Psychological Drivers
Fear and resentment are often powerful emotional undercurrents in what gets labeled as alcoholism (more clinically, Alcohol Use Disorder). They don’t cause it on their own, but they can strongly drive the cycle of drinking and make it harder to stop.
This is consistent with clinical descriptions of AUD as a multifactorial condition involving psychological, social, and neurobiological factors.
Sources: NIAAA: Alcohol Use Disorder overview
Fear shows up in a lot of forms:
Fear of failure, rejection, or not being “enough.”
Social anxiety or discomfort in relationships
Fear of confronting painful memories or emotions
Alcohol can temporarily quiet that fear. It dampens the nervous system, making things feel more manageable in the moment. Over time, alcohol can become a maladaptive coping strategy for stress and anxiety relief. NIAAA: Alcohol and stress/anxiety effects
But over time, the brain starts to rely on alcohol as a shortcut for emotional regulation. When the effect wears off, fear often comes back stronger, which reinforces the urge to drink again. This pattern aligns with negative reinforcement models of substance use, where the removal of unpleasant emotional states strengthens behavior.
Sources: APA Dictionary: Negative reinforcement
Resentment works a bit differently:
Lingering anger toward people, situations, or past experiences
Feeling wronged, misunderstood, or treated unfairly
Internal narratives like “why did this happen to me?”
Resentment can create a constant low-level emotional pressure. Drinking becomes a way to numb or escape that pressure. Research on coping-motivated drinking shows that alcohol is often used to suppress or avoid negative emotional states rather than resolve them.
Sources: NIAAA: Alcohol and coping behaviors
The problem is that alcohol doesn’t resolve resentment—it often deepens it, especially as relationships, health, or responsibilities start to suffer. Clinical guidelines for AUD note that continued drinking despite harm is a core diagnostic feature.
Sources: American Psychiatric Association: DSM-5 criteria overview
There’s also a feedback loop:
Fear → drink to cope → consequences → more fear
Resentment → drink to numb → impaired judgment/actions → more resentment
Over time, this loop can become self-reinforcing and harder to break. This aligns with behavioral models of addiction, emphasizing reinforcement cycles and habit strengthening over time.
Sources: NIAAA: Alcohol and brain/behavior pathways
From a psychological perspective, this ties into concepts like:
Negative Reinforcement — drinking removes unpleasant feelings, so the behavior gets repeated
Emotional Avoidance — avoiding difficult emotions rather than processing them
Emotional avoidance is widely recognized in clinical psychology as a maintaining factor in anxiety and trauma-related disorders, and it is frequently addressed in therapies such as CBT and trauma-focused approaches.
Sources: American Psychological Association: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy overview
Addressing fear and resentment directly is often a key part of recovery. That might involve:
Therapy (like cognitive behavioral approaches or trauma-informed therapy)
Learning emotional regulation skills
Working through past experiences rather than suppressing them
Building healthier coping mechanisms and support systems
These approaches are consistent with evidence-based treatments for AUD, which emphasize psychological intervention and coping skill development alongside behavioral change.