Nicotine increases the pleasurable effects of alcohol while reducing the risk of negative consequences.
Do you smoke? Drink? “Two in one”? This is normal. And this applies to many: studies show that 85% of regular drinkers of people “addicted” to nicotine. As the scientists explain, these two substances are approximately the same part of the brain – and it explains why you smoke without stopping after you drink an alcoholic beverage. Thus, nicotine not only stimulates the increase of alcohol consumption and enhances the pleasure from it but also reduces the adverse effects of alcohol.
Experts have long suspected that nicotine increases the pleasurable effects of alcohol while minimizing its disadvantages, such as drowsiness. However, the processes associated with these phenomena remained so far a mystery, until a team of experts from the University of Missouri have focused their research on this subject.
Recently they found that in rats nicotine acts on neurons of the basal forebrain that can stimulate the craving for alcohol, and accordingly alcohol consumption (while increasing consumption of both substances). This area of the brain involved in the formation reaction of remuneration involved in the development of feelings of pleasure, and dependency. Neurons of the basal forebrain are also associated with the development effect of drowsiness caused by alcohol.
