Yeah - that’s the benefit of developing really stupid destructive habits - instead of actually doing anything constructive, you get credit for just stopping being stupid!
45 years last March 
To the OP, congratulations.
For me, its been 7 years and a couple of months. This book was the key to me quitting.
A real watershed moment was walking home from the train station about a month after I had quit and smelling a nearby Italian restaurant for the first time after more than 2 years of getting off the train at the same station.
I quit on May 21, 2005. It went much better than I expected. I used the Allen Carr book also. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I had been led to believe.
I seriously quit smoking back in the mid-1980s. Didn’t intend to go cold turkey, but that’s how it happened – crushing workload, the workplace converted to nonsmoking, no time to run down two flights of stairs to puff in the winter cold, so I just didn’t smoke for a week, suddenly realized I was a non-smoker.
I would occasionally backslide – have a smoke when drinking with friends – but didn’t seriously smoke again until a few years ago when I worked in a call center. The only thing to do on breaks was go out with the smokers, who inevitably offered a cigarette, which I inevitably accepted. Fortunately, just as I felt myself sliding back into addiction, I changed jobs and have no time for smoke breaks again.
I do puff on a pipe when I’m in my woodworking shop, but that’s not inhaled, and I usually go weeks between smokes.
I quit smoking February 7, 2000. I smoked about a half-pack a day at that point, but before had smoked over a pack a day (Canadian packs are 25 cigarettes). I quit using Zyban/Wellbutrin and had the most fucked-up dreams you can imagine.
I picked up my mom’s smoke allergy, which got much worse after I quit.
I am 2 weeks shy of being tobacco free for 2 years. The first 2 weeks were cake and the next 2 were hell and during that period I was using the gum.
About six months after I quit I did have one smoke and I threw up from it. That made me realize how toxic nicotine really is and it seemed to kill any further cravings for cigarettes. Now I feel that I am as much of a non smoker as I ever was a smoker.
2 years and 3+ months. I started on the Wellbutrin route, but had to quit that after 2 weeks when I had to go on IV steroids for another problem. Though I stopped taking the Wellbutrin, I stayed off the cigs too. I had a thread on here about that time bitching that the Wellbutrin wasn’t working much anyway.
Between quitting and the steroids, I gained 40 lbs in about 2-3 weeks. Still haven’t been able to lose it.
My smoking history:
0 to 18 = no smoking.
18 to 32 = smoking.
32 to 44 = no smoking.
44 to 53 = smoking.
53 to 63 (today) = no smoking.
I made any number of attempts over the course of ten years.
It finally took a little more than two years ago.
Haven’t had a cigarette since May of 2004.
Don’t give up. It’s entirely possible that you’ll make a number of attempts before you finally succeed. But you really do need to get yourself psyched up about it, first. You need to make a definite commitment. I urge you to make the commitment.
(And don’t beat yourself up when you fall off the wagon. Just keep trying.)
10:00 pm on May 24, 2001 is when I had my last cigarette. I was a pack-a-day Marlboro Red smoker.
I used the patch and it helped a TON! And yes I got weird dreams too. I didn’t do the full patch routine, after about 4 weeks I knew I was done smoking, so I gave the rest of my patches to a friend.
I did gain about 15lbs, and I didn’t go to the bar for that 4 weeks. When I did eventually walk back into the bar I asked the bartender for a straw and I cut it to cigarette length. When I craved a cigarette I’d stick that straw in my mouth and chew on it for a while, it probably looked silly , but it helped!