Revenge Is the Strongest Drug Addiction

7/19/25

Important application for those whom we have had to kick out because they wanted the Kingdom without the King:

Yale School of Medicine:

Revenge is an act designed to inflict harm on someone because they’ve inflicted harm on us. We could yearn for anything after we’ve been mistreated, such as a scoop of ice cream, a nap, or a relaxing massage. But what most of us really want is the other person’s pain—and for them to know that their pain is because of the pain they’ve caused us. The desire for revenge is the root motivation for almost all forms of human violence. From childhood bullying to intimate partner violence, urban violence, police brutality, mass shootings, violent extremism, genocide, and even war; perpetrators of violence almost always believe they’re victims seeking justice. Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. The brain doesn’t like pain and tries to rebalance itself with pleasure. Pleasure can come from many things, but humans have evolved to feel intense pleasure from hurting the people who hurt us, or their proxies.