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The Tipping PointThose smokers who are depressed, in short, are essentially using tobacco as a cheap way of treating their own depression, of boosting the level of brain chemicals they need to function normally. This effect is strong enough that when smokers with a history of psychiatric problems give up cigarettes, they run a sizable risk of relapsing into depression. Here is stickiness with a vengeance: not only do some smokers find it hard to quit because they are addicted to nicotine, but also because without nicotine they run the risk of a debilitating psychiatric illness. This is a sobering fact. But it also suggests that tobacco may have a critical vulnerability: if you can treat smokers for depression, you may be able to make their habit an awful lot easier to break. Sure enough, this turns out to be the case. In the mid-1980s, researchers at what is now the Glaxo Wellcome pharmaceutical firm were doing a big national trial of a new antidepressant called bupropion when, much to their surprise, they began getting reports about smoking from the field. "I started hearing that patients were saying things like, 'I no longer have the desire to smoke,' or 'I've cut down on the number of cigarettes I'm smoking,' or 'Cigarettes don't taste as good anymore,"' said Andrew Johnston, who heads the psychiatry division for the company. "You can imagine that someone in my position gets reports about everything, so I didn't put much stock in them ...» |
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