How do smokers make it through long flights?

My husband is a heavy smoker, and the last thing before the security and the first thing after the border is a cigarette.

During long flights he has three phases:

Phase 1: he is listening to music, watching some movies, talking to me while I am watching some movies, and talking to me while I am reading a book.

Phase 2: nervous grazing, complaining, gloomy predictions, re-thinking our relationship and at some point he will go berserk on his fingernails and cuticles.

Phase 3: He doesn’t want to eat or talk, devouring what's left of his fingers. He is steaming internally to explode before touchdown. After a long marriage and many flights, I can flip through the on-flight magazine without as much as getting annoyed, while he tells me about this terrible thing that I did recently/in the past and how angry/disappointed he is.

When he is reaching the border his eyes are bloody and wild, and then he is dropping his belongings like hot potatoes, and running for a cigarette. When I’m joining him outside with our luggage he is already smiling like an angel, and is holding an apologetic latte for me :)

So in a few words - it’s not easy and not pretty.

Best way we recently found to deal with it, is a sleeping pill taken mid-flight. When a smoker gets on board he has just had his last cig, and there are things going on. If somebody would take a sleeping pill at the beginning he would wake up mid-flight with cigarette first thing on mind.

Sometimes I am the one taking a sleeping pill and it works for me too :)

*Agnes Kesse