I was gonna say that some people who smoke cigars use them on a very occasional basis, but it sounds like she’s had a very long-running nicotine habit:
Not only did J. K. Rowling create the Harry Potter universe, she did it while smoking so much that she experienced symptoms of nicotine overdose [1]. Rowling had been smoking since her teen years where she was frequently caught smoking at bus stops with boys in leather jackets [2]. But the author quit smoking in 2000 with a combination of nicotine gum and the popular game, Candy Crush, to keep her mind occupied when she’d otherwise be giving in to cigarette cravings [3].
The only time I see her inhale is around a Marlboro Light. She claims this was to be a non-smoking day. I’m not sure how this squares with five cigarettes in two hours.
Rowling has been open about her struggle to write book four, which nearly caused her to have “a nervous breakdown”:
That was the period where I was chewing Nicorette. And then I started smoking again, but I didn’t stop the Nicorette. And I swear on my children’s lives, I was going to bed at night and having palpitations and having to get up and drink some wine to put myself into a sufficient stupor.
I’ll be a smoker til the day I die, even if I never have another cigarette. If I could choose one drug I could take forever without consequences as long as I gave up all others - caffeine, alcohol etc - it would be nicotine.
I was gonna say that some people who smoke cigars use them on a very occasional basis, but it sounds like she’s had a very long-running nicotine habit:
https://blog.lucy.co/10-people-who-smoked/
I suppose she un-quit at some point.
EDIT:
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0600-times-treneman.html
https://thefriendlyeditor.com/2015/06/16/rowling-writing-harry-potter/
2024:
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1797759158688854150?lang=en
Even her drug choices are deplorable!