Smokers are more drawn to alcohol. Free Technical Library News

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Smokers are more addicted to alcohol

30.04.2015

It is known that smokers develop alcohol dependence several times more often than non-smokers. For a while, this was just a fact of medical statistics, until finally, researchers at the Scripps Institution figured out what kind of neural mechanism might underlie such a relationship.

An article in The Journal of Neuroscience talks about a special group of neurons that are activated by the combined action of alcohol and nicotine. During the experiment, male rats were allowed to drink as much alcohol as they liked. In terms of human proportions, 1-2 servings of beer came out, and the animals stopped just when they were already clearly starting to get drunk. They did this in order to find out the starting point, that is, how much rats drink without any bad habits.

Then the animals were divided into two groups, and one of them was treated with alcohol vapors for two months in order to form their own addiction. When such rats were given alcohol, they already drank a dose corresponding to six bottles of beer, and the level of alcohol in the blood was three times the legal level (again, in terms of human proportions). The rats, like the first time, drank as much as they wanted, and there was nothing surprising in the increased needs: alcohol addiction makes everyone drink more. The second group of animals was treated not just with alcohol vapors, but in a mixture with nicotine. And now their dependence developed not in two months, like in the first group, but in just three weeks. Moreover, their addiction to alcohol did not weaken even when quinine was added to the drink. The fact that the bitter taste did not extinguish the craving for alcohol indicated a real irresistible attraction, as it looks in people.

All this was necessary to look into the brains of rats - just alcoholics and alcoholic smokers. Nicotine, as expected, activated some neurons from the reward system, which is responsible for the feeling of pleasure, reward satisfaction, etc. search further. But it turned out that in combination with alcohol, nicotine also activates stress neurons, thereby strengthening feelings of discomfort, anxiety and irritation. Stress, on the other hand, can be calmed down by the same alcohol, which, acting through the reinforcement system, “extinguishes” stress with the help of a feeling of pleasure.

The authors of the work emphasize that the neurons that turned on under the simultaneous action of nicotine and alcohol differed from those that were activated in response to each substance separately, to nicotine and alcohol.

Since such nerve cells are a separate group, they need to choose their own approach - that is, some kind of agent that would specifically suppress their activity. If such a remedy can be found, it will become easier to eliminate alcohol-nicotine addiction. In the meantime, I can advise those who are unable to part with any of the bad habits, at least indulge in them separately, at different times - if you want to quit, it will be easier for you to cope with them if your addiction alone does not "know" about another.

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