water and detox

Factual Questions
1

I stopped smoking cigarettes a few months ago. As a result, I’ve visited quite a few cessation websites. Most of them recommend drinking lots of water. Many of them say it “flushes the accumulated toxins from your body faster” or it “speeds the removal of nicotine from your system,” etc. An example may be found here, at Quitnet.com:

Now, I know that it’s a bad thing to drink too little water, and I know that the act of drinking may satisfy some “hand to mouth” fixation, but I wonder if extra water will do anything to speed detoxification. For one, I don’t think that very much nicotine is normally excreted by the kidneys. How about it, dopers? Does anyone know if there is any scientific basis for drinking extra water to detoxify more quickly? Should all recovering addicts drink extra water, or is this hydropathetic nonsense?

2

Extra water won’t help detox you. But it is something to do with your hands, and some people get so twitchy and distracted during acute withdrawal from an addictive substance that they fail to drink enough fluids, get mildly dehydrated, and get more uncomfortable than they need to be. also, running to pee all the time gives you something other to do than smoke.

QtM, MD