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To determine why alcoholism is more common in smokers, researchers conducted an animal study.
Rats were trained to press a bar to obtain alcohol and were then given daily nicotine or saline in various experimental protocols. Some animals were made physically dependent on alcohol. Especially in alcohol-dependent animals, nicotine increased the rate at which alcohol intake increased, the amount of work that animals would do to obtain alcohol (i.e., the number of times they would press a bar to get one dose), and the amount of drinking despite adverse consequences (alcohol was adulterated with quinine, which rodents normally do not like).
In neuropathological studies, the combination of alcohol and nicotine recruited discrete neuronal ensembles …