How to Deal With an Alcoholic: Dos, Dont’s, Coping

The less alcohol you drink, the lower your risk for these health effects, including several types of cancer. AUD is a condition in which a person is unable to stop using alcohol despite negative consequences. With some insight into factors that can cause rage or aggression while drinking, you can take steps to avoid certain behaviors. A small 2015 study published in Translational Psychology investigated the role of this variation in impulsive and aggressive behavior while intoxicated (10). Research suggests several factors may be involved, including personality, genetics, social considerations, brain chemistry, and brain changes. “One of the acute effects alcohol can have on the brain is causing rage, anger, and aggression,” says Brent Metcalf, LCSW, a specialist in trauma treatment and clinical alcohol and drug counseling at Tri-Star Counseling.

• If you become a crazy drunk person when you’re drinking, and you drink often, it’s probably safe to say you’re an alcoholic.
• Similarly, in nearly 40% of violent incidents, surveyed individuals from the United Kingdom said they believed their perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol.
• Such factors including head injury, neurochemistry, physiological reactivity, metabolism, and genetics.
• However, it’s about more than getting easily upset or having a short fuse when you drink alcohol.

Anger Management and Alcohol Addiction

Verbal outbursts or less severe physical attacks may still occur in between these times. You may be irritable, impulsive, aggressive or angry most of the time. Those expectations can also arise from what we’ve learned about alcohol from family members and peers.

Impact on your safety

The journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology reports on studies showing that alcohol can increase aggression in both men and women, but more so in men. Alcohol impairs a person’s executive functioning, making it harder for them to think clearly and make rational decisions. Impulse control is affected, and individuals under the influence of alcohol may have a shorter fuse than they otherwise would. This is not to say that alcohol causes aggression, or serves to makes someone angry, in and of itself; however, it may be a contributing factor when it comes to difficulties controlling these emotions. In addition, alcohol abuse and addiction can result in poor anger management skills.

Addiction Treatment Programs

Similarly, those overwhelmed by anger might use alcohol for relief, only to find it intensifies their inner conflict. The link between anger and alcoholism is cyclical—they can exacerbate each other if left unchecked. Addressing and letting go of anger is vital in the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 12-step approach, which involves a moral self-inventory and overcoming personal flaws. Too much alcohol affects your speech, muscle coordination and vital centers of your brain.

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Not to mention, recovering alcoholics that don’t manage anger are at higher risk of relapse. Anger can have various culprits, sometimes rational, others irrational. Triggers such as losing your patience, injustice, and feeling under-appreciated can all spur anger feelings. Also, feelings of grief or memories of traumatic experiences can trigger it. Someone who experiences passive anger may appear calm and have difficulty expressing their feelings.

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One study published in a journal called Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience sought to explore factors that make some people more aggressive when they drink. Anyone who’s lived with an alcoholic parent, partner or other close family member understands all too well what happens when their loved one’s personality changes suddenly as soon as they have a drink or two. Suddenly, the person they know and care for is a much different, angrier person — short-tempered, abusive and often violent.

• When it comes to anger specifically, people may experience a phenomenon called “alcohol myopia” in addition to their already heightened emotions.
• This differential effect was also marginally present for during-treatment AA meeting attendance and posttreatment drinking consequences.
• Specifically, they exhibited a reduced capacity to detect sadness and fear and a reduced tendency towards seeing happiness.

Instigating factors normatively produce an urge to behave aggressively (e.g., provocation). These factors provide the initial momentum alcoholism and anger toward an aggressive action that represents the availability of an aggressive response. Of course, availability of an aggressive response does not mandate its enactment.

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As a whole, alcohol use naturally heightens emotions, and for people who are predisposed to aggressive tendencies, it can quickly make bad scenarios worse. BetterHelp offers affordable mental health care via phone, video, or live-chat. Additionally, there is evidence that chemical and biological factors play a role.

The Physiological Effects of Alcohol on the Brain and Emotions

The group can give you a place to get social support and encouragement from others going through a similar situation. It is not your job to “cure” your loved one’s alcoholism, but allowing natural consequences to occur is one factor that can push a person from the pre-contemplative stage to the contemplative stage of overcoming addiction. But the reality is that not even the person dependent on alcohol can control their drinking, try as they may. The problem is when someone gets stuck in this step and ignores the situation.