It's been one of the most important things in my life to stop smoking and then to write this book to hopefully help others do the same. I hope it helps you attain a new perspective not only on smoking but on the related issues we've talked about throughout the book. And that reading this book helps you to stop smoking permanently. Thank you for reading the book; best wishes to you.

You are a seeker of truth and freedom. Who would unknow anything of what they now know? No one who seeks and values the truth. Who would love the chains of their enslavement? No one who knows they hold the key. Cast off your chains and walk free.

If this book has worked for you, either you smoked your last cigarette some time ago, several pages ago, or it's time to do that now. If you still want to smoke, it hasn't worked yet. Because the idea is to get rid of your desire to smoke.

If you're thinking “Oh God I have to quit now”, you're not done: you're hooked when you want one. The idea is to get rid of your desire to smoke.

If you agree that you don't enjoy smoking, the 'enjoyment' of smoking went out the window for you a while ago. You can't enjoy your last cigarette because you know you don't and never really did enjoy smoking.

By the time it's time to smoke your last cigarette, you're pretty much done, if we have connected as I hope we have and you're at the final stage of stopping smoking.

Part of what's involved in stopping smoking is developing a sense of observing how you really feel when you smoke a cigarette.

Is the romance of smoking over for you? There's an excitement of anticipation in the romance, a build-up to smoking so that the smoking comes as a great relief, almost like a little orgasm of relief. That's part of the amplifier. That excitement of anticipation amplifies the irritation of the withdrawal symptoms into an urge to smoke.

But when you've ended the romance, the thrill is gone. The thrill, the build up of desire and anticipation—you can recognize that's something you maintain like a romance. You can observe yourself and how you maintain it. And when you do, you can see also how you can put it aside. Because it's very much an abusive romance, and you're the one getting the abuse. You supply the thrill yourself; it isn't inherent in the drug or the activity.

Smoking has been as addictive as it has been for 9,000 years not because smoking is that fulfilling and pleasurable, but because it provides a plausible illusion of pleasure and fulfillment, and our deep need for pleasure and fulfillment does the rest, fills in the blank, even makes a romance with an inanimate drug, out of our deep needs.

If I ever get executed, and they ask me if I want a final cigarette—if they still do that, or ever did that—I doubt I'd want one. It would give me more pleasure to realize I didn't want one than to con myself with a lie that I did. Knowing that you don't want it, even or especially in times of stress, is a source of strength. In fact it's a greater source of strength than smoking is. And it isn't a matter of denying yourself something you want. You don't desire it or want it. The romance is over. The spell is over.

I used to drink alcohol to be able to deal with public occasions, sometimes. I thought it made me more fun and the events more fun. I used it to cope with some stressful situations. Of course, it wasn't a very good way of coping with them at all. Now I don't feel the need or desire to do that. I may not be particularly fun or interesting. But I'll be there just as me, and am interested to encounter other people just that way too. I don't feel the need to escape from those encounters into a more 'viable me'. In any case, alcohol doesn't provide a better me. It provides a worse.

Similarly, I don't feel that smoking helps me cope better with anything or that it provides a better me in any sense, really. I still have problems coping with things, sometimes. I still avoid and procrastinate. But at least I don't reach for a cigarette in the mistaken belief that it's going to do anything good for me.

Recreational drugs are overrated. Drugs that seem to start out as enhancers of parts of ourselves inevitably end up diminishing those and other parts of ourselves. They cater to our insecurities that we ourselves aren't enough, that we aren't enough to be able to deal effectively with what we have to do. Or we aren't enough to be able to enjoy ourselves, or have other people enjoy us.

It's funny, but in fact we get better when we make the simple determination to just be ourselves and proceed without smoking or alcohol, and let the chips fall as they may—just on us being ourselves, warts and all. There's great strength in it. You are enough just as you are. And you can be proud that you know it. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

If you still smoke, smoke that last cigarette, if you like. It isn't the moment before you're blindfolded and executed. It's the moment before you walk free from a jail cell you've been locked in too long. You've got the key.