The Link Between Anger and Alcoholism

Or, you may have someone in your life or family who has a problem with a short fuse or a hot temper. When anger gets out of control, this emotion can become very destructive to yourself and others. Laura Newberry is a reporter with the mental health initiative at the Los Angeles Times and writes Group Therapy, a weekly newsletter. She previously worked on The Times’ education team and was a staff reporter at both the Reading Eagle in Eastern Pennsylvania and MassLive in Western Massachusetts. She graduated from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2018 and is currently pursuing her master of social work. Group Therapy is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Section 1.1 outlined a number of direct and indirect mechanisms that describe how anger and related emotions may be related to alcohol consumption and relapse after alcohol dependence treatment. Initial support for alcohol-adapted anger management treatment suggests that clinicians and researchers may have an additional intervention to address anger-alcohol associations. Clinically, not all alcohol-involved clients accept the philosophies and approaches alcohol depression and anger of AA and other mutual-help groups. AM may be a particularly relevant tool for such anger- and alcohol-involved clients. Also, it may be important to consider alcohol-adapted anger management treatment primarily for combined anger- and alcohol-involved clients, as these were the clients eligible for the present study. If this guide has revealed anything, it’s that the link between anger and alcoholism should be taken very seriously.

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Always look out for such signs, and know when a pattern or trend emerges. As well as being linked to aggression (and making it more likely you could be on the receiving end), binge drinking harms your physical and mental health. One way to have a bit less is to alternate alcoholic drinks with a soft drink or water. Many people who drink are never violent and even those who do become aggressive won’t do so all the time.

In other situations, alcohol is the main catalyst for anger and violence. An individual who drinks because they feel emotions of stress or anger can also be indicative of an alcohol use disorder. On the flip side of this, an individual who maintains a generally calm demeanor while sober, yet displays actions of anger and stress after drinking, can also indicate an alcohol use disorder.

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The treatment should target both the person’s mental health and substance use disorder as two parts of a whole. Control of emotions isn’t the only link between https://ecosoberhouse.com/. They feel anger to avoid other more challenging emotions and behaviors. Sometimes, drinking alcohol can cause people to become an “angry drunk”.

• “Child maltreatment” is defined as any form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, as well negligence or exploitation that results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health and/or well-being.
• The instinctive way to express anger is through some sort of aggression.
• As with all research, this study has limitations which should be considered in interpreting our findings.
• Alcohol is both a risk factor and a consequence of childhood abuse.
• As a result, you may be overly aggressive during a situation where you’d otherwise notice the cues that tell you to think more rationally.

This research was supported by a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health grant (R01 AA17603) to the first author. The NIAAA and NIH had no further role in study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data; in the writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the paper for publication. The views herein do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIAAA or the NIH. You can’t always change the situation but you can change how you react to it. Without invalidating yourself, you should learn how to accept the present and either lives with it or move on.

Alcohol and the Brain

Individual case data suggested positive anger and abstinence outcomes. At posttreatment, those clients completing the Forgiveness Therapy sessions reported greater improvements in composite anger and anxiety relative to those clients completing the alcohol and drug counselling sessions. Clients receiving the anger and aggression focused cognitive-behavioral group therapy reported significantly less alcohol use during the 12 weeks of treatment relative to the comparison group. Although these initial studies each have methodological limitations, they provide early support for anger-based interventions in substance abusing populations.

The study concluded that alcohol increased the odds of physical aggression in those men who had high trait anger and poor anger management skills. It also noted that sexual aggression was higher with alcohol, even in men with low trait anger and reasonable anger management skills. Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious group support programs, has long recognized the link between alcohol and anger. Therefore, most AA support groups encourage members to explore anger as part of their recovery.