"Aaah" sensations when we eat food, "aaah" sensations after using nicotine. Food cravings, nicotine cravings. What causes the mind to attach the same importance to that next nicotine feeding as it does to eating food? What's the common thread between nicotine, heroin and methamphetamine addictions?

Drug addiction is about living a lie. It's about the brain's priorities teacher, our dopamine pathways, being fooled into believing that nicotine use is a species survival event, as fundamental to survival as food and water.

It isn't that we liked smoking nicotine but that we didn't like what happened when we didn't smoke it, the onset of withdrawal. Freedom from Nicotine not only makes the science of nicotine addiction understandable, it shatters the laundry list of lies we invented to explain that next nicotine fix. It guides readers through each layer of recovery (physical, emotional, subconscious and conscious) while providing effective tips on how to diminish the impact of each, and minimize risk of relapse.

This book's scope is broader than just how to quit smoking cigarettes, cigars or pipes. It's the first book ever to focus on all forms of nicotine delivery, including empowering smokeless tobacco users to stop using chewing tobacco, dip, snuff or snus, those addicted to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to end lozenge, gum or patch use, and slaves to the new electronic or e-cigarette to reclaim their hands, lips, lungs, self esteem, time, money and mind.

"Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home" is a culmination of a decade devoted to studying the work of the world's most accomplished smoking cessation educators, counselors, scientists and researchers, and witnessing the value of their lessons in counseling, college seminars, 63 state prison programs and at online peer support forums.

"Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home" was written by me, John R. Polito, a former long-term heavy smoker and the 1999 founder of what has become the Internet's most popular non-government quitting forum (WhyQuit). This is the first quitting book to document the science underlying the cessation method responsible for generating almost 90% of long-term successful ex-smokers, cold turkey or abrupt nicotine cessation. But why is the science important?

It's critical because for more than two decades, pharmaceutical industry quitting product marketing has focused on getting us to fear and doubt our natural instincts. Industry ads falsely suggest that quitting cold turkey is nearly impossible. They've brainwashed us into believing that you have to be a super hero to succeed. Although we'd hoped over the years that industry research and marketing integrity would improve, it's actually gotten worse.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has now assigned Chantix a black box warning (its highest warning level) and produced a video clip telling smokers that Chantix may actually cause them to commit suicide. Today's Chantix commercials are designed to convince you that it's "your time" to accept that quitting my kill you because Chantix's benefits outweigh its risks, because a slow-moving tortoise defeated a freedom-seeking hare in a fair and honest race. Hogwash! Although the "serious mental health" risks part is true, the race never happened.

Clinical trials of NRT, Zyban and Chantix did not pit these products against real cold turkey quitters. Instead, they competed against study participants who joined in hopes of getting weeks or months of free replacement nicotine (or nicotine designer drugs), but were instead randomly assigned to receive a placebo look-a-like. Not only were they not smokers who wanted to quit cold turkey, most were smokers who had made a number of prior quitting attempts and knew exactly what full-blown withdrawal felt like. Once they sensed its arrival, they realized they'd been assigned to the placebo group instead, became frustrated, threw in the towel and handing these products an unearned victory by default.

Think about it, placebo isn't even a real quitting method. As I recently wrote in Canada's leading medical journal (CMAJ), researchers cannot hide the onset of nicotine withdrawal from those whose previous quitting history taught them exactly how it feels, that "pharmacologic treatment of chemical dependency may be the only known research area in which blinding is impossible."

Pharmaceutical quitting products easily and routinely defeat placebo users inside clinical trials, yet fall flat on their face when going head-to-head against cold turkey quitters in real-world use (see Doran CM, et al, Smoking status of Australian general practice patients and their attempts to quit [PubMed Abstract], Addictive Behavior, 2006 May;31(5):pages 758-766; also see 2006 Unpublished U.S. National Cancer Institute Survey of 8,200 quitters, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Page A1, February 8, 2007; also see UK NHS, Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services in England, April to December 2007 [full text - see Table 6], April 16, 2008; also see, Ferguson J, The English smoking treatment services: one-year outcomes, Addiction [PubMed abstract], 2005 Apr;100 Suppl 2:59-69 [see Table 6]; also see, Alberg AJ, et al, Nicotine replacement therapy use among a cohort of smokers [PubMed abstract], J Addict Dis., 2005;24(1):101-13; also see, SmokeFree London, Tobacco In London, Facts and Issues, [online PDF report, see Figure 14], November 26, 2003; also see Boyle RG, et al, Does insurance coverage for drug therapy affect smoking cessation? [free full-text], Health Aff (Millwood), 2002 Nov-Dec;21(6):162-8; also see, Pierce JP, et al, Impact of Over-the-Counter Sales on Effectiveness of Pharmaceutical Aids for Smoking Cessation [free full text], JAMA, September 11, 2002;288:1260-1264).

"Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home" repairs confidence in our natural quitting instincts. It exposes pharmaceutical industry clinical study shell games while making tobacco industry flavor, taste and pleasure marketing sadly laughable. It provides readers with a roadmap that minimizes travel anxieties by clearly identifying and preparing them for relapse hazards along the way.

What sense does it make to fear coming home to entire days where we never once think about wanting to use nicotine? Why fear discovering that active drug addiction is about living a lie, that nicotine use did not define who we were, give us our edge or help us cope, or the truth that life without nicotine is actually better not worse.

Although nearly impossible to believe right now, everything done while using nicotine can be done as well as or better without it. Although the enslaved mind screams otherwise, recovery is a temporary journey of re-adjustment and we leave absolutely nothing behind. Every neuro-chemical nicotine controlled already belonged to us. Even the love in our heart, we get to bring it with us.

Why travel in ignorance and darkness? Why fear recovery when we can be its master and embrace it? You're about to witness what may be your clearest example ever of the saying, "knowledge is power!" In the end there's just one guiding principle determining the outcome for all ... no nicotine just one hour and challenge at a time! The next few minutes are all that matter and each is do-able. We comfortable ex-users are now nearly one billion strong. Join us! Yes you can!

Breathe deep, hug hard, live long,

John