The article regards substance abuse and woman abuse not as a causal relationship but as the co-incidence of the two phenomena. It discusses only abuse of women by men. Women are sometimes violent toward men, and violence also occurs in gay and lesbian relationships. When medical severity rather than frequency of violence is considered, however, 94 percent of serious domestic assaults are male-to-female. Drugs lower an individual's normal sanctions against violence or affect changes in thinking, physiology, emotion or motivation to reduce tension, or motivation to increase personal power. In addition, drugs reduce the user's ability to perceive, integrate, and process information, and alcohol can increase the user's sense of personal power over others. The natural properties of alcohol or drugs are not the sole determinants of whether a man becomes abusive when intoxicated. Social work practitioners must evaluate the extent and severity of both violence and addiction, a family's history of both phenomena, the extent to which men and women believe in situational violence, and the social engines of gender hierarchy and a chemical-dependent society. Table, references