Venting Doesn’t Reduce Anger, But Something Else Does, Study Says : ScienceAlert

If you had a parent who was frequently enraged while drunk, you may expect that response in yourself when drinking and therefore exhibit it. Using a personality questionnaire, an aggression scale, and alcohol use and history assessments, researchers compared 156 people without the gene with 14 people who have it. Researchers were studying people in the Finnish population, of which more than 100,000 people have the genetic variation. Drinking can have a relaxing or anxiety-relieving effect by mimicking the “chill-out” effects of GABA.

Differentiating verbal expression of anger from physical aggression

Alcohol withdrawal can be potentially life-threatening, in the case of severe dependence. Medical detox is typically considered the optimal method for allowing alcohol to safely process out of the body while under continual medical supervision. When people have difficulty controlling impulses, trouble regulating their emotions, or may present a danger to themselves and/or others, medical detox is required. Medical detox programs are often the first stage in a comprehensive addiction treatment program. These programs usually last 5-7 days on average and commonly use medications to manage difficult physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms. Anger management issues may be rooted in a specific mental health disorder in some cases.

Alcohol and Anger: Understanding the Connection

This type of therapy focuses on learning how a person’s anger and alcoholism started and reprograms the brain so it no longer thinks that it needs alcohol to deal with anger and other emotions. It also teaches the person more healthy ways to deal with their anger moving forward such as exercise, journaling, and other ways that we discussed earlier. The relationship between recovering alcoholics and anger is so complicated that even things like lack of healthy coping skills, resentments, toxic relationships, dishonesty, and unhealthy behavioral patterns can contribute. Additionally, even people not struggling with a substance use disorder can experience anger and these other emotions.

If You Know You’re an Angry Drunk, What Can You Do?

• Alcohol impairs a person’s executive functioning, making it harder for them to think clearly and make rational decisions.
• Sometimes, people with alcohol use disorders have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol due to specific genetics.
• Neither gender had any significant impact on the results (Gan et al., 2015).
• If anger is a symptom of someone’s mental health disorder, alcohol can intensify the anger to dangerous levels.
• Other holistic methods are often used during a comprehensive addiction and anger management treatment program as adjunctive, or complementary, treatment methods.

If you think about it, a crucial part of being aggressive when intoxicated is lacking self-awareness. Those who don’t think about the consequences of their actions are more likely to adversely affect themselves and others. Additionally, when you don’t reflect on mistakes you’ve made, you’ll probably repeat them.

After detox, individuals suffering from co-occurring disorders often proceed directly into a residential treatment program where structured around-the-clock programming can help to manage both disorders. Yet early indicators of alcohol issues show that if attention were paid, excessive drinking might be headed off before alcoholism develops. For example, experts now recognize a pre-addiction stage of alcohol use disorder (AUD). If a person is identified with pre-addiction before alcohol issues become entrenched and then receives treatment, major emotional and physical pain could be averted.

• The stress-reducing effects of alcohol often make people believe there are no real consequences for their actions, which leads to confrontations, fights, or displays of aggression.
• Before exploring the common emotional experiences while drinking, it’s essential to understand how anger and alcohol perception are intertwined.
• Understanding this dynamic highlights the importance of mindfulness and caution regarding alcohol consumption, particularly for individuals prone to anger-related challenges.
• Results showed enough escalation in people consuming these drinks to label the beverages a “potential risk” to increased hostility.
• They were directed to engage in a task with the potential to trigger aggressive verbalizations, with those who consumed alcohol showing significantly more such behavior.
• They first consumed alcohol and were asked to recognize the emotions of different faces on a computer task.

A variety of disinhibiting cognitive processes support the “moral disengagement” that accompanies destructive human behavior, including alcohol intoxication [12, •13, ••14]. The difference between inhibiting and disinhibiting influences constitutes a person’s “urge-impedance,” or the overall ability of an individual to inhibit an aggressive inclination. Muscle tension, headaches, irregular heart rate and blood pressure, sleep difficulties, and the potential for heart problems or even stroke may be possible risk factors for chronic anger and emotional regulation issues. Add in alcohol abuse, and the multitude of possible social, emotional, physical, financial, and behavioral problems related to alcohol addiction, and the risk factors and potential for negative side effects go up exponentially. Post Acute Withdrawal (or PAWS) is a very common set of symptoms that occur after you stop drinking or significantly reduce your alcohol consumption. Higher stress levels, irritability, and sleep issues are three common symptoms of PAWS that directly relate to increased anger issues.

Learning more about the different types of alcohol withdrawal can help illuminate why these symptoms are occurring and how to manage them. Speaking with a physician can anger and alcoholism also help address these uncomfortable feelings and find relief. Some studies highlight the impairment caused by alcohol consumption on processing emotional faces.

• One study supporting this finding enlisted 245 men with a history of heavy episodic alcohol use (Berke et al., 2020).
• Not to mention, recovering alcoholics that don’t manage anger are at higher risk of relapse.
• In a WHO assessment on domestic violence and alcohol, 55% of surveyed Americans stated they thought their partner was intoxicated during a physical assault.
• However, some studies have been done to better understand who is more at risk.
• And as they say, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” When you rely primarily on alcohol to get you through your challenges, other coping strategies eventually atrophy.

Alcohol recovery and anger management co-treatments