling in Amityville, N.Y., the researchers ditched their initial project and concentrated on the women. Since then they and other researchers, led in large part by Blume herself, have found that: As a group, women become intoxicated faster than men. "This is true," said Blume recently, "partly because women, even lean women, have less body water and proportionately more body fat then men, so the alcohol is diluted less in women. But there is more to it than that. Women metabolize alcohol more slowly, and it is still not clear exactly why." A woman's reaction to alcohol may vary from day to day. In some women, some of the time, this appears to be related to the menstrual cycle, peaking just before the menses, Blume said. "Two drinks on Friday may cause no problem to a woman," says [Keven R. Bellows]. "On Sunday, the same drinks in the same woman may put her under the table." Standard charts showing how many drinks will impair driving are designed for men, not women, Bellows says. "If you're a woman and you're going by one of those charts, you'll end up either in jail or in traction." Alcoholism in women runs a more virulent course than in men. Said Blume: "It moves faster once it starts, and at least some and maybe all of the serious long-term complications of alcohol, like cirrhosis of the liver, gastrointestinal bleeding, may hit women earlier in the course of the disease on less intake. Therefore, you have less time to intervene, and, in fact, the woman alcoholic is more of an emergency."

NCA's [Susan Galbraith] and her colleagues successfully promoted federal legislation last year requiring states to set aside a certain percentage of their alcohol and drug abuse mental health block grants for expanded services for women. With a $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, NCA surveyed the response to this legislation-now up for renewal-and found that 45 states and three territories had indeed developed new programs, ranging from ones for homeless women in New York to a Native American program on Southwest reservations and a first-of-its-kind program for black and Hispanic lesbians in Los Angeles. Shortly after the "Cagney & Lacey" screening, actress [Sharon Gless] was listening intently as Bellows discussed the plight of the female alcoholic.