Likewise, if you’re diagnosed with one of these conditions, your doctor may ask about symptoms of the other. This is a common part of diagnosis because both so frequently occur together. Alcohol use disorder and depression are two conditions that often occur together.
On the other hand, both conditions also share certain risk factors, such as genetics and social isolation. Having either depression or alcohol use disorder increases your risk of developing the other condition. There is a strong link between alcohol use and depression, a mental health condition that includes feelings of hopelessness, emptiness, fatigue, loss of interest, and more. But does regular drinking lead to depression, or are people with depression more likely to drink too much alcohol?
Alcohol recovery and anger management co-treatments
Some clinical features of AUD may also precipitate sleep disorders, such as a preoccupation with obtaining alcohol and AUD-related psychosocial stressors. Moreover, tolerance to alcohol can increase alcohol intake, which in turn may exacerbate sleep symptoms. Alcohol consumption can lead to feelings of depression due to chemical reactions. In the short term, drinking alcohol can make you feel good, sociable, and even euphoric.
Anger Management and Alcohol Addiction
Drinking water may not have a direct impact on feelings of depression, but rehydrating can absolutely help you start feeling better physically. As hangover symptoms begin to subside, the emotional effects may follow. If you already have depression, you might feel even worse, since alcohol can magnify the intensity of your emotions. Dopamine produces positive emotions that make you feel good and help reinforce your desire to drink, but alcohol affects your central nervous system in other ways, too. One study found that chronic alcohol use decreases the function in the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in impulse control.
Moving From Maladaptive Anger to Adaptive Emotions
Researchers have also linked impulsive alcohol-related behavior to genetic involvement, with the presence of the serotonin 2B receptor gene (HTR2B) playing a role in impulsive and aggressive behaviors while under the influence of alcohol. Drinking cocktails that include energy drinks should be considered a possible factor for aggressive behavior as well. Researchers surveyed 175 young adults who mixed alcohol with caffeinated energy drinks about their verbal and physical aggression in bar conflicts. Results showed enough escalation in people consuming these drinks to label the beverages a “potential risk” to increased hostility. Researchers evaluated the failure to consider future consequences as a significant risk factor for aggression (Bushman et al., 2012) In this study, 495 social drinkers were assigned to a group that consumed alcohol or a placebo group. They were also required to respond to the Consideration of Future Consequence Scale (CFC).
Listening to your inner critic can worsen depression, making it difficult to do things that could help alleviate symptoms (e.g., doing activities you once enjoyed, spending time with other people, exercising, etc.). The hallmarks of anxiety disorders are excessive and recurrent fear or worry episodes that cause significant distress or impairment and that last for at least 6 months. People with anxiety disorders may have both psychological symptoms, such as apprehensiveness and irritability, and somatic symptoms, such as fatigue and muscular tension.
- People who struggle with anger and aggression have been found to have lower serotonin levels.
- There was a brief mention of AA attendance and coverage of drink refusal skills and relapse prevention.
- 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.
- First, the modest sample size did not allow for detection of meaningful but relatively small between-group differences and effect sizes.
Some studies highlight the impairment caused by alcohol consumption on processing emotional faces. One such study involved a sample of 85 social drinkers who were described as being low or high trait anger based on their responses to the anger expression index of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2) (Eastwood et al., 2020). They first consumed alcohol and were asked to recognize the emotions of different faces on a computer task. Specifically, they exhibited a can a drug dog smell nicotine reduced capacity to detect sadness and fear and a reduced tendency towards seeing happiness.
Anger management issues may be rooted in a specific mental health disorder in some cases. Regardless, treatment for emotional regulation is an important aspect of a specialized addiction care model, and someone prone to aggression, violence, or angry outbursts can benefit from an integrated program that focuses on controlling impulses and maintaining emotional balance. In addition to potential mental health disorders related to difficulties managing anger, there are several physical side effects of unchecked and chronic anger.
Providing anger management skills to such individuals might help lower anger and conflict that would alter these negative consequence trajectories. Quitting drinking on its own often leads to clinical improvement of co-occurring mental health disorders, but treatment for psychiatric symptoms alone generally is not enough to reduce alcohol consumption or AUD symptoms. Among people with co-occurring AUD and psychiatric disorders, AUD remains undertreated, leading to poorer control of psychiatric symptoms and worse outcomes. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), nearly 8 million adults in the United States struggled with both a mental health disorder and addiction in 2014. When a person struggles with both alcohol addiction and anger management problems, the issues exacerbate each other. For example, drinking alcohol may escalate a situation, increase the likelihood of a worse outcome, and cause negative consequences of heightened anger and aggression, especially if a person already struggles with controlling their anger when they are not drinking.
When a person struggles with alcohol use disorder (AUD), these withdrawal symptoms can contribute to mood swings, trouble thinking clearly, and a feeling of being “on edge.” All of these things can make it more difficult to regulate emotions, increasing issues related to anger management. Several explanations have been proposed to help explain why individuals with PTSD may engage in efforts to down-regulate positive emotions. Individuals with PTSD may take a judgmental and evaluative stance toward positive emotions (Weiss et al., in press-a; Weiss et al., 2018; Weiss et al., 2019). These maladaptive responses to positive emotional experiences may derive from the heightened physiological arousal elicited by positive emotions (Litz et al., 2000). Indeed, physiological arousal is characteristic of many PTSD symptoms (e.g., intrusions; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), and, as such, may result in emotional distress through stimulus generalization (Roemer et al., 2001). In this respect, heightened levels of physiological arousal, regardless of source (e.g., negative or positive emotions), may be experienced as aversive among individuals with PTSD.
Such factors including head injury, neurochemistry, physiological reactivity, metabolism, and genetics. In a 2017 report, researchers shared their findings of the relationship between alcohol and dating violence. The study included 67 undergraduate men who were currently dating someone. Alcohol impairs cognitive function, which means it is more difficult to problem-solve, control anger, and make good decisions when drinking.