Bonnie Spring, a professor of psychology at UIC and a research scientist at Hines VA Hospital, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on smoking. Her research focuses on the mechanisms or hooks that maintain unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and problematic eating. A former smoker herself, she views smoking and problem eating as behaviors that people use to regulate their mood and concentration. That is what makes them so hard to give up. Professor Spring was a pack-a-day smoker for 20 years. For her nicotine seemed to enhance concentration and provide pleasure, especially while she was in graduate school. She stopped smoking for a year during her clinical internship, but once she began to teach and to write extensively in a solitary setting she found herself resuming her habit. Professor Spring was intrigued by self-help strategies. She applied the strategies she learned to herself and discovered that they worked. This lead to her changing her professional interests to studying and treating smoking and problem eating behaviors.