Struggling With Alcohol? Better Quit Smoking, Too
Oct. 25 -- FRIDAY, Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) -- Overcoming alcoholism is tough enough. That's one reason many alcoholics who smoke continue to light up even while they're in recovery from alcohol dependency.
But new research suggests that tackling both addictions simultaneously may offer the best chance of success.
Recovering alcoholics often admit they're using nicotine as a drug, said Dr. Michael M. Miller, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
"They can tell you, 'I don't want to quit [smoking], because it changes the way I feel. I use it to deal with stress,' " added Miller, who's also director of NewStart, a chemical dependency rehabilitation program at Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wis.
A study of alcoholics in treatment for their alcohol problems used brain scans to examine how performance on cognitive tests changes with abstinence from alcohol. Twenty-five alcoholics stopped drinking for six to nine months, but the 12 who smoked continued to smoke.
"We found that the smoking alcoholics over six to nine months of abstinence did not recover certain types of brain function as the non-smoking alcoholics did," said study author Dieter J. Meyerhoff, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Decision-making skills, thinking speed, 3-D visualization and short-term memory were affected, calling into question the prospects of long-term sobriety, he noted.
And while smoking and non-smoking alcoholics improved on several other cognitive tests, such as learning and remembering words, smokers' brain function, in general, took longer to recover.
The findings were published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Studies indicate that 60 percent to 75 percent of people in alcohol-treatment programs smoke cigarettes, and 40 percent to 50 percent are "heavy" smokers, consuming more than a pack a day.
Yet treatment for tobacco dependence is not routinely included in alcohol treatment programs, Boston University researchers reported recently in the journal Alcohol Research & Health, published by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
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