Smoking interferes with thinking and memory in recovering alcoholics

Two addictions are worse than the sum of their parts. After six to nine months of abstinence from alcohol, recovering alcoholics who were also chronic smokers showed a significantly lower rate of improvement in tests of memory, reasoning, judgment, and visual/spatial coordination than non-smoking recovering alcoholics in a study conducted by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC). Not only did the smokers improve less, but their overall scores were lower than the non-smokers on most neurocognitive measures tested by the researchers.