Word: habitability
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They have tried switching to lemon drops or gum or tranquilizers. They have forced themselves to look at ghastly pictures of cancer-ridden lungs and have even attempted to quit cold-turkey. But for most heavy smokers who would like to kick their habit, nothing seems to work. Between 1966 and 1970, 22 million American smokers made at least one serious but unsuccessful attempt to quit. In fact, more cigarettes are currently being sold in the U.S. than ever before. Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich have devised a new method for breaking the habit...
...steps, the director of the institute's psychology department, Johannes Brengelmann, and his assistant, Elisabeth Sedlmayr, divided a volunteer group of 354 heavy smokers into three teams, each of which tried a different "cure." One team was treated with psychotherapy to learn the emotional causes of their habit; the second was given a drug that is supposed to curb the urge to smoke; for the third group, the only treatment was instruction in how to apply the rules...
...weeks, 20% of the psychotherapy group and 30% of the drug group had kicked the habit completely or had cut down to ten or fewer cigarettes a day. By contrast, 60% of the rule followers had reached their goal. Presumably, if they want to learn to smoke again, they must now work their way backward from Rule...
...long been believed that experimentation with heroin is an irrevocable act that leads eventually to addiction and the criminal acts necessary to support the expensive habit. Thus it has also been assumed that the tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen who used the drug in Viet Nam have returned home as addicts, increasing the proportions of what was already a national heroin epidemic. But last week the Defense Department released a study that seemed to undermine these assumptions...
...study asserts that narcotics dependence among returned veterans is no higher than it is among those who did not serve. In a finding that is bound to raise eyebrows among drug experts, the report also implies that heroin addiction, far from being incurable, is a habit that many people simply outgrow...