Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Anger, alcohol and the body
What drink takes first is the part that holds you back, which is why nothing feels different from the inside. You are not angrier, there is simply less between the feeling and the mouth. A stimulant leaves that part in place and floods everything with drive and urgency instead. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you what to expect from an evening, and it explains why the mixture goes wrong so reliably.
Do not come anywhere near the prayer if you are intoxicated, not until you know what you are saying (Quran 4:43). Not knowing what you are saying is named as the trouble, and that is precisely the capacity that goes first.
النساء
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا تَقۡرَبُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَنتُمۡ سُكَٰرَىٰ حَتَّىٰ تَعۡلَمُواْ مَا تَقُولُونَ وَلَا جُنُبًا إِلَّا عَابِرِي سَبِيلٍ حَتَّىٰ تَغۡتَسِلُواْۚ وَإِن كُنتُم مَّرۡضَىٰٓ أَوۡ عَلَىٰ سَفَرٍ أَوۡ جَآءَ أَحَدࣱ مِّنكُم مِّنَ ٱلۡغَآئِطِ أَوۡ لَٰمَسۡتُمُ ٱلنِّسَآءَ فَلَمۡ تَجِدُواْ مَآءࣰ فَتَيَمَّمُواْ صَعِيدࣰ ا طَيِّبࣰ ا فَٱمۡسَحُواْ بِوُجُوهِكُمۡ وَأَيۡدِيكُمۡۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَفُوًّا غَفُورًا
You who believe, do not come anywhere near the prayer if you are intoxicated, not until you know what you are saying; nor if you are in a state of major ritual impurity- though you may pass through the mosque- not until you have bathed; if you are ill, on a journey, have relieved yourselves, or had intercourse, and cannot find any water, then find some clean sand and wipe your faces and hands with it. God is always ready to pardon and forgive
Qur’an 4:43read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The alcohol myopia model, set out in a review of this literature, explains disinhibited aggression as attention narrowing onto whatever is provoking while everything that would have held you back drops out of view. It is a theoretical account rather than one experiment, and it fits the common report that a small thing somehow filled the whole screen. Treat it as a way of understanding what happened rather than a measurement of it.
Giancola PR, Josephs RA, Parrott DJ, Duke AA. (2010). Alcohol Myopia Revisited: Clarifying Aggression and Other Acts of Disinhibition Through a Distorted Lens.. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
One of them weakens what stops you and the other strengthens what pushes you, and both end up in the same place.
If drinking is anywhere in the picture, stopping will probably do more for your anger than any technique you could learn. That is not the interesting answer, it is just the one that moves the most.
Sleep, food, illness and the run of stress you have been carrying set the height of your fuse before anything has even happened. Sort those out and you are simply a calmer person that week, with no insight required.
Anger sends people back to the thing they had stopped, and the thing they had stopped makes the anger worse. Any plan that treats these as two separate projects tends to come apart.