Anyway, when I lived in China, packs were about 20 cents a pack, and that was for the decent quality. I have never smoked in my entire life, but some of the guys over there smoked like crazy.
The top smoker I met there smoked 6 packs a day every single day. He pretty much smoked every second of the day, including while eating.
I used to work in a metal fab shop where smoking was allowed in the shop while working. There were two guys who were pretty much tied. Pretty continuous through the day. One guy was able to quit and the other (last I heard) was still smoking after losing a lung. Maybe it was part of a lung.
A friend of mine that I grew up with didn’t seem to take a breath that wasn’t through a cigarette for years but he was able to quit.
This douchecanoe* I worked for back around 1998 put away 2.5-3 packs per day. He smoked all over the place. I stayed sick most of the time I worked there.
*douchecanoe because he was a complete asshole, not because he was a smoker
My dad. He would always light the next one with the stub of the last one. He was diagnosed with emphysema at 48 and died of lung cancer, after much suffering, at 58.
I had a customer at the car dealership where I worked who told me he smoked 4 or 5 packs a day. His car ashtray was overflowing onto the carpet all the time and the car smelled horrid. I was a smoker then and it stunk terribly even to me. The mechanics all smoked but no one wanted to work on his car. He was in fact Chinese, if that’s relevant.
My brother: 3-4 packs/day. He’s get up several times during the night to feed the beast. Had to quit cold turkey after arterial disease nearly killed him.
Ya know, that was my first thought too, when I saw the OP. All the smokers I know are thin-to-normal weight though. I’ve only known one overweight smoker, and her issue was hormones or something. (That’s what she said.)
My husband quit smoking in 1993. He claims a 5 pack a day habit, when he was driving truck.
A friend says she gets up in the night to smoke. I asked “You mean you’re up, so you smoke?” She says no, she gets up just to smoke.
Unfortunately it was my ex-Mother in Law. She would smoke 3 to 4 packs a day, one cig right after another. Her home was covered in yellow tar. Sadly she got lung cancer and past away a few months ago in her 50’s, I quit smoking shortly before her death. Way too young to leave this Earth.
My dad literally smoked every waking minute. I don’t know how many packs a day but he started the minute he woke up and didn’t quit until he went to bed. He kept his cigarettes in his pajama pocket. He was a projectionist at a theater and when we went to visit him the whole booth would be in a cloudy haze. He smoked while he drove and while he ate. Like someone mentioned above he lit almost every next one with the current one. All of us kids have asthma to a certain extent and he dropped dead of a heart attack at 54.
My best friend growing up was smoking 2 packs a day before she was old enough to buy the things. We lived together about 12 years ago and I saw her go through 3 packs in a day. She could smoke at work, so she smoked from the time she got up until she went to sleep and I know she woke up in the night to smoke.
Back in the days when you could smoke at work, I worked with a guy who was a constant smoker. Office hours were 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., and this guy would smoke two packs at the office daily. No idea what he was like in his off-hours, but I’d guess he was a four-pack-a-day smoker.