Coughing Blood

I have been a moderately heavy smoker and drinker for the better part of 10-12 years now. Couple of smokes here there in high school, moved up to a half pack a day in college and ever since have hovered between a half and a whole pack a day for the better part of 8 years. In addition to that, I have also had a near daily recreational drinking and marijuana habit. It is also worth mentioning that I long ago developed the practice of mixing small amounts of tobacco into the joints that I roll, potentially pushing my daily tobacco use closer to a pack and a half/two packs a day....unfiltered.

Fortunately, I have never had any problems with addiction and my habits have never interfered with my ability to lead a normal and productive life. For the most part, I am healthy, functional and content with who I am at 28 years old. Unfortunately however, when I look back at the last ten years of my life, I can hardly find a time where there wasn't a drink, joint and/or cigarette in my hand, whether socially while out and about, or at home unwinding in my free time.

Even more unfortunately, my life these past 18 months has been so exceptionally stressful that my daily drinking and marijuana consumption has more or less doubled. While I've recently began to taper off and find ways to tackle my issues in a more healthy manner while simultaneously reducing the booze, cigarettes, pot, greasy/fatty foods, etc....the worry that I have is the following:

Several times in the last few months I have been woken from my sleep by coughing fits and have had to expel large amounts of blackened phlegm in order to breath normally again. I quit cigarette smoking entirely and experience almost immediate relief (within a couple days) from my nocturnal coughing fits. Just recently however, I got another bad bit of news, folded a little, then bought and consumed several packs over several days. As a result, just moments ago I was seized by a relatively mild spell compared to the others, but this time there was blood in the mucus I expelled. It didn't seem frothy and I intend of following up with either my GP or ENT after the weekend, but I am incredibly frightened by this new development. Reading up on hemoptysis suggests such a wide range of problems....most of them cancerous.

My question is, how concerned should I be given my history as a 28 year old male with a 10 year habit of relatively heavy smoking and drinking? Did I just tear a blood vessel from the force of my cough? Is this a precursor to cancer? Or at least....what are the odds that I should be seriously concerned...the odds this could be something worse?