My surgery is on April 10th and yesterday I met with my surgery team's psychologist. I had to fill out about 15 psychology questionnaires prior to seeing him. He went over them in about a second, circling everything I'd written down as 'do' or 'feel often' or 'all the time'. He asked me a couple of questions, and, for the life of me I can't remember what it was, he asked me something to which my answer was "I'm more anxious about giving up smoking than about giving up food", and it's true. He didn't ask me anything else about it, or anything else for that matter and soon came to the conclusion that I might not be ready for surgery, that I need to fix other things first (i.e. smoking). He didn't ask me if I was ready to stop smoking or not (my pulmonologist recommended I quit smoking 2 weeks prior to surgery -- 4 days from today), he didn't ask what my pulmonologist (gave me the green light for surgery and made recommendations for the anesthesiologist)... Ok, now I'm rambling... Anyway, this psych person said I wouldn't be able to handle giving up food and cigarettes at the same time, among other things. He may be right, I'm yet to find out, but what bothers me is that he said that after I said I was more anxious about giving up smoking --- is that really that telling of who I am and how I handle things?

Ok, I needed to vent, I apologize for the rambling.

So, fellow smokers/ex-smokers, how did you handle having to quit? How did you quit? Did any of you simply not quit? How'd that go?

I'm not looking for a lecture, I'm looking for actual stories about quitting/not quitting. I've been a heavy smoker (1+ packs/day) for 18 years, and, unfortunately it's very much part of my life: both my parents and both brothers smoke (I live with my mother and 1 brother - can't avoid them), I work at a very small, very informal advertising agency run from my boss' apartment - only 3 employees: all of us smokers (esp. the boss) = smoke-friendly office. I'm not sure I'm ready to quit, and from what I've heard you really need to want it in order to be successful. I'm not predisposing myself (am I?), I know I need to quit in order to have a speedy recovery / no pulmonary embolisms / a healthy life once and for all. But even the thought of a pulmonary embolism doesn't scare me as much as the thought of nicotine withdrawal and craving (+ I won't be able to replace my addiction with food).

I'm sorry about my newspaper-sized post. Just really need to hear from people who were once (or are currently) in my shoes.

@Ro2x - I had the same concerns about chantix but in the end the only side effect I had we're really weird dreams. I eventually connected that the dreams were only when I drank alcohol.