The difficulty in quitting smoking

I have tried many times unsuccessfully to quit smoking. Everytime I finish a pack I tell myself that I am going to quit. I never eventuates though. I usually am back up at the service station or milk bar the next day or within a few hours. The longest I have gone without a cigarette since I started some 19 months ago or so, was six days. I am ashamedly a pack a day smoker and have been for most of hte 19 months I have smoked. I was talking to a lifelong smoker tonight, who has smoked for well over forty years, and he told me that 19 months is absolutely nothing. I am not so sure. Last winter was a very sick one for me. I came down with my first fever since about 14 years of age. It was a really bad case where my fever was hovering below forty. I was coughing far more and had far more colds than in any previous year. It is without a doubt a direct result of the damage I have done to my immune system through smoking. I even had the odd smoke during this time, even though it felt extremely harsh on my throat. I just don't feel at the moment that I have any will-power. I was never a very conscientious student, in high school, university and later a TAFE where I did a course, or at least the first half of a course in IT. I have never really been able to resist temptation when it comes to food or able to pull myself together completely in times of psychological hardship. These are things I am learning to do now though. Self-control, will-power - it is something I need to learn pretty fast and I feel I have already made some inroads.