IN THIS issue of the ARCHIVES, Hall and her colleagues1 present data indicating that nortriptyline hydrochloride, a tricyclic antidepressant, increases smoking abstinence rates. Using antidepressant drugs as aids to smoking cessation stems from the 1988 observation that cigarette smoking is associated with a history of major depression and that a history of depression predicts smoking cessation failure.2 These observations have been replicated on numerous occasions and it is now clear that nicotine withdrawal can provoke depression in smokers with a history of depression.3 These observations led a number of individual investigators as well as pharmaceutical manufacturers to hypothesize that antidepressant compounds might aid smoking cessation. However, the trials that tested this hypothesis produced unanticipated results.