CIGARETTE-SMOKING - HABIT OR NICOTINE MAINTENANCE - EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM SMOKING ABSTINENCE AND OVERSMOKING

Cigarette consumption, craving to smoke and smoking pleasure, subjective reasons for smoking, heart rate, motor activity, and nutrient intake were continuously assessed in 22 subjects. After ad lib smoking on the first experimental day, subjects had to abstain between 12:30 h and 17:30 h on the second day and to smoke twice the habituated number of cigarettes during the same period of the third day. Craving and smoking pleasure decreased during oversmoking and increased for the first cigarettes after abstinence. Activity adjusted heart rates decreased by about 5 bpm during abstinence. In the evenings, however, these parameters as well as smoking rates, subjective reasons for smoking, and nutrient intake remained completely unaffected by the previous manipulations. Also cardiac nicotine tolerance, as assessed by the increases of the averaged activity-adjusted heart rates after cigarette lighting, was identical for all three evenings, irrespective of the afternoon smoking condition. Furthermore, none of the subjective effects of the afternoon abstinence was observed for the longer lasting overnight deprivation. These results suggest that habituated temporal patterns play a role in cigarette smoking which is perhaps even more important than the need to maintain a constant plasma nicotine level.