Trying to quit smoking? The devil is in the drink - health - 05 June 2010 - New Scientist

If drinking and smoking seem inextricably linked, perhaps it's because in the brain's pleasure centre they actually are.

Alcoholics often have a particularly hard time quitting cigarettes. Traute Flatscher-Bader at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues wondered why this should be. So they did a post-mortem analysis of gene expression in the brains of smokers, alcoholics and those who had done both during their lives.