All addicted smokers experience cravings to smoke. Cravings can be triggered by abstinence, or by episodic events such as stressful situations or smoking cues in the environment. This combination of factors can cause craving to manifest in a pattern that may appear to be haphazard. However, through a series of longitudinal studies involving more than 20 000 individual interviews, my colleagues and I believe we have discovered a fundamental order embedded in this disorder. In this editorial, I will argue that recent advances in our understanding of the pathophysiology of tobacco addiction allow doctors to make a reliable diagnosis based on a single characteristic feature, the recurrent and periodic compulsion to use tobacco [1].
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