Are You Addicted to Anger? You’re Not Alone.

Anger is natural. But it isn’t your friend.

Everybody’s angry.

It feels unavoidable. You know what I mean. There are two worlds we live in; the physical and the online. And lately, my online world has erupted in a conflagration of rage.

I’m an angry man by nature. I come by it honestly. There is a wild rage embedded in the invisible coils of my DNA. And angry people change the world. My ancestors painted themselves with woad and ran, naked and screaming, into battle. The warp spasm of Cu Chulainn turned the legendary hero into a terrifying monster.

But I have no bull to slay.

Getting angry can serve a purpose. It can feed you with energy as the sea feeds the storm. It cuts through the chatter, tapping straight into your limbic system and sweeping away the concerns of morality, of reality, of moderation. That’s why it feels so good.

That’s why it’s so dangerous.

The engine growled.

My truck sat idle, wide-set tires tanned with dust that drifted in murky clouds from the gravel road. Cars lined up behind me. A long thread traffic worked its way back from where I sat beneath the mobile sun. But I didn’t move.

My window was down. A massive bull bison, all towering shoulders and heavy head, stood on my side of the truck bellowing. Thick strings of saliva stretched between his blunt-toothed jaws as he roared at me. It was the rut, the mating season for his kind. In my big black truck, I must’ve looked a little too much like a rival.

In this Canadian National Park, the bison aren’t quite wild. But they aren’t quite domesticated either. Their world is far smaller than it used to be, contained by cattle grids and wire fences. But in that realm, these animals do what they like. When your body is two thousand pounds of muscular anger, you don’t have to take orders.

The Minotaur was the result of a crime.

An abomination. When King Minos failed to sacrifice a beautiful bull, Zeus made his wife fall in love with it. Through some clever cosplay, the Queen seduced the bull and bore a monstrous child.

She named the creature Asterion, meaning star. She loved her little monster with the beautiful blindness mothers have, that saw the precious uniqueness of the beast that horrified everyone else. Even monsters have mothers.

But the cuckolded King felt differently. He had Asterion locked up in a labyrinth, a whispered threat and horror to the people of Crete. A monster they sometimes heard bellowing in the night as tectonic plates shifted and cooled.

Of course, cows are herbivores.

And anyone who’s spent time on a farm knows that cows are placid creatures. A single dog or a kid with a stick can move a whole herd of cows wherever they are wanted. Even into the trucks that lead to the slaughterhouse.

But bulls, like many male mammals, exist to fight and fornicate. Juiced up on a flood of testosterone, they see the world only as threat or opportunity. A bull in rut is an awesome sight, a powerful creature overcome with wild rage. The conquering anger that sends the matador running for the fence, his bloodless sword clattering from a trembling hand. But that anger doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s just another face of fear.

Anger and fear are alike in that both flood our bloodstream with adrenaline. The pupils dilate. The heart rate climbs. Pain disappears. People risk their lives to feel this rush over and over again, and we call them junkies because we can see the pattern of addiction in their behaviour.

We don’t need to leap out of a plane or climb a mountain to feel an adrenaline rush. Spluttering in anger at some idiotic Facebook post provides a tiny hit of the same potent drug. We are drip-fed this stuff daily, whether we look for it or not. Because our modern-day princes and kings learned long ago that we are drawn to what we hate and fear.

We can’t look away from the monster. We dive headfirst into the sufferings of the world not because we think we can solve them, but because they get us high. Because we need to believe that life itself is a serious matter, and that our individual lives are part of the majestic drama.

There’s money to be made from your anger and fear. When we meet in person, it’s all smiles and hugs and relentless positivity. But put us behind the sickly glow of the computer screen, and we begin bellowing like bulls at every unknown noise, every suggestion of movement.

We charge again and again, made reckless with rage, only for the cape to twirl harmlessly over our heads. Somehow, we never seem to turn our horns on the killer flourishing the red rag in front of us.

Theseus was the perfect Athenian.

A man of action who used his brain as well as his physical prowess. A champion of democracy and the beardless foil of the more brutish Hercules.

Theseus already had many adventures before he came to the island where Asterion hit in his labyrinth. But the two of them, the athletic democrat and the mute monster, are rarely remembered apart from one another. Their fates are entwined, bound together by Ariadne’s thread. The darkly glittering path through the maze that echoed with wordless rage.

In The House of Asterion, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has the Minotaur waiting hopefully for the man he sees as his redeemer. As thuggish Theseus’s sword drips with the Minotaur’s spill blood, he remarks in wonder that the monster didn’t resist.

We don’t choose what we want.

The rage-filled bison in the park wanted me gone. Terrified that I would steal the cows of his herd and impregnate them all, leaving his genes to fade into dust. Theseus wanted to stop the routine sacrifice of young Athenians to the barbarism of Crete. The shrieking campaigners of the modern world are trying to save the country or protect the innocent or build a better world. No one but the rarest of psychopaths gets out of bed in the morning eager to do evil.

But to desire anything is to fear. Because we all know that not everyone’s dreams can come true. We are all afraid of missing our target. Even lions eat fast.

Rage is intoxicating and addictive. Just because a drug is produced inside your own body doesn’t mean it’s not a drug. It feels good to be angry. It feels like life. Like liquid fire in your veins, the sudden adrenaline flood makes you forget pain, forget nuance, ignore everything but the dictates of your own flooded heart.

You’ll get used to that feeling. You’ll come to depend on your chemical crutch the way an addict depends on heroin. You’ll seek it out, turning your dripping horns in ever-narrower circles, charging at shadows and roaring in a labyrinth with no doors. In the end, the only person left to gore is yourself.

So how do we escape this corrosive cycle?

At twelve-step meetings, coffee and cigarettes are ubiquitous. Maybe we can never really escape our addictions. Maybe the best we can hope to do is transform them into something less harmful.

• Never act in haste. Except in life or death situations, it’s almost always possible to take some time before reacting. Even a few seconds, time enough for a couple of deep breaths and unhurried heartbeats, can help you process the sudden adrenaline dump of anger that leads to rash decisions.
• Manage stress. Anger has a way of building up slowly, gathering strength day by day until you can no longer keep a lid on it. Learn to recognize the signs of stress when they first manifest themselves and deal with them as soon as possible. Remove yourself from stressful situations whenever possible. Carve out some quiet time each day for yourself to do nothing other than simply exist.
• Be honest, both with yourself and with others. It may not be your kid’s messy room or your partner’s forgetfulness or the made-up headlines of the day that are really bothering you. We are as much a victim of our hormones and emotions as a rutting bison, no matter how much more enlightened we like to think we are.
• Practice forgiveness. Unresolved resentment destroys human relationships. And grudges are usually far more damaging to the person who holds one than they are to anyone else. Forgiveness is not a gift you give to your enemy, but a gift you give yourself. To forgive is to break the hold the past has on you so that you can move forward.

Anger drove the wolves from the forests and kept our species alive in a hostile world. Even today, it has its uses. Anger, properly channeled, can forge a better world from the ashes of the old.

But when you hear the bull bellowing in your labyrinthine soul, take a moment to ask yourself why. Is your anger useful? Or is it the destructive recklessness of addiction?

Monsters make mazes, but then mazes make more monsters. When that bronze sword falls, you might find yourself glad to let the beast die at last.