Abstinence not healthier than low-risk alternative

[Vocalek]

I'd like you to take a look at a poll that I started in the Nicotine subforum of the Health and Medical Issues area: Does nicotine abstinence screw up your life?

I would like to see all researchers who evaluate a a smoking (nicotine) cessation method encouraged to include testing for the effects on attention, memory, and mood. Testing would be administered before any treatment starts, a week or 2 after the cessation date, and then periodically on those who continue to remain abstinent, as well as those who relapse to smoking. The tests would need to be quick ones -- Perhaps CPT, MME, you might be able to suggest a few others, or get some good input from a phychiatrist--maybe even a neurologist.

Also, is there an instrument that measures the kinds of things that I asked about in my survey? We need to document how much difficulty people are having carrying on with their daily living activities.

IMHO, if we had been doing this type of data collection during the clinical trials, we might have caught on that certain groups of people would have a difficult time with drugs like Chantix.

I suspect that most of the "side-effects" people experience are related to the nicotine deprivation, rather than a direct effect of the treatment. I recall reading that one study determined (as an aside I believe) that most relapse was due to cravings rather than to severity of withdrawal symptoms. Humph! Depends on how you define the severity of symptoms. Scores on the Fagerstrom don't quite give the complete picture. When people can't perform their work or their home responsibilities, abstinence can become too much to bear.