Sleep

Many people use smoking to relax and relieve their daily stress. People often do not smoke alone, so there is a social aspect. The smoker will “take a break” from their current activity or work to smoke. The average length of time to smoke a cigarette if I had to guess is between 3-5 minutes. When you smoke you take a slow deep breath or “drag” to inhale the smoke and most smokers I know hesitate and hold for a moment before they exhale the smoke. Is this a coincidence that people associate smoking as a relaxing pastime? I think not. If we take a closer look at the activities described above without smoking a cigarette we can see some of the positive activities needed to relieve stress and anxiety. For example if we look at a smoker who smokes a pack per day(25 per package) and only smokes during their waking hours (say 16 hrs based on a 8 hr rest period), that equates to approximately smoking 1.5 cigarettes per hour. Now if we take this amount and times it by the amount of time to smoke a cigarette (5 minutes) we come up with a figure of 125 minutes dedicated to smoking that package of cigarettes per day. This figure is a little over 2hrs per day. Now if we include the socialization aspect and fact that we are taking 2 hrs of our day to concentrate on smoking we can clearly see that we are not finding relief from a cigarette but all of the activities associated with smoking that cigarette such as:

1)     social aspect of visiting with others

2)     taking 5 minute “breaks” many times per day

3)     long, deep, breaths

4)     spending 2 hours per day doing this activity