Why Does Drinking Release the Rage? Understand Alcohol-Related Anger and Aggression

When it comes to anger specifically, people may experience a phenomenon called “alcohol myopia” in addition to their already heightened emotions. This scenario involves losing your sense of perception under the influence. 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. Alcohol can provoke different emotional responses for different people. If you have a natural tendency to be angry, drinking alcohol may cause you to become aggressive. “Trait anger” refers to a person’s general tendency to experience chronic anger over time.

However, it’s about more than getting easily upset or having a short fuse when you drink alcohol. The outcomes of alcohol and anger can be hazardous, causing traumatizing situations for the inebriated person and the people around them. “People often believe that a state of happiness is ideal, and the majority of people consider the pursuit of happiness a major life goal,” lead author Heather Lench, a professor at Texas A&M University, said in a news release. “The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and well-being has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion, but previous research suggests that a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes.”

How alcohol contributes to aggression

While psychotherapy is the primary approach for co-treatment of alcohol use and anger management, medications like mood stabilizers and those used to treat substance withdrawal may also be part of your treatment plan. An earlier study found that alcohol use enhanced aggression primarily among individuals who showed a heightened disposition for such behavior (Eckhardt and Crane, 2008). 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. The effect was only apparent for challenging puzzles, however; there was no benefit to being angry in tests involving simple puzzles.

While the study did not support a significant difference between groups high and low in anger, these results support the notion that such impairment in facial recognition may contribute to aggressive responding. Long-term alcohol abuse can also cause serious and possibly permanent brain changes, which increase emotional instability and amplify certain psychological disorders. People with anger management issues already lack control over themselves. Thus, someone with a long-term alcohol addiction may become easily irritable over time. A person may become very tense and have difficulty winding back down.

Trait Anger and Alcohol Aggression

As a positive, unalarming emotion and one that others are used to seeing, however, happiness isn’t on the radar as much as anger. Research has shown that thought suppression may contribute to alcohol-related aggression. One study supporting this finding enlisted 245 men with a history of heavy episodic alcohol use (Berke et al., 2020). They completed surveys assessing their endorsement of traditional masculine alcoholic rage syndrome norms, use of thought suppression, and both trait and alcohol-related aggression. It was found that thought suppression mediated the association between the toughness masculine norm and alcohol-related aggression. Another study of 249 heavy drinkers similarly found that alcohol intoxication predicted higher levels of IPV in those who reported low psychological flexibility (Grom et al., 2021).

Thankfully, there are a wide range of options when it comes to seeking out help for both anger issues and alcohol addiction. “If you feel that your anger is really out of control, if it is having an impact on your relationships and on important parts of your life, you might consider counseling to learn how to handle it better. Both inpatient and outpatient programs for alcoholism addiction provide a supportive and safe environment for overcoming the grip of alcohol on your life.