I’m a moderate smoker, who enjoy a few cigarillos a day (I’ve eschewed my habit of smoking 20+ cigarettes a day). However, I’ve noticed that when drinking alcohol, I feel like smoking a lot more than I usually do. I’m sure many of you have noticed this as well, ‘party smokers’ and all that.
Is there an actual physiological reason why it is so? Or is it just a learned habit that alcohol+nicotine=good?
BTW: this is my first post here, glad to meet you!
same to you. 
and this is my fourth. or fifth.
as a former smoker myself, i wholeheartedly agree with you on the ‘alcohol+nicotine=good’ equation.
i don’t know if there’s physiology behind it or not, but we both know *kicking * the habit means we’ve had to rethink learned behavior - i.e. - reach for the phone, reach for a smoke. finish a meal, reach for a smoke. coffee - the list is endless. i stayed out of bars and didn’t drink for months. now, two years later, i don’t have any trouble getting a beer and then finding myself craving a cigarette. the desire for one is gone - luckily.
anyone gotta cite on whether it’s physiological or not?
The number of non-smokers I know that want a cigarette when they’re drinking would lead me to believe that it’s either physiological or a learned behaviour that drinking=have a smoke.
A couple of studies, published in 2002, suggest a possible mechanism for the synergy between booze and cigarettes: Alcohol And Nicotine A Pleasurable Combination.
The cite is very neurosciency, but basically claims that both alcohol and nicotine stimulate the release of dopamine in a part of the brain associated with a pleasure response, and that, at some concentrations, the effects of two drugs are additive.
Smoking while drinking makes you feel better, and drinking while smoking makes you feel better.
Glad to meet you arnesw!
Alcohol and cigarettes go together like cyanide and valium!
This article cites a study which suggests that alcohol and nicotine target the same cell sites in the nervous system.
Interesting articles. It would suggest a physiological link between the two. But what about the non-smokers wanting a smoke once they get a couple below the belt? Initially, they wouldn’t know the first thing about the effects of it (neither would their bodies). What makes them start? Any social smokers around?
My bad habit is eating and when I drink I tend to indulge in food more. Perhaps it is simply that booze makes us less inhibited.
I always thought it had to do with alcohol actually minimising nicotine (“depotentiating” was the word I think used). A slightly drunk person can have five cigarettes virtually one after the other, whereas that would turn even a heavy smoker green and ill if they were sober.
I’m one of these people. I’m notorious among my friends for bumming smokes at the bar, but I can’t justify buying a pack, because I’d just end up throwing away the other 21 cigarettes. 
I think it may be from the fact that, as a non-smoker, the only time I’m really ever exposed to tobacco smoke is in bars. I’m sure I’ve built up a subconscious connection between the two in my mind at this point.
This is interesting, OneCentStamp. But do you really crave a cigarette when at the bar, or will you do just as fine without?
I’m a (very) former smoker - I quit some 20 years ago - but I still crave a cigarette when I’m at a bar, especially if I’m with smokers. I have no idea whether that’s psychological or physiological, although I do get a very noticeable rush if I give in and light one up, and I feel like it intensifies the effect of the alcohol.
I’m willing to bet that none of these “non-smokers” have never smoked before. They don’t smoke regularly now, but they did in their HS or college years, at least when drinking. And now they don’t smoke for all of the reasons not to smoke, but there’s always a tiny pang* there, that they force themselves to ignore. But drinking brings it up and lowers inhibitions at the same time. Also, seeing people smoke increases the pangs*.
In the past I have alternated between being a smoker, and being an only-smokes-when-he’s-drinking-er.
I’m with you that most of the non-smokers have probably puffed the occasional cigarette during school/high school/university - but really! If they puff again at a reunion party, the nicotine of last should have left their bodies years ago! So what gives? Do they remember how good it was? Does their body remember how good it was? If they didn’t really smoke, what?
Hmm
I gave up daily smoking in 1990. Total cold turkey. And I can drink moderately in a and not want a smoke. I can sit in a bar and not want a smoke. I can drink moderately in a bar and not want a smoke. I can have sex and not want a smoke. I can sit anywhere within a very smoky room and not want to smoke. I can sit with my buddies who smoke my brand(s) and not want to smoke.
So none of those things are “triggers” for smoking.
But if I’ve had too many, say drinking to a .15 BAC, (and that’s a rarity) THAT’S when I’m dying for one. And on the rare occassion I do that (like last year during my 45th birthday party) that NIC hits my brain like freaking crack!! And I can smoke down a pack in no time flat. So I’m thinking it has more to do with actual intoxication than just drinking in, and of, itself.
I really do crave it, moreso if the place I’m drinking isn’t especially smoky. Weird.
I don’t smoke. Never have. Don’t intend to start.
But sometimes, if I’m at the bar and the mood strikes me, I am not opposed to having a cigarette. Normally it’s just a puff or two, as I don’t seem to be able to smoke a whole cigarette on most occasions.
And I know it’s not stimuli within the bar; I’m in Waterloo, Ontario. We’ve been smoke-free for 10+ years (I think, I can’t seem to find the original date, but I barely remember “smoking or non-smoking” sections in restaurants) Hell, we can’t even smoke within 10 meters of the entrance to the bar, nor under any covered area (if it has a roof, you can’t smoke there). But I’m still willing to brave the cold (it strikes me the most in winter, it seems) to have a smoke.
Weird.
The strangest thing is, if I’m drinking (heavily… +8 beers or equivalent), sometimes, I don’t feel drunk… And if that happens, and I have a single puff of a cigarette, I’m instantly LOADED. As in more drunk than if I had drank those without the cigarette. (Actually, it generally started the blackout… The puff would be the last thing I remember. I don’t drink like that anymore… Thankfully)
Wow, I’m going to have to start buying my cigarettes in Houston.
Move to Houston, honey, and you can have my leftovers after I smoke three cigs from each pack.
24 in a pack? Jeez. How about I send you stamps and you mail me back the “extra 20” cigarettes from each pack, Sparky? 
As to the OP, I smoke about 7-12 cigarettes per day, on average. I can smoke more than twice that amount over the course of a night if I’m out at a bar.** :eek:
It doesn’t appear to be alcohol-related as there is no difference in the increase of cigarettes whether I’m actually drinking at the bar, or functioning as the desginated driver for the night. For me, I believe that I smoke more as a result of being in a social situation where I’m not quite sure what to do with myself if I’m not holding a cigarette. This theory wouldn’t hold for non-smokers, of course. Non-smokers have alot of practice with interacting with others sans the security blanket of a cigarette.
**this will drop dramatically after 3/1/07, when the official bar smoking ban goes into effect for AZ. 
Yes. I furtively rub my genitalia under the table with a free hand.