I've had the opposite experience. Whenever I was down to one or two cigarettes per day, I'd find myself using almost 100% of all my brainpower trying to convince myself to not give in to the craving. In the end, I decided that it would be more productive to smoke a few sticks a day and not have the craving run as a * * * * * /bin/trytosmoke cron job the whole day.

I've been able to keep it down to about 5 per day for a couple of years now.