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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Neuropharmacology. 2011 Jan 27;60(7-8):1318–1325. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2011.01.020

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The top panel illustrates a hypothetical series of several days of drinking in a chronic alcohol-dependent individual followed by acute and prolonged withdrawal. Repeated dosing of alcohol and withdrawal with regular episodes of smoking shown over the course of one day (bottom panel) may cycle endogenous GABAergic tone up protectively during periods of alcohol withdrawal and down during periods of drinking (top panel), when alcohol supplements the endogenous tone. Smoking may compensate for a loss of alcohol during periods of acute withdrawal (top panel), allowing alcohol-dependent smokers to maintain greater stability of GABAergic tone. Specifically, during acute alcohol withdrawal, there is an initial increase in GABAergic tone in alcohol-dependent smokers and nonsmokers, which is more severe in nonsmokers. During prolonged withdrawal there is likely a return to baseline, or normal cycling of GABA.