Smoking May Cause Recovering Alcoholics to Relapse

Two researchers from Temple University in Pennsylvania are presenting the results of their study on nicotine and alcohol at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego this week. The journal, Psychopharmacolgy, will also publish the study.

According to a November 6 press release by Newswise.com, Thomas J. Gould, Ph. D. and Danielle Gulick state that their study, which was funded by the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, revealed that the two addictions not only cause learning issues independently, but also work negatively together to keep the user addicted to both drugs. While it has been accepted that alcohol abuse adversely impacts learning, there have been no studies exploring the effects on learning when one tries to quit one addiction while still actively pursuing the other addiction.

Gould, who is an associate professor of psychology at Temple University, states that the research confirms that the part of the brain which alcohol and nicotine affect is the hippo-campus. The hippo-campus is the area that is instrumental in one's ability to retain information as a short-term memory and then convert it into a long-term memory.

Gould now believes that people who are addicted to nicotine in addition to abusing alcohol tend to accelerate their use of nicotine in order to combat increasing learning deficit issues caused by the alcohol. If the alcoholic tries to quit smoking, they experience additional learning deficit issues from the nicotine withdrawal.

At that point, they may attempt self-medication with alcohol. It is true that a small amount of alcohol will help with the short term memory issues they are experiencing because of the nicotine withdrawal. However, as their tolerance for the alcohol increases and they consume more, the learning issues again become more pronounced and the cycle repeats.

This cycle can also begin if a smoker initially tries to withdraw from alcohol. The detrimental cycles can be perpetuated either because of using the drugs in combination or because of trying to withdraw from one and not the other. According to the study, the persons have a high probability of relapsing and becoming heavily addicted to both drugs.

The study's authors are hopeful that the results of their research will enable medications to be formulated so that the affected receptors in the brain can be blocked and withdrawal symptoms will not occur.

Thomas J. Gould makes this statement on his Temple University faculty web page: "Understanding the interactive effects of these drugs on cognition will aid in developing more effective treatments for both alcoholism and nicotine addiction."

Sources used: Newswise.com
www.temple.edu/psychology/FacultyWebs/Gould/lab.html