Q: I’m an alcoholic with some PTSD that manifests as rage when I drink. How will this impact my dismantling?

A: I’ve received a number of questions on these themes recently so will say a bit more than typical here.

The transition to Human Adulthood requires clarity. Alcohol destroys clarity, and rage destroys presence. But these aren’t obstacles; they’re escape routes. The alcohol and PTSD aren’t the fire; they’re the smoke.

The question behind this question is: “How can I dismantle the false self without giving up the parts of the false self I’m still using to survive?”

Alcohol and PTSD don’t “impact the dismantling,” they are the dismantling. They’re expressions of the very structure you’re trying to see through.

In my experience working with Jumpers over the years, I've seen how rage is the false self’s emergency defense system. When someone gets close to a real insight, a real crack, a real moment of self-seeing, the false self often deploys rage as its last line of defense. It isn't random, and it’s not even personal. It’s a mechanism whose sole purpose is to protect the false self from being seen.

Viewing the alcoholism and PTSD as obstacles that might derail noble inner pursuits may sound sensible, but notice what is being smuggled in here:

“I’m an alcoholic with PTSD…” frames the drinking and rage as fixed identity components.

“…how will this impact my dismantling?” assumes dismantling is something you can manage, optimize, and protect from disruption.

The same mechanism that drinks to avoid reality is now asking how to dismantle itself without being dismantled. It wants guarantees, strategizing, a safe container, a roadmap that keeps the deconstruction controlled and tidy. But dismantling is not a tidy event, it’s demolition.

The simple reality is, you can’t dismantle a false self while actively reinforcing the machinery it lives in. 

The false self fights dirty. The sooner you get this, the better. If you give it alcohol and trauma to work with, it will win every time. Not because you’re weak, but because you’re outnumbered and you’re handing the enemy fresh ammunition. Alcohol is the dream’s most reliable tranquilizer, and rage is one of its best distractors. Both keep you from looking at yourself. Alcohol just lowers the gate so the self can unleash its full arsenal.

For the purposes of dismantling, this isn’t about trauma theory. This is about function, pattern, and the machinery of the false self.

What I can see (what anyone in my position would see,) that may be of use to you, is that rage is engineered to destroy presence. This is not psychology or morality, it’s not even about emotion. It’s about function.

PTSD is not a wound, it’s a system. It’s not the event that happened, it’s the pattern your nervous system built to protect the self from ever experiencing that kind of helplessness again. What looks like rage, panic, shutdown, hypervigilance, flashbacks, is actually a protective architecture. And that architecture exists for one existential purpose: to keep the identity intact at all costs.

Rage is the fastest way to collapse consciousness into survival mode. PTSD knows (mechanically, not consciously) that the biggest threat is not pain, but presence. Presence forces you to feel, see, remember, question, unravel, dismantle, face the truth of what happened, and face the truth of who you think you are.

Rage restores the old story that PTSD depends on. The identity built around trauma often reinforces narratives like, I’m not safe, I must be hyper-alert, the world is dangerous, I need control to survive, If I let go, I’ll be destroyed.

Look closely though and you’ll see that these beliefs are not conscious choices, they’re structural supports. Rage reinforces every one of them and restores a sense of control, a sense of power, a sense of agency (even if it’s explosive,) a sense of separateness, and most importantly, a sense of self.

When rage hits, the prefrontal cortex goes offline and the survival brain takes over. Thought becomes weaponized, attention collapses into a single point, the world becomes enemy or threat, all internal seeing stops. This is why it’s addictive. Rage is an identity-protective chemical reinforcer that keeps the past from dissolving, because if it does, the self built around it dissolves too. 

This is the existential part.

PTSD isn’t just protecting you from the memory, it’s protecting you from losing the identity built from that memory. If the trauma stops defining you, the self constructed from the trauma begins to unravel. The false self interprets this as death, so it fights. With rage.

So, the real question you’re asking, (some version of  “Can I wake up without losing the coping mechanisms that protect the dream?”) reflects characteristics of Phase Two: Disruption. There’s enough awareness to see the cracks,and enough destabilization for the rage, drinking, and trauma responses to feel dangerous. And yet the ego is trying to negotiate terms, bargain, and maintain control. This is classic Disruption Phase behavior where the false self senses threat and doubles down on its defenses. Addiction, rage, and PTSD responses are defenses. They’re all mechanisms that protect the identity structure from collapse.

Your question shows that collapse has begun, and the false self is scared.

The real danger isn’t your drinking or your rage. The real danger is believing those things are “you,” and believing they have to remain untouched while “you” pursue truth.

So I’ll leave you with these, not as comfort, but as tools: 

“When the rage comes, when the drinking pulls me under, what part of me is trying not to die?”

“What part of me is trying to survive by keeping me unconscious?”

That’s where you look next.