James Kimmel Jr., a clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale, has spent decades studying what happens in the brain when a person is wronged and then given a chance at payback.
His findings, discussed in a recent interview and drawn from his published research, show that revenge activates the same craving and reward circuitry that lights up during substance addiction.
For anyone researching addiction treatment, that overlap is worth understanding, since anger and grievance are common threads in relapse.
The Brain on Revenge Looks Like the Brain on Drugs
Neuroimaging studies cited in Kimmel’s work show that the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum, the brain’s craving and reward centers, activate when a person considers retaliation.
The anterior insula, which processes pain, fires first and appears to cue the craving. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for weighing consequences before acting, goes quiet.
“Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs,” Kimmel said. By the clinical definition of addiction, the inability to resist an urge despite the harm it causes, Kimmel argues that revenge qualifies.
This finding matters for addiction treatment because clinicians already know that anger, grudges, and impulsivity are common relapse triggers.
Understanding that the urge for revenge runs through addiction-like circuitry gives treatment providers another lens for the emotional volatility that often surfaces during early recovery.
Forgiveness Reverses the Same Circuitry
Kimmel’s research also found that forgiveness calms the pain network, shuts down the craving circuitry, and brings the prefrontal cortex’s judgment back online.
He developed a six-step forgiveness practice that echoes techniques already used in some addiction treatment settings for craving management and emotional regulation.
The practice involves naming the grievance, noticing the emotional charge without judgment, imagining what forgiveness feels like, noticing any shift in feeling, returning to that imagined relief when the grievance resurfaces, and repeating the process until it becomes a habit.
Kimmel calls this “decisional forgiveness,” an internal act done for a person’s own healing rather than something that requires the other party’s participation or even awareness.
Emotional Intelligence and Recovery Overlap
Kimmel frames the choice to forgive as an act of emotional intelligence, drawing on self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
Those same four skills show up throughout addiction treatment curricula, particularly in cognitive behavioral therapy and relapse prevention planning, where clients learn to notice an urge, understand where it comes from, and choose a different response before acting on it.
What This Means for Treatment Seekers
Grievance and resentment frequently appear in relapse prevention work as risk factors for returning to substance use.
A craving-reduction technique that does not require confronting another person, and that can be practiced privately, may be a useful addition to the coping skills taught in outpatient counseling, group therapy, or aftercare planning.
People comparing programs may want to ask providers directly whether emotional regulation and anger management are part of the curriculum, since this research suggests those skills carry real neurological weight in recovery.
Exploring Treatment Options
Rehab.com’s guide on relapse prevention and coping skills can help clarify how emotional regulation fits into a broader recovery plan.
Additionally, learning about different levels of care at a treatment center is a useful next stop for anyone trying to figure out which treatment setting best addresses both substance use and the underlying emotional patterns that can drive it.
Search rehab.com’s director to search for addiction treatment centers. You can call
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