Drinking Alcohol and The Risk of Violence

Substance misuse can begin even after the very first time drug addiction treatment someone uses a drug. When some drugs are taken, they can cause surges of neurotransmitters much greater than the smaller bursts naturally produced in association with healthy rewards like eating, hearing or playing music, or social interaction. This can lead to functional changes that occur in the areas of the brain involved in reward, stress and self-control. The tendency to avoid looking ahead and assessing consequences for one’s actions is a risk factor for aggressive behavior while drinking. That may sound obvious, and it’s a theory backed by a small, interesting 2012 study from Ohio State University (9).

• Ultimately, we need more research to confirm, despite the acknowledged risk of other harms, that drugs like MDMA and LSD have a low potential for causing violence compared with alcohol.
• There were reports of alleged sexual and physical assaults at the festival, held over five days including Australia Day.
• It’s all too common that problem drinking disrupts bonds with a spouse, family members, friends, coworkers, or employers.
• Furthermore, evidence also shows that the convergence of men and women has usually been stronger in the age group of young adults in comparison to any other age group (Wilsnack et al., 2018).

Follow the UK low risk drinking guidelines

Drinking does not inevitably lead to violent behaviour, and most episodes of drunkenness pass without any violence. However, by lowering inhibitions and impairing judgement alcohol can increase both aggression and the willingness to take risks. The science on this issue is complex, but we know from experience that drunkenness can why does alcohol make people violent trigger violent behaviour in a wide range of contexts. Since the relaxation of licensing laws in 2005, for example, drunken violence in town and city centres has tended to be pushed later into the night – although the overall levels of violence have not increased significantly.

Talk with your doctor about reducing alcohol intake

• For these reasons, some people may exhibit nervousness, outbursts, aggression, and even violence while intoxicated or during withdrawal.
• Aggression refers to a range of behaviors that can result in both physical and psychological harm to yourself, others, or objects in the environment.
• AAC is committed to making recovery accessible to everyone in need and offers a combination of proven therapies and services to meet your individual needs.
• There are no studies showing a clear link between the use of LSD and violence.
• She says that anger management programs are a good start for those who end up seeking help when alcohol gets them into trouble with the law or their families.

Then, they participated in a competitive reaction time task where they could choose the intensity of electric shocks to deliver to an opponent when they won a trial. By Buddy TBuddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website. People who tend to ignore the future consequences of their behavior, or score low on the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) scale, have been found to display more aggression. Anger is an intense emotion you feel when something has gone wrong or someone has wronged you.

Brain health

• So, LSD can lead to significant changes in consciousness and perception that are therapeutic in clinical settings.
• Alternative solutions may involve setting drink limits, avoiding alcohol when you’re already having intense emotions, or opting to have emotional conversations when you’re sober.
• The link between alcohol consumption and aggression is promoted by various interacting factors.
• Anecdotally, we have rarely seen people become violent as a result of their distress after taking LSD at festivals.

When people drink they are also less likely to consider the possible consequences of their actions. Additionally, more than three-quarters of study participants with the gene had mood disorders, personality disorders, and mood swings (10). According to a review from 2017, alcohol is more likely to cause personality shifts related to negative emotions, but that doesn’t mean anger is the most common emotional experience while drinking. Importantly, some people naturally have poorer executive control than others, and these people, particularly if they are male, are more likely to be aggressive after drinking alcohol.

Alcohol can affect men’s and women’s health differently

Many people who drink are never violent and even those who do become aggressive won’t do so all the time. If you have a natural tendency to be angry, drinking alcohol may cause you to become aggressive. The more alcohol a person drinks, the greater the risk of harmful health effects.

• Abed says the people that one surrounds themselves with also plays an important role in minimizing the risk of substance misuse.
• However, in the recent years, data from the United States indicate that the binge-drinking rate in adult women (age 21–49 years) has been rising (Hasin et al., 2019; Sarah and Keyes, 2020).
• Alcohol can impair the OFC, and disrupt communication between the OFC and the amygdala.
• They volunteered at the recent Rainbow Serpent Festival with DanceWize to provide festival goers who were feeling distressed with a safe space to process their drug-induced experience.

But when we drink alcohol, executive control flags, making it harder to reflect on our behaviour and self-regulate. Instead of taking a few deep breaths when we feel slighted or insulted, we give in to our impulses, which for some are violent. One way in which alcohol’s effects on brain functioning have been measured is to look at how people use what’s known as the brain’s executive system. Decision-making, problem solving and reasoning are all jobs the executive system takes control of.