> There is theorized to be some synergistic effects between tobacco smoking and the antipsychotic medications that people such as your brother often require.
"Antipsychotics" are palliative medications that do not address the cause of the problematic symptoms. They have repeatedly been shown to cause a very poor long-term prognosis for the unfortunate patients who are put on them.
Nicotine is somewhat similar to Vitamin B3 (Niacin), which has been shown to help schizophrenics recover. Niacinamide supplementation helps my girlfriend reduce her tobacco use.
... Here, we propose a model that a subset of
schizophrenia can respond to niacin augmentation therapy
better than other subsets because these patients have
contributions in their psychotic manifestations from the
neural degeneration resulting from niacin deficiency. We
present a short description of our case report which
showed rapid improvement in schizophrenic psychotic
symptoms subsequent to administration of niacin as an
augmentation therapy. We, thus, propose that niacin
deficiency is a contributory factor in schizophrenia
development in some patients and symptom alleviation in
these patients will benefit from niacin augmentation,
especially in some particular psychotic features."