I smoked a pack a day for 10 years. I've now been clean 2 years 1 month 2 weeks 6 days 13 hours and 31 minutes. But who's counting?
I found a quit-smoking community online, and used it hour-by-hour through my first week.
http://quitsmoking.about.com . Absolutely invaluable.
Here's what I learned. There's ONLY ONE THING you have to do to quit smoking. That thing is: don't smoke. Do <i>whatever else</i> you have to do. Just don't smoke.
It helps if you warn EVERYBODY in your life first. Set a quit-date, then tell everyone about it. That way they'll hold you to it, and they'll forgive you in advance for being a bastard.