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Areas › Anger › Anger, alcohol and the body
Episodes that look random from close up often turn out to have a shape once there is a record of them: a point in a monthly cycle, a change of medication, a course of steroids, the months after an illness. A pattern like that points somewhere practical, which is putting the hard conversations on the easier days rather than trying to be a better person on the difficult ones. Anabolic steroid use has a well known reputation for rage and needs medical help rather than psychological technique.
He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful (Quran 32:9). The body and its workings were given to you, so learning how yours actually runs is part of looking after what you were given.
السجدة
ثُمَّ سَوَّىٰهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِۦۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
Then He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 32:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a placebo controlled experiment, a single dose of testosterone rapidly increased aggressive behaviour, but only in men who were already high in dominance or impulsivity. The hormone did not act on its own, it worked through the person it was given to. That is a useful correction to the idea that body chemistry settles behaviour by itself, and it also means a pattern in you is worth knowing rather than worth fearing.
Carré JM, Geniole SN, Ortiz TL, Bird BM, Videto A, Bonin PL. (2017). Exogenous Testosterone Rapidly Increases Aggressive Behavior in Dominant and Impulsive Men.. Biological psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When the body is already primed to react, the same event costs more to handle than it would a week earlier.
If a physical pattern is clear, take it to a doctor rather than trying to manage it as a psychological problem.
Anger has a chemistry of its own. There is nothing to pour down the sink and nobody to stop selling it to you, which is why letting it go feels like losing something rather than putting something down.
You are right that the first drink takes the edge off. That is exactly what makes it hard, and pretending otherwise would only be untrue.
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.