The bottles stack on top of one another like a monument to good times. They are Mount Rushmore with Budweiser, Miller, Coors, and Heineken emblazoned on the side. The discarded bottles stand as a testament to hard partying. The stack gives new meaning to the song, 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.



Most people are horrified by the site of this. The person that the bottles belong to is probably going to be labeled an alcoholic. Or maybe everyone will be nicer to them, and wonder if they have a drinking problem.

This is because you are confronted immediately with how many bottles of alcohol have been consumed. Our habits can seem much different when you look at them over a period of time, instead of just discarding the remnants as soon as you are done with them.

You might not want to be so quick to judge. You are a smoker. Take a minute to think about how many packs of cigarettes that you have smoked in the past year?

Or think of how many packs that you have smoked in the past two years. Even more shocking would be to think of how many packs of cigarettes that you have smoked since you started smoking. Are you starting to get the picture?

Most packs of cigarettes are almost an inch tall. That means if you are five feet tall and smoked one pack per day, it would only take you two months to reach your full height in a stack of cigarette boxes.

Add another day for every inch you are over five feet. In a year, your little tower of tar would reach over thirty feet high. In five years, it would equal one hundred fifty two feet. In ten years, your little boxes would add up to three hundred feet.

Roughly the length of a football field. Can you imagine your favorite teams stadium lined with your littered boxes. Think of all those boxes. Think of all the cigarettes in the boxes that you have smoked. It adds up quickly.

And what do you do with all these empty cigarette boxes? Do you throw them away? Do you recycle them? Do you let them pile up on the floorboard of your car? No matter what you do, that is a lot of empty boxes to dispose of. It is a lot of paper used just to package your habit.

Since we so quickly discard of the packages, we have never really forced to notice just how much we are smoking. These little packs could serve as a disturbing reminder of exactly how much you are smoking. And I am guessing that if you are still smoking, then you do not want to be reminded of that.