One indulgence leads to another: The more you drink, the more likely you are to light up, says a new study in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
And it doesn’t just apply to perpetual puffers—researchers found social smokers were also more likely to crave a cigarette after a few too many rounds.
The reason: “Both alcohol and nicotine are addictive and stimulate the part of your brain that acts on rewards,” explains Marina Picciotto, Ph.D, professor of psychiatry at Yale University, who studies nicotine’s affect on the brain. “Taking one is like priming the pump, and it makes you crave the other.”
If you aren’t a habitual smoker, though, why do you cave after a couple hours at the pub? It may be as simple as remembering how much you enjoyed lighting up last time you were out with friends. “Nicotine is especially good at strengthening the association between the act of smoking and the cues in your environment,” says Picciotto. “When you smoke while drinking, you strengthen the correlation among the cigarette in your hand, the friends you’re drinking with, and the drink itself. The next time you go to a bar, the environment triggers a cigarette craving.”
But while nicotine may enhance your nighttime buzz, it could also amplify your morning pain: A 2012 report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that people who drank heavily and smoked were more likely to have a hangover than those who skipped the smokes.
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