Effects of monitored nicotine fading and anxiety management training on smoking reduction

Abstract

This study provided clinical trial evaluation of a monitored nicotine fading procedure, while examining the hypothesis that nicotine fading plus anxiety management would be more effective than nicotine fading alone. Twenty-eight dependent smokers were separated into high and low trait anxious groups, based on a median split of Trait Anxiety scores, and then randomly assigned to one of the two treatment conditions. Contrary to prediction, training in anxiety management did not add to the effectiveness of monitored nicotine fading and may have detracted from its effectiveness for high anxious smokers. Overall treatment producedmodest abstinence at six month follow-up: 4 of 25 total subjects; 3 of 11 in the nicotine fading only group. Monitored nicotine fading continued to demonstrate that non-abstinent subjects control their smoking by continuing to smoke brands lower in nicotine and tar than their baseline brands: 18 of 21 subjects reported smoking a lower nicotine/tar cigarette at six month follow-up. These subjects were not found to compensate by increasing rate of smoking, but the possibility of other compensatory changes in smoking was not assessed in this study.