I just read an article about alcohol cravings while experience ‘negative emotions’ and I thought it was pretty interesting and should share. Although women are at higher risk for experiencing depression and men usually have more alcohol-use disorders, it was found that men are more likely to want alcohol when upset. During their research they looked at 54 adults who are considered to be healthy social drinkers (27 men and 27 women). They gave the adults three different types of scripts like stressful, alcohol-related and a neutral/relaxing one each performed in different sessions, days and order. “After listening to the stressful story, women reported more sadness and anxiety than men,” said Chaplin, “as well as greater behavioral arousal. But, for the men … emotional arousal was linked to increases in alcohol craving. In other words, when men are upset, they are more likely to want alcohol. These findings – in addition to the fact that the men drank more than the women on average – meant that the men had more experience with alcohol, perhaps leading them to turn to alcohol as a way of coping with distress, added Chaplin. “Men’s tendency to crave alcohol when upset may be a learned behavior or may be related to known gender differences in reward pathways in the brain,” she said. “And this tendency may contribute to risk for alcohol-use disorders.”

My parents are smokers so I thought these facts were pretty interesting. In the U.S. alone, there are 45 million adults and get this, 5 million youth smokers! In any given year, around 3% of these smokers trying to quit will succeed, but 60% are trying to quit. The University of Minnesota says that tobacco is just as addictive as heroin because of the mood-and behavior-altering agent. It is 1,000X more powerful that alcohol and 10-100X more intoxicating than barbiturates and 5-10X more potent than drugs like cocaine or morphine. The American Cancer Society has found that when smokers are very motivated to quit and know how hard it actually is, you get a higher success rate. When a smoker uses aids like nicotine patches or other similar products your chances of quitting can double, triple or more. Support from family and friends is also important and a company that sells a cigarette counter found that when a smoker put the counter on the box of cigarettes as you see the number going up it helps you quit the habit of doing it.

See what your states report card looks like when it comes to smoking:

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/addiction/index.aspx