Can smoking lead one to become an alcohol dependent and lead to the necessity of addiction treatment?
A lot of smokers I know are also alcohol drinkers. Are smoking and alcohol drinking somehow connected? Will the treatment of one eventually lead to the dissipating of the other?
Actually, smoking and alcohol consumption are indeed interrelated. Nicotine intake increases a person’s alcohol craving, whereas alcohol drinking boosts the effects of smoking. This explains why smokers are almost always drinkers as well. Addiction treatment will be needed when the person is already consuming so much more of the substances than what is moderate, or when he is getting physically or psychologically dependent upon them. Treatment of both disorders will be best as treating only one will bode for a bigger chance of relapse.
Smoking and drinking quadruple your chances for disease. The alcohol makes your body take it all in.Smokers who drink usually want to smoke more.
I used to smoke during college but I never had the urge to get wasted when I was smoking. On the other hand, when I was drinking, I smoked. But then again, during those times, I almost always had cigarettes in my pocket..so it was inevitable. Now I quit smoking but I still drink occasionally on the weekends. But never I felt I became dependent with alcohol because I smoked. Back to your question, I guess not.
WOW The honest answer is that there is no conclusive study either way…
*Imoderate* smoking or drinking are both addictive behaviors. Addiction is something some people are more suceptible to than other people. Immoderate smoking could be a warning sign of addictive tendencies, and potential for other addictive behaviors… But nobody knows for sure… And only 85% of alcoholics are smokers as well. I was unable to find a figure for moderately drinking smokers, but even if i had found one i would not trust self-reports of moderation.
The reward circuit in your brain for one addiction is very similar to any other, and so addictions are considered to be ’synergistic’, meaning that one addiction and a new one become part of a single addictive mechanism. You combine stuff that gives you an addictive payoff for a higher payoff, and get accustomed to that higher payoff. But nobody knows for sure.
There are few effective treatments for alcoholism (and none of them are 12 step based).
1. to meet regularly with a financial counselor who helps you to remain conscious of how much *money* you spend on your addiction,
2. A drug called Chantix . One dose of the drug, called varenicline cut drinking by 50 per cent, and the animals did not go back to excess drinking after the drug was stopped, which is what often happens when people try to reduce alcohol dependence with the currently approved drugs.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76486.php
The same few treatments are long term effective for tobacco addictions (the patch is not effective, except in moderately smoking women, for whom behavioral changes are the key to quitting). Cost/benefit counseling, to let you know what you might have otherwise done with all that *money*
and the same drug: Chantix.
Members of AA (a 12 step program) consume immoderate quantities of both caffiene and tobacco products. Some studies speculate that it is an attempt to satisfy their addiction reward circuits in their brain to compensate for alcohol they no longer consume. But nobody knows for sure.
Addictive reward behavior is a response to chronic stress, and a somewhat effective self treatment for some serious mental illnesses, as well as garden variety depression and anhedonia (people who just don’t experience much pleasure). Proper psychiatric treatment, including psycotherapeutic drugs, lessens addictive behavior in these people.
Some people drink for relief of pain, and become both addicted to the alcohol, and still reliant on the alcohol for chronic pain. Treatment of chronic pain reduces alcoholism, but it can hardly be called relief from addictions in those people who must still be medicated with addictive substances.
The study of addictions is full of bad science. It is difficult to ethically experiment of human beings. There is a lot of political pressure, and pressure from funding sources, to come to pre-determined conclusions – the studies are designed to exclude uncomfortable answers. Where treatments are limited, and a lot of public pressure exists, people tend to inflate the effectiveness of poor or counterproductive treatments, like 12 step programs.
In every year 5% of addicted people quit their addiction. It does not matter what the addiction is. It does not matter *much* what treatment they have received. 12 steppers are more likely to die, and a little less likely to quit, than those participating in other forms of ‘quitting’. It is speculated that this is because the core principle: “I am helpless over alcohol” leads to dangerous and unhealthful binging, or because the people still in AA are the people who are just never going to be secure in their sobriety… But nobody knows for sure. The other exception is of mental health services for those who are self-medicating for serious psychiatric or pain management issues, and those who take Chantix.
Bizarre but true. People are frequently court mandated to a treatment that is known to be not only ineffective, but dangerous – enforcing learned helplessness in the face of a behavior that only a great exertion of will can overcome, when a *single dose* of a drug gets over 7 times the results, and was discovered because it got results in a population of smokers who did not even intend to quit drinking! lol