| Alcohol and Quitting Smoking | |
A drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Physically it's a hard habit to break and psychologically quitting smoking may be even tougher, even after problem drinkers stop drinking, according to a new study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, November 1999.
Most recovering alcoholics smoke -- an estimated 60 to 95 percent of them! And many of them replace that "drink" in one hand with a cup of coffee, which contains caffeine and presents its own set of health issues.
This new study indicates that smokers with current or past drinking problems have a more difficult time quitting than do smokers with no history of alcohol problems.
Smoking to 'Cope'
While in recent years smoking has declined among American adults, the rate of smoking among heavy drinkers has held steady, says Dr. J. Taylor Hays, associate medical director of the nicotine dependency center at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.Quitting seems to be more difficult for smokers with current, or even past, drinking problems, Hays and his colleagues reported in the behavioral medical study. The tendency for heavy smokers to also be heavy drinkers, and vice versa, has long been noted, Hays said. Why alcohol dependency hinders the effort to quit smoking is unclear, but Hays speculated that for recovering alcoholics, the elimination of one substance results in greater dependency on another substance.
An earlier study Hays and his colleagues cite in their report showed that 58 percent of subjects smoked in order to "cope with urges to drink alcohol."
Half as Likely to Quit
In a study of 382 men and women in a smoking-cessation program, the investigators found that after four and eight weeks of therapy, recovering alcoholics and current problem drinkers were significantly less likely than those with no history of alcohol problems to have quit smoking -- at least in the short-term.Surprisingly, Hays noted, smokers with past drinking problems -- recovering alcoholics -- were the least successful in kicking the smoking habit. Compared with smokers with no alcohol dependency, those with current drinking problems were about half as likely to have abstained from smoking after eight weeks, and recovering problem drinkers were little more than one-third as likely.
After six months, the two alcohol-problem groups did not differ significantly from the non-drinking group in smoking abstinence.
