Smoking Habits of Alcoholic Out-Patients. II

In Part I of the present study“ a comparison between the smoking habits of a group of alcoholic out-patients and those of the general population showed that alcoholics are excessive smokers particularly of cigarettes. This finding was discussed within the context of the relevant literature. The available evidence suggests that psychiatric disorders, notably those which may be subsumed under the general label “neuroticism” or “emotional instability,” are more closely related to excessive cigarette smoking than any other factor and that this relationship tends to be interchangeable. It was also pointed out that several investigators working independently of one another, and employing a variety of methods, were unable to differentiate the neurotic symptom patterns displayed by alcoholics from those of non-alcoholic psychiatric patients when these two groups were drawn from comparable populations.6 Given the validity of these