The sound of breaking dishes in the kitchen, a trail of damaged but unopened candy wrappers, sitting on the floor next to the cabinets with their doors ripped off, with the sugar bowl half-spilled, thankfully recovering with some sugar under their tongue and no major bodily injury. Terrifying.

Hyperglycemia does too. (High blood sugar.) It’s known as diabetic rage. A number of things are happening there. Part of it is brain inflammation – experienced as suffering – and brain inflammation is directly behavior-modifying, causing aggression.

And indeed that’s what happens with traumatic brain injuries.

The same mechanism is behind the aggression sometimes displayed by cocaine users. Cocaine tamps down brain inflammation short-term, increases it long-term.

And indeed, people with traumatic brain injuries and central nervous system inflammation tend to have more problems with cocaine abuse.