The supposed difficulty in quitting smoking is not because the process itself is difficult, but because you as a smoker fear that you will have to deal with a long, arduous process in order to free yourself from cigarettes.
Lucky thing is, that's not the case.
There are a ton of smaller reasons why you keep smoking, including habit, chemical addiction, and a bunch of other things.
Most importantly, though, the reason why you keep smoking is fear.
You're afraid that your life won't be the same without cigarettes, that you won't be able to enjoy your life any more once you remove nicotine from it.
Trying some of the other methods of quitting just go to reinforce this: You try using the nicotine patch and suffer day after day of cravings...
and then you give in.
It just seems like finally quitting would be like a lifetime of that, and that sounds horrible! Believe me, it does.
The reason why it seems so horrible is that you're approaching the whole thing the wrong way.
Quitting smoking is a very, very good thing...
but because of the way that cigarettes work, you don't feel like that.
You feel like you'll have to put up with a lot of misery in order to receive the small reward of longer life, but that reward almost pointless if you won't be able to have your trusty cigarettes around.
What you need to learn to quit without feeling withdrawal is that at any point while smoking, even on the best of days, your tobacco addiction is making you feel horrid.
In the year since I quit smoking (loving it every last step along the way) I've felt better on my worst days than I'd ever felt as a smoker.
You can get there too!