Health Behavior News Service - Recovering alcoholics whose chosen strategy is to abstain from drinking are least likely to relapse, according to a new study of a nationally representative sample of adults.
However, although abstinence is the most reliable form of recovery to help middle-age and older adults avoid alcohol abuse and dependence problems, the study [...]

Endo-Society.org — New research into lifelong alcohol consumption reveals that heavy binge drinking by adolescents and young adults is associated with increased long-term risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. The risk is lower in people who start drinking alcohol later in life and maintain more moderate drinking [...]

Kaiser Permanente - One of the largest individual studies of the effects of alcohol on the risk of breast cancer shows that it makes no difference whether a woman drinks red or white wine, beer or spirits (hard liquor). It is the alcohol itself (ethyl alcohol, or grain alcohol) and the quantity consumed that increases [...]

Newswise - Problem drinkers who took the craving-curbing drug nalmefene whenever they felt the desire to drink alcohol reported fewer heavy drinking days each month than drinkers who took a placebo pill, but both groups reported marked reductions in heavy drinking days. Nalmefene is not yet available in the United States; it is still considered [...]

Short-lived cognitive boost from nicotine soon overwhelmed by long-range toxic effects of cigarette smoke on brain.
UCSF - After six to nine months of abstinence from alcohol, recovering alcoholics who were also chronic smokers showed a significantly lower rate of improvement in tests of memory, reasoning, judgment, and visual/spatial coordination than non-smoking recovering alcoholics in a [...]

Society for Neuroscience - A study of alcohol-dependent animals shows that a newly discovered compound that blocks chemical signals active during the brain’s response to stress effectively stops excessive drinking and prevents relapse into alcohol abuse.
The new, synthetic compound, known as MTIP, also muted the anxiety that typically develops in rats experiencing the equivalent of [...]