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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A recent study reveals coffee and cigarette use among Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members is greater than among the U.S. population. Researchers want to find out what type of impact these two items have on recovering alcoholics.
"Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes are part of the culture of AA, but we knew little about the degree to which this occurred, how much more prevalent these behaviors were compared to the general American populations, or why AA participants actually drank coffee or smoked cigarettes," said Peter R. Martin, director of the Vanderbilt Addiction Center at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and corresponding author for the study. While the most common cause of death in long-term recovering alcoholics is related to the health consequences of cigarette smoking, Martin noted, recent epidemiological studies have shown coffee consumption is not harmful to heath and may, in fact, reduce the risk of death from suicide, certain cancers and other diseases.
Martin and his colleagues asked 289 people in open AA meetings during the summer of 2007 in Nashville, TN to self-report coffee and cigarette consumption. Almost 90 percent of people consumed coffee and about 33 percent drank more than four cups per day. The most common reasons were because of coffee's stimulatory effects and greater alertness. More than half of the respondents smoked cigarettes. The most common reason was because of smoking's reduction of depression and anxiety. "If coffee is beneficial and cigarettes are harmful to health, AA members seem to be going in the right direction," observed Martin.
Other researchers say little is known about coffee's role in fighting alcohol addiction. "It's possible that coffee is even a gateway drug, with coffee drinking beginning at about the time persons begin using alcohol," Robert Swift, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School, was quoted as saying.
The strength of this study, Swift added, is that relatively little is known about AA, why some persons are helped by it while others are not.
SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
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