Revenge is not a drug nor forgiveness a cure
I found myself nodding along to about half of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Then I came to the discussion of forgiveness, and I started snarling.
It is not often that you come across a sentence that sums up a 20-year stretch of your life.
I found one in last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, though:
“Getting revenge, or even just fantasizing about it, releases dopamine and produces feelings of pleasure that cover up the pain and restore balance, for a while.”
— James Kimmel Jr., “This is your brain on revenge”
That covers the way I felt about my former stepfather from the age of 27 up until three years ago when I finally found something that could be called closure. That’s a solid 20 years of resentment in which I frequently fantasized about confrontations with him.
The root of my anger was pretty clear: my stepfather had been unfaithful and dishonest to my mom. He spent through their shared retirement savings. He broke her heart. I was also indignant at what I perceived to be his lack of accountability.
After he separated from my mom, he asked me to come visit him. I told him there would need to be an honest conversation about what was happening in the family if he wanted to maintain a relationship with me. He never responded to that request, and after my mom divorced him, I began to feel deeply ashamed that I had not done more to stand up to him first when I was a teenager and later when the marriage collapsed.1
I never actually did anything to the man. I didn’t even yell at him. I spent years, however, imagining a confrontation with him. It was—to use the framework presented in the Wall Street Journal essay—generating a hit of dopamine to mask the pain and anger I felt over how things ended. I was trying to apply psychological spackle to cover up a hole entirely too big to be patched in this manner.
This was, it turns out, the most compelling part of the article:
By James Kimmel Jr. | The Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025
Kimmel is a former lawyer, someone who identifies himself as previously being obsessed with revenge. He’s been researching the subject for several years now, and is a lecturer at Yale. He has a book out on the subject, “The Science of Revenge” and has recently appeared on podcasts with everyone from Dr. Phil to “The Armchair Expert” with Dax Sheppard.
As someone who has spent a great deal of time thinking and even envisioning methods for harming people who I believe have harmed me and my family, I found parts of Kimmel’s essay provided tremendous insight:
Kimmel says that drugs have a similar effect upon the brain, and from there characterizes the human desire for revenge as being a disease and potential addiction. In one interview I listened to, he compared revenge to the opiode crisis.
I found this part of his article significantly less convincing.
Revenge is frequently characterized as a disease or disorder. This happens in literature all the time, Western classics like “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It is done by academics, too. Psychologist Karen Horney did it in her paper “The Value of Vindictiveness,” which was published in 1948.
In these works, revenge is characterized as an alluring temptation we all feel, but once a person gives into it, it can co-opt and destroy their entire life.
What this model fails to account for is the fact that the desire for revenge is an instinct that exists across our species. It can be traced back to the value it provided to our primitive ancestors who used punishment and retribution as a way to organize their (small) societies.
But the bigger issue with describing the desire for revenge as a disease rather than a trait or a tendency is that it creates a scenario in which there should be a cure or a fix. This—almost invariably—is forgiveness. An emotional elixir. Something you need to practice in order to avoid having your life dominated by an insatiable appetite for payback.
Sure enough, that’s exactly where Kimmel winds up, citing research that showed forgiveness lessened neural activity within the brain’s pain network and increased activity in the region associated with self-control.
I’m not going to touch the religious references here.
I will say two things, however:
Presenting forgiveness as a cure or antidote for the toxin of revenge puts an onus on people who have been harmed and in some cases abused.
There is no evidence that someone who suffers trauma must forgive the person who inflicted that harm in order to recover from that trauma.
Now, forgiveness may help in that regard. In fact, it may often help. It’s not always necessary, however, and I believe that’s an important distinction to make because when people start talking about forgiveness as some sort of detox as Kimmel does, it applies pressure on people who’ve been harmed to forgive the people who harmed them.
Amanda Ann Gregory has spent 17 years counseling trauma victims. She’s also someone who experienced trauma herself. Her book “You Don’t Need to Forgive” was also published this year, and while she’s not against forgiveness nor does she dispute its power, she’s very specific in pointing out that forgiveness is not some sort of non-negotiable requirement for someone who is recovering from trauma.
No research indicates that forgiveness benefits everyone in every circumstance. Unfortunately, many believe forgiveness is the gold standard of mental health, and they unconditionally pressure themselves and others to forgive, which rarely leads to genuine forgiveness.
— Amanda Ann Gregory, “6 Reasons Why You Can’t Forgive”
Speaking only for myself, I have significantly reduced the amount of pain I feel over the actions of my stepfather. I do not spend as much time ruminating about his actions or imagining what I could do to harm or humiliate him. I am not as angry.
Also: I have not forgiven him.
Now some of that is due to the fact he’s never asked me to forgive him, either. Perhaps that’s because he can’t bring himself to recognize the impact his actions had on me. Perhaps it’s because he truly doesn’t believe he’s responsible the harm I feel I’ve suffered.
I’m not mad about this, but I wouldn’t say that I’ve forgiven him, either. I’ve simply chosen to stop relitigating what happened and declared that this specific chapter in my life is over. I’m not waiting to see if he expresses remorse and questioning if he feels bad. I’m not looking up his online profile to see where he’s living or what he might be up to. I’m not going to do something that I hope will set things right. There’s no score left to settle. It happened. It’s over. I’m moving on, and while I could see how someone might see this newsletter as an attempt to have the last word, I’m honestly not doing this to hold my stepfather or anyone else accountable for what happened.
I’m writing this newsletter for three primary reasons:
I think there’s value in exploring why I was unable to let go of this for 20 years.
I think it could be helpful to delve into the exact process that allowed me to let go of this animosity I felt or at least temper it dramatically.
I want to describe the relief and sense of peace I’ve found now that I’ve come out on the other side of what was an unyielding desire for retribution.
While I wouldn’t choose to characterize the desire for revenge as either a disease or a drug, I do believe that it can compound the suffering we experience as humans. I think it does this by fueling decisions we later regret as well as trapping us in mental cycles that keep us ruminating and therefore re-experiencing the pain we have previously suffered.
And while I think forgiveness is an admirable, maybe even noble goal, I do not think it applies in every instance. It certainly didn’t in mine. Here, I’ll quote again from Amanda Ann Gregory:
Many who have not forgiven do not feel angry or resentful toward their offender. They may not like or love their offender. They may feel little or no empathy for them. And yet, they feel at peace. “
— Amanda Ann Gregory, “6 Reasons Why You Can’t Forgive”
The question of why I was ashamed—and whether this was appropriate—is a separate issue that I’m sure I’ll get into at some point. The fact is: I did feel ashamed, and I gained some relief from the pain I felt over this by imagining myself standing up to my stepfather in a way that I wished I had done back when I was a teenager.