The weekend often leads to an influx of students Uptown. They occupy the cushioned bar stools, order brews and gather outside to exhale weekday stress in a thick veil of Marlboro smoke.
These students are well versed in easing the stress of a long week and are even better at mitigating the next morning’s hangover. But long-term effects of their decisions might be similarly repairable with the proper execution.
Eighty percent of smokers who continue feeding a nicotine habit after 30 are at risk for emphysema, said John Kemerer, medical director at Campus Care. But if a student quits in his or her 20s after smoking during four years of college, the risk of developing emphysema is substantially reduced.
“The body has everything in itself to heal itself if we allow it,” Kemerer said. “And if you take away the toxin, you’re going to get better.”
Coughing and other respiratory symptoms caused by smoking begin subsiding within weeks of nixing the habit, according the American Lung Association’s website.
Tania Basta, associate professor in social and public health, said allowing time to heal after quitting is the best way for the body to mend itself.
“The body is really resilient in that if you quit drinking and smoking, the body is able to adapt and change, and it’s like you haven’t done that behavior after only a pretty short time,” Basta said.
Mending can only begin, however, after a habit is nixed completely. Basta said students who smoke often have a harder time dropping the nicotine habit as opposed to those who want to halt heavy weekend drinking.
“Quitting smoking when you leave campus is going to be much harder (than alcohol) because they are truly addicted to nicotine,” Basta said.
The average smoker will attempt to quit seven times before he or she is successful, said Terry Koons, associate director of the Campus Involvement Center. According to a survey conducted by the center, 13 percent of OU students admit to being social smokers, while 7 percent admit to smoking daily.
Additionally, students who binge drink on the weekends are more at risk for liver damage than those who booze in smaller doses, said Kris Washington, assistant director of health promotion for the Campus Involvement Center.
“If someone is drinking large quantities (of alcohol) even just over Friday night and Saturday night over four years, they’ve damaged their liver more than a college student who just drinks a couple drinks each day,” Washington said.
Though time can help erase the effects of abusing alcohol, family history is a factor that determines how successfully a person can quit.
“(If you have) one family member with an addiction to drugs or alcohol, you are more likely to move into an addiction state more quickly,” Koons said.
Other factors that affect how well one can recover from using or abusing various substances include the quantity of the substance, the frequency at which it was used and the duration of time the person used it.
“If they quit and they quit for the next 10 years, their body may be able to sustain change, but it also depends on other things in their lives,” Koons said.
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