Have you ever noticed that a lot of people in 12-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous smoke a lot of cigarettes? If you haven’t, next time take a look around. You’ll notice the same thing in a lot of rehab facilities and anywhere that caters to staying sober.

The first thing you might think of is that drug addicts and alcoholics aren’t exactly health fanatics, so naturally, they are smokers also. We all know that cigarettes and nicotine products are bad for you, and most people with their health in mind try and stay away from them. However, there are a lot of people who actually pick up smoking while they are in treatment!

Cigarette Smoking and Rehab Facilities

When you come to rehab, the goal is to get off of any mood altering substances. Whether it is alcohol, cocaine, or heroin, your mind and body need to go through the withdrawal and detoxification process. Then, intense therapy in order to figure out what caused the addiction and how you can prevent it from coming up again in the future.

Rehab facilities don’t allow you any kind of leeway when it comes to drugs or alcohol. Most don’t allow energy drinks, and some don’t even allow caffeine. Especially while patients are in the detox stage. However, they do allow cigarette smoking. Some allow their clients to smoke whenever they want. Others have a super structured environment where you are only allowed out a few times per day.

Either way, cigarettes remain the single vice an addict can hang on to. It is something they can turn to when they feel stressed, sad, or even celebrating. In the past, they would have turned to drugs or alcohol. For those people who start smoking in rehab, it is likely because they have nothing else to do, so it is transferring their old addiction into one that is less immediately dangerous.

Rehab Facilities Don’t Commend Smoking

If you ask all the rehab facilities if they want their patients to smoke, the answer is a resounding no. Sure, smoking may be less dangerous in the short term than drugs or alcohol, but we all know that cigarettes come with a lot of collateral when it comes to your long-term health. Smoking causes serious lung disease like lung cancer and emphysema, COPD, Asthma, heart and cardiovascular disease, it increases your chance of other cancers, and much more.

Many people say that nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to break. So, our advice to you is that if you already smoke when you come to rehab, try your hardest to quit while you are there. Many rehab facilities offer smoking cessation programs to help you get healthier while you are learning how to live a life free of addiction. They also offer many therapies and courses to help occupy your time and channel your energy into more positive things.

If you have never smoking but are thinking about starting it up while in treatment, don’t do it! You may feel like you are missing something without drugs and alcohol present, but smoking cigarettes isn’t the answer. Far too many people have picked up smoking in rehab, swearing that they would quit when the program ended, but here they are years later still smoking – wishing they had never started.

Rehab facilities are designed to make you healthier and to give you a better future. That should be your mission across the board, and in order to truly be healthy, cigarette smoking should be cut out from your life, or never picked up in the first place!