Why it's time to start treating revenge as the potentially deadly addiction that it is

New York Post

31-05-2025

We don't usually think of anger and resentment the way we think about drugs or alcohol. But growing evidence suggests that, for many people, the craving for revenge follows the same patterns as substance abuse and addiction, triggering powerful biological urges that can spiral out of control and destroy lives.
Recent neuroscience discoveries show that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Real or imagined grievances (perceived mistreatment, humiliation, shame, victimization) activate the anterior insula — part of the brain's 'pain network.'
In response, your brain activates its reward circuitry, causing dopamine to flood your brain, producing short-lived bursts of pleasure.
5 Legendary thinker Homer focused on themes of revenge in his iconic tale 'The Odyssey.'
Getty Images
For most people, this process is manageable.
But for others, the self-control area — the prefrontal cortex — that's supposed to stop you from engaging in harmful behaviors gets hijacked, resulting in tragedy.
We know now that revenge isn't metaphorical. It's biological. In the moment, revenge feels great. But like drugs and alcohol, the effects wear off quickly, and the pain returns.
If not controlled, revenge can turn into a deadly addiction.
The only way to gratify revenge cravings is by inflicting harm on the people who hurt you (or their proxies).
Hard-core drug users inject narcotics into their own bodies to satisfy their cravings.
Hard-core revenge users inject bullets into the bodies of others.
Public health data and research show that grievance-triggered revenge cravings are the root motivation of almost all forms of violence, including youth violence and bullying, intimate partner violence, street and gang violence, police brutality, violent extremism, terrorism, and even war.
5 Almost every act of violence and warfare can be attributed to feelings of vengeance, which is why revenge must be treated as an addiction, critics believe.
Getty Images
Criminologists have proposed other motivations — predation, dominance, ideology, hate, and sadism.
But the neuroscience of revenge suggests these are better categorized as grievances that activate revenge desires, and the hedonic reward one receives when revenge is achieved.
While scientists haven't thought of revenge as an addictive process until recently, poets, playwrights, and prophets have been trying to tell us this for millennia.
Writing in 700 BCE, Homer, for instance, warns of the dangers of compulsive revenge seeking in the Odyssey.
The tale of Odysseus reveals the hero returning home from the Trojan War to find his wife, Penelope, in the company of more than a hundred suitors. Odysseus slaughters them all in an orgy of retaliation, unleashing a cycle of revenge that can only be stopped with the intervention of the gods.
5 Author Matthew White estimates that 445 million people have been killed in revenge-related acts of violence.
Facebook
In the fifth century BCE, the ancient Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides achieved immortal fame through tragic plays like 'Antigone,' 'Oedipus Rex,' 'Agamemnon,' and 'Medea,' which exhorted audiences about the dangers of compulsive revenge seeking.
The book of Genesis cautions humanity about the risks of revenge in stories such as Cain's murder of Abel and God's vengeance-fueled mass slaughter of humanity during the flood.
Today, we see the perniciousness of revenge on every scale.
From vicious personal feuds and road rage to mass shootings, terrorist attacks, genocides, and war, the compulsion to seek revenge can often not be tamed, even when it costs everything.
Whether it's a teenager bullied at school, a political faction nursing old grievances, or a nation seeking redress for historical wrongs, the underlying brain biology is the same.
Tally the casualties of all the murders and physical and psychological assaults throughout human history, and you're likely to reach the number of dead and wounded from compulsive revenge seeking.
Multicide researcher Matthew White estimates that a staggering 455 million people have been killed in just the top 100 most deadly atrocities and wars in recorded history.
The World Health Organization estimates that violence-related injuries kill approximately 1.25 million people each year.
5 'The Science of Revenge' is written by James Kimmel Jr.
But there's good news. Understanding violence as the result of an addictive process means that we can finally develop ways of preventing and treating it beyond mere arrest and punishment. Laws and prisons deter some people, but not those whose brains are gripped by the intense craving for payback. Like drug addicts risking death for a fix, revenge addicts risk everything for the fleeting satisfaction of retaliation.
As with drug addiction, education, cognitive therapies, counseling, self-help strategies, and, potentially, anti-craving medications like naltrexone and GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic may help.
But an even more powerful revenge addiction strategy exists inside our brains — forgiveness.
Recent neuroscience studies show that when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance, your brain's pain, craving, and reward circuitry shut down and your self-control circuitry activates. In other words, forgiveness takes away the pain of past trauma, eliminates revenge cravings, and restores smart decision-making.
5 James Kimmel, Jr. says that forgiveness acts as 'an even more powerful revenge addiction strategy.'
Michelle Senatore
It's not a gift to the person who hurt you — it's a gift to yourself. You can use it as often as needed to heal yourself from the wrongs of the past, but still defend yourself from threats of the present or future. Bottom line: Forgiveness is a wonder drug that we don't use often enough.
As May closes and we reach the end of Mental Health Awareness Month this year, there may be no mental illness that we need to become more aware of than revenge addiction.
Unless we learn how to break the cycle of revenge, it will continue to destroy individuals, families, communities, and nations.
James Kimmel, Jr., JD, is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and author of 'The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction — and How to Overcome It,' from which this article is adapted.