The Smoker

This participant was a very heavy smoker. I cannot remember the specific amount he claimed to smoke throughout the day, but I assume it was at least more than one pack. One way we could measure the level of smoking of our participants would be measuring CO levels. The participant blows into an apparatus (similar to a breathalyzer), which would then report the amount of residue from smoking cigarettes that remains in the participant's lungs. There is always a large range of CO measurements, depending on how heavy of a smoker someone is, as well as the last time the participant had a cigarette. Since we usually measure the CO levels when the participants first walk in to the lab, the levels are often sky-high since people often have cigarettes right before they walk into the building.

The particular participant had CO levels that were much higher than normal, even for someone who had smoked recently. This let us know that he was a very heavy smoker, which is ideal for our lab that is studying cigarette cessation in relation to marijuana use.

However, after having to deal with this participant, we may have experienced a smoker that was simply too addicted to participate in our study. During our screening process, participants come in between 9 AM and 5 PM in order to be trained and further examined for study eligibility. The day is long and boring, but it acts a perfect simulation for the conditions of the Inpatient segment of the study. Although participants do get several smoke breaks throughout the day, this particular participant could not wait for his breaks. He begged the staff to let him have frequent breaks, claiming that he could not function for long without smoking. We did let him have more frequent smoke breaks; however, this let us know that the participant would not be able to withstand the long, smokeless hours that would make both the Inpatient and Outpatient days. Furthermore, although most participants have a variety of negative reactions to quitting cigarettes, he would have reacting extremely negatively to the "quit day" (when the participants would have to stop smoking cigarettes). This participant showed that there are indeed too extreme people for our study.