What It’s Really Costing You

The number nobody adds up

What it’s really costing you

Almost nobody does this calculation. That is exactly why it changes something.

Before you go any further

Don’t scroll down yet.

Take ten seconds and answer one question, in your head: what does your behaviour cost you in a week?

Hold on to your number. You will use it three times on this page — and it is almost always lower than the truth.

Three people. Three bills.

None of the three considers themselves a serious case. That is precisely what keeps the number invisible.

A pack a day

Cigarettes

$5,110

a year

$14 a pack, the average price in Quebec. An ordinary habit, never questioned.

And 608 hours a year spent smoking — 25 full days.

A bottle a night

Alcohol

$6,570

a year

$18 a bottle. Not Saturday night out: the end-of-day glass that became the bottle.

Nights out, taxis and lost mornings not counted.

$150 a week

Gambling

$7,800

a year

The Canadian average is about $500 per adult per year. This person is at fifteen times the average.

And it is almost always under-reported.

What they already pay, every year

And where the full program sits — once.

The program · $2,500

Cigarettes $5,110

The program comes to less than six months of what he already pays.

Alcohol $6,570

The program comes to less than five months of what she already pays.

Gambling $7,800

The program comes to less than four months of what he already pays.

The difference is not only the gap. It is that the orange bar comes back next year, and the year after that. The marine line does not come back.

And now the same bill over a lifetime

Thirty years of the same habit

Not five years. Thirty — because almost nobody stops on their own after five.

Cigarettes

$153,300

over thirty years

And 750 full days. Two years of waking life, spent smoking.

Alcohol

$197,100

over thirty years

A house paid off. Or two children through university, in full.

Gambling

$234,000

over thirty years

Invested instead of spent, at 5 % a year, the same amount would become $518,000.

What can’t be counted

This is the part that confronts people most. And it is the part that makes them move — not the money.

The evenings you were there without being there.
What your partner, and your children, stopped asking you for.
The projects put off until next year, every year.
The business you gave up on, or let drift.
Your self-respect, worn down a little more each time.
Other people’s trust — the longest thing to rebuild, and the only one that can’t be bought back.
The person you would have become in the meantime.

None of that shows up on a statement. And it is the real bill.

And this cost is not a fault. It is the bill for a service you were genuinely receiving — the relief was real. You paid dearly, but not for nothing: you paid to stay standing with the tools you had.

Now you are in the process of discovering others. And here is the good news, the part nobody says: what it costs you to continue is exactly the measure of what you get back by changing.

Thirty minutes to find your real number

An assessment call, free and confidential. We look at your situation, we identify what your behaviour is really solving, and I tell you honestly whether my program is the right place for you. If it isn’t, I say so.

Book my assessment call

This is not a sales call. It’s a conversation.

Sources and method. Average price of a pack of cigarettes in Quebec, about $14 (2025). Average price of a bottle of wine sold at the SAQ, $17.21 in 2022–2023, rounded to $18. Net commercial gambling revenue in Canada, about $500 per adult, Critical Gambling Studies (2019). The thirty-year totals are the annual cost multiplied by thirty, without inflation. The 5 % projection illustrates opportunity cost and is not investment advice. All amounts in Canadian dollars.