It’s usually “alcoholism,” not “intermittent explosive disorder”
“To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it ” intermittent explosive disorder ” and a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized, affecting up to 16 million Americans”
So wrote Lindsay Tanner, AP medical writer, reporting on a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The study was based on a national face-to-face study of 9,282 adults who answered diagnostic questionnaires. Dr. Emil Coccaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago’s medical school and one of the study’s authors, said that treatment with antidepressants and behavior therapy is helpful in treating the disorder.
This is junk science at its finest.
National Highway Transportation Safety Administration studies have proven that 50% of tailgating is associated with DUI, which in turn is an almost certain indication of alcoholism in today’s United States. The analysis of road rage in Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence, clue number 3 under the category “A Supreme Being Complex (I am God),”makes a supported case that 75% to 100% of air rage and, therefore, road rage, is linked to alcoholism. Since alcoholism is the precursor to such rage, antidepressants and behavior therapy do nothing to treat this purported disorder.
So called intermittent explosive disorder is reported by staff writer Janet Cromley of The Los Angeles Times to more typically manifest in a person getting “furious at a spouse or child for a minor disagreement over something as mundane as dinner not being served on time or neglected chores.”I know many recovering addicts who admit that between drinking episodes they would yell at their spouse, kids or pets over such things. As Ketcham and Milam put it in Under the Influence, “When the alcoholic stops drinking, all hell breaks loose. Blood vessels constrict, cutting down on the flow of blood and oxygen to the cells. The blood glucose level drops sharply and remains unstable. The brain amines, serotonin and norepinephrine, decrease dramatically. Hormones, enzymes, and body fluid levels fluctuate erratically….These chaotic events cause fundamental disruptions in the brain’s chemical and electrical activity…the resulting pandemonium creates numerous psychological and physiological problems for the alcoholic, including profound mental confusion…” No wonder hardly anyone”including researchers”is linking alcoholism to the behaviors described.
Note that serotonin decreases dramatically. The antidepressants recommended by Coccaro target serotonin receptors in the brain. And the last I checked, the number of people who have undergone successful treatment for anger who were not in a program of recovery from alcoholism was near zero.
The disorder, if it exists at all, is rare. More often, plain and simple, it’s alcoholism.