Why Am I So Angry and Sad After Quitting Drinking (And Is It Normal)?
Angry after quitting drinking, let’s get straight to it. You’ve done the hard thing. You’ve put down the drink after years, maybe decades, of it being your go-to coping mechanism. You were promised clarity, energy, and a new lease on life. Instead, you’re walking around in a fog of sadness, punctuated by flashes of white-hot rage that seem to come out of nowhere. You’re snapping at your partner, you’ve got zero patience for your kids, and the slightest inconvenience feels like a personal attack. And the question screaming in your head is: Is this normal? Am I broken?
I’m here to tell you, from a man who spent 45 years with a drink in his hand, that not only is it normal, it is a necessary part of the process. What you are feeling is not a sign that you are failing. It is the sound of your mind and body beginning the painful, messy, and ultimately liberating process of healing. You are not broken. You are rebuilding.
IS IT NORMAL TO FEEL ANGRY AND SAD WHEN YOU STOP DRINKING?
Yes, it is completely normal. In fact, it would be abnormal if you didn’t. For many of us, alcohol was our primary tool for emotional regulation. It was the mute button for sadness, the pressure valve for stress, and the fuel for celebration. When you remove that tool without having built a new toolkit, you are left emotionally raw and exposed. The sadness you feel is a form of grief. You are grieving the loss of a constant companion, a ritual, an identity, and a coping mechanism that, for all its faults, worked for a very long time. Anger is the other side of that coin. It’s anger at the lost years, anger at yourself for letting it go on so long, and anger at a world that constantly pushes alcohol as the solution to everything.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN YOUR BRAIN?
Your brain is undergoing a massive recalibration. For years, you artificially manipulated your brain chemistry, specifically neurotransmitters like dopamine and GABA, to achieve a certain state. Alcohol floods the brain with dopamine, the ‘feel-good’ chemical, creating a powerful reward loop. It also enhances GABA, which has a calming, sedative effect. Your brain, in its effort to maintain balance, adapted to this constant chemical intervention by down-regulating its own natural production of these chemicals. Now that you’ve removed the alcohol, your brain is left with a massive deficit. This is the root of the low mood, anxiety, and anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure) that is so common in the early days. It’s a chemical and neurological reality, not a personal failing. As an NLP Master Practitioner, I think of it as your brain trying to run old software on a new operating system. The old code, the ‘drink-to-feel-better’ program, is still trying to execute, but the hardware has changed. The resulting error messages are the anger and sadness you feel.
WHY IS ANGER SUCH A DOMINANT EMOTION?
Anger is often a secondary emotion, a protective shield for more vulnerable feelings like fear, shame, and sadness. It feels more powerful to be angry than it does to be afraid or heartbroken. In the early days of my own reset, the rage was shocking. I was angry at everything. This rage is your nervous system, which has been suppressed for decades, finally coming back online. Think of it like a limb that’s fallen asleep; the pins and needles are excruciating as the feeling returns. That’s what’s happening to your emotional self. Furthermore, you are likely confronting, for the first time with clear eyes, the consequences of your drinking years. The missed opportunities, the strained relationships, the health concerns. It’s a heavy load to carry, and anger is a very common response to feeling overwhelmed by that weight. My ex-Army background taught me that anger is just energy. It can be destructive, or it can be the fuel that drives incredible change. The choice is in how you direct it.
HOW CAN YOU PROCESS THESE EMOTIONS WITHOUT DRINKING?
This is the central task of your reset: building a new toolkit. You can’t just white-knuckle your way through this. You need practical, daily actions rooted in the four pillars: MIND, MOVE, EAT, and SLEEP. The old you would have reached for a bottle. The new you reaches for a tool.
First, the MIND pillar. You must give these emotions an outlet. I use a practice I call journaling ‘The Darkness’. This isn’t a gratitude journal. This is a private, no-holds-barred data dump. Get a cheap notebook and a pen, and every morning, you write out every single ugly, angry, sad, and fearful thought in your head. You don’t edit, you don’t judge, you just get it out of your body and onto the page. This act alone is a powerful pressure release. Then, you practice the reframe. When a wave of sadness hits, you say to yourself, ‘This isn’t just sadness; this is my brain healing.’ When rage boils up, ‘This isn’t just anger; this is fuel for my transformation.’ This is a core NLP technique of changing the meaning you assign to your feelings.
Second, the MOVE pillar. Emotions are energy, and energy needs to move. If you let it stagnate, it becomes toxic. The single most powerful tool I discovered for this is cold water immersion. It doesn’t have to be an ice bath or a frozen river. It can start with ending your morning shower with 30 seconds of pure cold water, or simply dunking your face in a sink full of cold water. The physiological shock is a hard reset for your nervous system. It short-circuits the emotional feedback loop, yanking you out of your head and into your body. It is a physical act of choosing discomfort to build resilience. It proves to you, on a cellular level, that you can withstand difficult things. Beyond that, walking is non-negotiable. A simple 30-minute walk moves the angry energy through your body and helps to regulate your cortisol levels.
Third, the SLEEP pillar. Sleep is your superpower, and a lack of it is like pouring gasoline on the fire of your anger and sadness. In early recovery, your sleep architecture is a mess. You need to become ruthless about your sleep hygiene. This means no screens an hour before bed. A cool, dark room. A consistent bedtime and wake-time, even on weekends. When I was a chef, I worked brutal hours and ran on fumes and booze. Reclaiming my sleep was the foundation of my entire reset. Without quality sleep, your ability to regulate your emotions is practically zero.
WILL THIS FEELING LAST FOREVER?
No. Absolutely not. This is the most important thing you need to hear. This intense phase will not last forever. Think of your emotions like waves in the ocean. In the beginning, the waves are like a tsunami—huge, powerful, and relentless. They knock you off your feet. But as you continue to use your new tools, as your brain continues to heal, the waves become smaller. They still come, but they are manageable. Eventually, they become gentle swells on a calm sea. The grief becomes a memory, and the anger transforms into a quiet strength. A key tool from the MIND pillar is visualising your Future Self. Every day, take five minutes to close your eyes and vividly imagine the person you are becoming one year from now. See him or her—calm, strong, clear-eyed, and free. Connect with that feeling. This practice doesn’t just give you hope; it gives your brain a new target to aim for, a future to move towards instead of a past to escape from.
This journey is not about becoming a different person. It’s about becoming the person you were always meant to be before alcohol got in the way. The anger and sadness are the storm before the calm. They are the clearing of the wreckage. Walk through the fire. I promise you, what’s on the other side is worth it. You are not just quitting something; you are reclaiming everything.
