When i was in the hospital, the nurses gave out comfort smokes to calm those hardest caught by stress, delusion, mania or depression. Their was a certain irony that everyone noticed, but it went unspoken, because when you are in an instutuion triage is a daily occurance. Often you can only treat symptomns, and not even touch the larger underlying issues.

I wondered why nicotine helped, and there have been recent studies to suggest that it does help with the symptoms of schizophrenia and alzhemiers, but the researchers are refusing to prescribe tobacco. All of the Scizophrenics I know have smoked, they did not need to be told to start and they will not stop.

If it helps, and is proven to work clinically, is the daily calming better then the longer effects ?