Researchers found that aggression between two people in a romantic or sexual relationship was “associated with heavy drinking episodes and cocaine use.” A Scandinavian study that found the risk for violent behavior increases with intoxication, but only among individuals who are prone to suppressing their feelings of anger while they are sober. Testing people who reported that they were prone to burying their angry feelings, researchers observed a 5 percent increase in violent behavior that followed a 10 percent increase in drinking to the point of getting drunk. People who didn’t work their anger out were more likely to get drunk, and that state of drunkenness was connected to a rise in the chance of engaging in violent behavior. People who did not suppress their angry feelings did not show a similar association.
