Question for smokers…
On average, how long can you go without a smoke before a really deep craving sets in. I’m not talking about a minor “I’m going out for a smoke” type, but the kind that takes you over and makes you want to announce a break in that 6-hour long meeting.
I’m curious if it’s around the same for everyone, or widely variable.
If you’d like, also report how much you smoke, on average.
Smoke 10-20 per day, depending on whether I go out or not.
For me, there isn’t a definitive time period between fags. It’s all about what my brain is doing at any one time. Cravings will also come in waves, so a severe craving one minute will not stay for a long period. I could be bursting for a smoke when trapped on a train, but then forget to have one way after I’ve reached a place where I could smoke.
I find that if I know I can’t smoke for a long period, such as a 10 hour plane journey, then I mentally switch off from smoking and don’t get any major cravings during the entire journey. But put me in a bar with a glass of wine in my hand and I’ll be itching for a cigarette in minutes.
I often find myself itching for a cigarette during long boring meetings, probably out of sheer boredom.
So much about smoking is habit as well as drug addiction, so my brain will tell me that I’ll want one at about 11am during the week (break time!), but won’t tell me until about 3pm on a weekend, as my routine is broken.
Tough to say - I have one when I wake up, two on the way to work, then I don’t smoke until I leave work (6 - 8 hours?) and then I’ll smoke all the rest of the afternoon and until I go to bed.
Six hour meeting? I’d break in two hours, I think. I don’t have that kind of attention span, nor will to live. 
I smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes per day. I never wake during the night specifically for a cigarette but if I am woken up by a bad dream or one of the kids I’ll smoke before attempting to go back to sleep. During the workday I’ve found that two hours is about my max before I want to start gnawing on my desk or nearest coworker. The longest airline flight I’ve ever had was 3.5 hours and I was practically running through the airport looking for the nearest exit. Flying makes me nervous, so that may account for some of it.
Atlanta is the worst.
I’m pretty much like this, except I’m probably closer to 2 packs per day. I work from home and can smoke whenever I darn well feel like it. I know my consumption has increased a lot since the work at home thing started. I should lock them outside or something so I only smoke when I’m really Jones-ing for one.
I don’t smoke, but my grandfather does. He seems to get a craving for a new cigarette…oh, I’d say about halfway into the one he’s smoking now.
Boredom is my trigger. If I’m doing something I like, I can easily last several hours without getting a craving. The other trigger is eating. I need to smoke after eating.
If I’m someplace where I can’t smoke, I forget I’m a smoker, so long flights, trips in hubby’s non-smoking truck – no problem.
But if I’m sitting at the computer, like now, I’ll chain-smoke until bedtime.
I just moved to the DC area into temporary housing where smoking is frowned upon, consequently I smoke less than a pack a week. I used to live in NYC in a house where everyone smoked a lot, and there I smoked probably 6 packs a week. So as you can see, I can change my smoking habits pretty easily. I can’t say that I ever have a physical craving to smoke; I can’t even imagine what that would feel like. Today, I had a cigarette at 7:30am, and won’t smoke another until around 6:00pm, and am quite okay with that.
I wake up at 7 every morning and I can make it till about 2 in the afternoon before the craving really gnaws at me. That’s if I’m not working or on a schedule that day. On the days I work, I light my first cig on the ride in. Once I smoke that first one, the craving rises every two hours or so.
I smoke a pack +.
I quit smoking about 4 weeks ago, thanks to a well-timed bout of bronchitis (I had planned to quit this year).
I’m craving one every single damned second of the day…
I get a minor craving about hourly. I usually go 2-4 hrs between smokes. Like the others said, it really depends on what I’m doing. In a car, it’s usually one every 1/2 hr to hr. In a bar it’s more like one every 15mins.
I smoke 5-10 on a normal day (one that doesn’t include long drives or trips to the bar).
Depends.
My boyfriend and I recently switched to roll-your-owns using American Spirit tobacco. American Spirit, for those of you who don’t know, is all-natural tobacco, without the additives most commercial tobaccos have (at least, that’s what they tell me). He and I have stopped coughing as much since we switched, but it could be a lot of things.
When I smoked prerolled cigarettes, I went through about a pack a day, and I couldn’t go more than two, three hours without one at max. Now, I smoke maybe 8 cigarettes a day, and can go a lot longer without one. I absolutely must have one on my way to work, and after lunch, but other than that - sometimes I take a break at work to smoke, if I’m feeling like it, and sometimes I don’t. Part of it is that I don’t preroll the smokes - I carry a baggie of tobacco around, my roller, filters, rolling papers, and I make them on the spot. Since I have to make it, it makes me really think about if I want it or if I’m just bored.
However, if I have had a particularly stressful day (work was hell, someone died, etc.) I’ll come home and preroll about a pack worth of cigarettes, because I know I’ll be craving one every ten minutes. I also sometimes buy the prerolled American Spirit packs when I have a long drive ahead of me, because I tend to smoke more while I’m driving (the prerolled American Spirit cigarettes are EX-PEN-SIVE, so I try to plan ahead and preroll cigarettes for a drive).
~Tasha
Rarely. For example, because of meetings I didn’t have my first cigarette until 11 this morning. I didn’t realize I hadn’t smoked yet until I got out of that last meeting.
Back when I smoked, about 4 1/2 hours until the craving set in. After 6 hours I was beside myself.