This got my attention:
www.washingtontimes.com...
Many heavy smokers quit immediately and permanently when a small structure deep in the brain is damaged, a finding that provides a new lead in the
search for smoking-cessation treatments, a study says.
"Nicotine addiction depends on a healthy insula" -- a region of the brain linked to emotion -- say the study's authors at the Brain and Creativity
Institute at the University of Southern California and collaborators at the University of Iowa.
"There is a new target in sight. ... It is always amazing to identify targets," said Antoine Bechara, associate professor of neurosciences and
psychology at USC and a senior author of the study. "There is a lot of potential for pharmacological developments."
This is some information on the structure of the brain that's being examined in relation to drug addiction and, specifically, nicotine addiction.
en.wikipedia.org...
I'm a heavy smoker, with no desire to quit, and this is interesting to me. Not because I think it might help me quit, but because it might lead to a
greater understanding of the triggers that make smoking so pleasurable, the physiology that opens the doorway to psychological addiction.
As always, there seems to be the potential for abuse. I shudder when I think of the day that Happiness hits the shelves in pill form, and people
usher in a dystopian world where the government and the corporations can abuse us endlessly, as long as we take our medication.
It already seems to be approaching that day. We don't have one pill, we have a whole regimen of drugs and artificial stimuli that help us ignore the
truth.
Anyway, this article interested me, and I thought I should post it in case anyone hadn't seen it, and had an interest in the subject matter. Happy
thinking.