This book is for those who want to stop smoking, those who have stopped but find that they still want to smoke, and those who think about issues of tobacco, smoking, and addiction.

The problem with many approaches to stopping smoking is that they require too much willpower. You want to smoke but have to continually resist your desire to smoke. Most people eventually give in to their desire.

What we're going to do is different. It doesn't require so much willpower. Here's the program. We're going to get rid of your desire to smoke. Obviously it wouldn't be hard to stop if you had no desire to smoke. You're going to get to that point and learn how to retain your lack of desire to smoke. So that it's permanent. That's the program in a nutshell.

Addiction to nicotine has two fundamental components: the physical and psychological addictions. Many people find it surprising to learn that the psychological component of the addiction is the hardest issue to successfully address. Getting rid of your desire to smoke is mainly a matter of dismantling the psychological addiction.

Nicotine addiction is like an iceberg: there's the part you see and the part you don't. The part you don't see is the biggest part: the psychological addiction. The physical addiction is the visible part.

The physical addiction is over in less than a week. Also, the physical sensation of withdrawal is subtle, unlike the withdrawal symptoms from alcohol or heroin. The sensation of nicotine withdrawal is of light-headedness and mild hunger. What makes stopping smoking difficult is the way that the sensation of hunger for nicotine gets amplified into urges by the psychological addiction.

When we dismantle the psychological addiction, we unplug the amplifier. In the week after you stop, while the physical addiction is still present, rather than experiencing urges to smoke, you experience the actual physical sensation of nicotine withdrawal, which is much easier to deal with. You don't experience the urgency associated with urges because you will have no desire to smoke. All you will experience is something like occasional mild hunger, and this sensation will pass. As the physical dependence disappears over the course of a week, even that mild hunger-like sensation will cease permanently.

It's like the difference between an appointment with the Wizard of Oz when he is right in front of you versus when he is hiding behind the facade with amplifiers, fire and brimstone blazing away. The amplifiers, fire and brimstone make him seem more powerful, fearful, and persuasive than he is. He's much easier to deal with without the amplifiers.

Some people experience stopping smoking as torturous. Because they are trying to stop doing something they desperately want to do. The way you're going to do it, there is no torture or desperation. To the contrary, stopping permanently should be one of the best experiences of your life. It's certainly the top smoking-related experience! Smoking is ho-hum compared with stopping smoking permanently, if done right.

You see more clearly. You see that what kept you smoking is gone. You don't desire it anymore. You're free of it. Those who know what it's like to be a slave to a substance know how much they'd like to be free of it. Stopping smoking successfully is an experience of gaining self-knowledge and freedom. Freedom that requires defending, but real freedom. Freedom from the desire to smoke and, with that freedom, freedom also from smoking.

With that freedom goes a need to experience its joy and satisfaction. Rejoicing in your freedom from addiction helps you stay free. Because if you can really feel that joy and satisfaction every day, when you call on it, that helps you deal with what is left of the urge to smoke after the amplifier is unplugged. Because you appreciate what you have. You can feel it. You think 'Would I rather have a cigarette or feel what I am feeling now?' If you can feel the joy you have earned, you'd rather feel that joy. If you can feel the pleasure of breathing fresh air, you can appreciate it and cherish it.

When you see the nature and power of the illusions that have kept you smoking until now, you glimpse the veil of tears, the fabric of this life. You see how powerful illusions can be. You come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of yourself and the world.

The experience of stopping smoking is thought to be hellish. It is if you retain the desire to smoke. But if you have no desire to smoke, it's as easy as it is to resist staring at the sun.

That's where we're going by the end of the book. Some get there and some don't. If it doesn't work for you, don't despair. Many people stop smoking several times before it's permanent. You eventually succeed. But each time you try is necessary in your journey; you learn important things about yourself and your addiction in the process. Understanding why you continue to smoke is crucial; so is being able to deal with the stories you tell yourself to start smoking again.

You might think the goal is to stop smoking. But that happens automatically if you meet a different goal. The goal is to understand why you continue to smoke and therefore understand what benefits you think smoking gives you. In reading this book, you'll come to understand that smoking doesn't give you any of those things.

The other thing you need to do is end the romance with smoking. To dismantle your psychological addiction to smoking, you free your head of illusions about smoking and your heart of the romance with smoking.

One of the things we'll look at in the last part of the book is the 9,000 year history of smoking. From tobacco shamanism in the Americas through the European and, not long after that, global adoption of tobacco starting in the 1500s. Why look at that history? So much has changed since then. Even the tobacco is different—it used to be hallucinogenic, believe it or not. And we don't use it religiously, unlike many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. What of that history is relevant to your desire to stop smoking now?

So much has changed but the fundamental dynamic has not. For thousands of years, people have ascribed medicinal and other powers to tobacco and smoking that they don't actually have. Smoking has always supplied a convincing illusion of offering important benefits.

Getting to the bottom of those very old illusions, understanding them clearly—through the ages and across different cultures—is liberating.

What do we see through those convincing smoky illusions? Do we see the menacing grin of Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of tobacco, commanding us beyond our ability to resist? Not so much. We see ourselves, our naked, vulnerable, human frailty and need for reassurance and assistance in a world we do not command. It's an old story of our desire for help.