THE CALCULATED DAMAGE OF ADDICTIONS
You might
think that just one cigarette 'can't hurt'. But it could in fact cost a smoker
almost 14 minutes of their life, according to new calculations.
A new
website has worked out how much time a smoker, alcoholic or a drug addict will
lose, each time they use.
For
example, regularly smoking 20 cigarettes a day cuts ten years off a person's
life, the website claims.
Alcoholics
cut their lives short by 23 years, while chronic cocaine users lose 34 years,
it adds.
Treatment4addiction, a website providing information to people with drug and alcohol addictions, has calculated how many years an addiction to cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, methadone and heroine are cutting from their lives by continued use.
Mephamphetamine
addicts live to an average age of just 38, while heroin addicts don't fare much
better, dying at on average at just 38 years old.
The
website's creators have also worked out how many minutes or hours each single
dose will cost an addict.
One line of cocaine takes a chronic user five minutes closer to death, while a single methadone pill costs a user almost 13 hours.
Treatment4Addiction.com
is a ‘resource for people looking for help and support in regards to drug and
alcohol addiction’, its developers said.
All the
data came from official sources including the U.S Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Jake Tri,
project manager for the website said it was formed after the developers heard
comments about how much time smoking a cigarette costs a person, and wanted to
find out the exact figure.
He said in a recent interview: 'The initial inspiration for this project was from hearing a statement many of us have come across in passing... Something like "Smoking one cigarette takes away 10 minutes of your life".
'We then
wondered about other drugs and applied the same methodology using statistics
from several reputable sources.
They
checked their methodology against statistics from the University of Bristol,
and found they were very close, with differences attributed to the fact they
were using U.S. government sources rather than U.K. statistics.
He added
that the methodology gives an estimated number rather than a definite
number.
He said:
'There are far too many factors to give a 100% accurate assessment of how much
time one loses after smoking a single cigarette or taking a single drink.
However
this methodology does provide a good estimate for those that are chronic users
of a certain substance, as it is based on average usage and life expectancy
data and it could also vary from one person to another since everyone has
different body structures.
Meaning
the same number of sticks of cigarette to cut of 12 years of person A might
take just 2 to 3 years from person B.
Mature
Minds Talk.
Curled
from Daily Mail.
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