Nicotine

Aajonus's core position was that the craving for a cigarette is not a craving for nicotine per se but a craving for blood sugar and enzymes. Smoking triggers a toxic response that forces the liver to release stored glycogen, and that glycogen release produces a rush of energy. The preferred blood sugar compound, glycogen, is made from the protein sugar pyruvate, which in his framework is best obtained from raw meat. Raw meat can enter the blood and help arrest the carbon monoxides and tars introduced by smoking. The energy rush from nicotine is real, but it is produced through a damaging and indirect pathway rather than through genuine nourishment.

He framed caffeine and nicotine together as remedies people reach for when they wake from too many hours of sleep and find themselves anemic. He explained that after five hours of sleep the body has consumed two to four tablespoons of red blood cells through a process where, in the absence of sufficient dietary protein, phagocytes are forced to eat other red blood cells. After eight hours, that anemia is pronounced. After ten hours it is severe. The person who wakes and cannot move, cannot think, and reaches for coffee or a cigarette is reaching for something that will raise blood sugar or adrenalize the system to compensate for the red blood cell deficit. He said, "Is caffeine or nicotine a remedy for anemia? Well, that's what people go for." He regarded this as an understandable biological response to a nutritional problem, not a character failing or a true addiction in the psychological sense.

Aajonus repeatedly distinguished between the body's genuine need for the blood sugar mechanism that nicotine triggers and the artificial intensification of that dependence by the tobacco industry. He stated that cigarette manufacturers add chemical compounds specifically to amplify the addictive properties of their products. In one context he said 42 elements out of 68 present in commercial cigarettes are there to keep the smoker addicted. In another he described ammonia-based drugs added to cigarettes to release the nicotine more rapidly and forcefully. He compared the tobacco industry's manipulation of its product directly to the pharmaceutical industry's practice of engineering dependency in patients.

He noted that commercial snuff and chewing tobacco are also chemically treated to increase addiction. He made the observation that American Spirit cigarettes were asked about by attendees and mentioned as supposedly more natural, but he stated that to get truly untreated tobacco one would need to know a grower in the South who does not treat the plants.

Aajonus connected nicotine stimulation to adrenal activation and described it in the same category as cocaine, caffeine, and pharmaceutical stimulants. All of these work by causing the adrenal glands to dump adrenaline into the system, which produces the sensation of energy and alertness. He said clearly, "If you're putting poisons in the body, I don't care if it's cocaine or nicotine or whatever, you're going to charge the body with adrenaline. That doesn't mean it's a healthy charge." The energy is real in the sense that the body mobilizes reserves, but it does so at the cost of cellular integrity, accelerating deterioration over time rather than building capacity.

He also noted that nicotine stimulates the brain and said that it is chemically related to niacin, describing it as "vitamin B-niacin." This was offered specifically in the context of raw green tobacco, where he observed that the nicotine content would give a mild high when the raw plant was chewed, but in his experience no one became nauseous on raw green tobacco the way they would from smoked tobacco.

While Aajonus regarded the blood sugar mechanism triggered by nicotine as the functional driver behind the craving, his more sustained concern about smoking was the accumulation of tars in the body. Tars are cooked at temperatures he estimated between 750 and 1250 degrees Fahrenheit during smoking, and in some passages he specified the range more broadly as 1200 to 1800 degrees for the ash at the burning tip. At those temperatures, the fats in the tobacco leaf are converted into trans-fatty acids that bond together into extremely dense, thick substances. Once deposited in the body, these tars are very difficult to break down because of their high-temperature origin and their density.

He said that over many years, tars crystallize and clog many bodily systems, especially the kidneys. He described smokers as having "tar crystals" compounding the general mineral crystal burden that accumulates in anyone eating processed foods. He noted that he observed very few smokers in whom tars did not accumulate, though he acknowledged exceptions. He described knowing five people who had smoked for years while on the Primal Diet for sixteen years and showed no tar deposits in their bodies, which he attributed to their livers producing several different kinds of bile capable of converting the vaporized oil from the tobacco into a usable cholesterol. He did not know how many smokers had that capacity, but characterized it as rare.

He also addressed secondhand smoke in detail. He said people raised in smoking households or who worked in smoke-filled environments accumulated tars throughout the body in a pattern he described as "patched all over the system," as opposed to the more concentrated deposition in lungs and kidneys seen in direct smokers. He performed visual assessments on individuals and identified secondhand smoking histories from the pattern of tar deposits visible to him, telling one mechanic who had never smoked that he essentially had the tar burden of a smoker because his coworkers had been smoking in the shop for years.

Marijuana was addressed in comparison to tobacco throughout the source material. Aajonus stated that marijuana has approximately sixteen to twenty times more tars than regular cigarettes, making smoking one joint tarwise equivalent to smoking a whole pack of cigarettes. He attributed this to the greater fat content of the marijuana leaf compared to the tobacco leaf. He said, "There is a lot more fat in marijuana than there is in a tobacco leaf. And that tar is actually tar because you've cooked it. So it's a trans-fatty acid basically." He noted that marijuana tars, like tobacco tars, can crystallize and harden in various parts of the body, with the specific location depending on individual weaknesses.

Aajonus developed a specific protocol using raw green tobacco juice to dissolve and cleanse hardened and crystallized tobacco tars from the body. He said the only way he had seen people deliberately break down tars was to eat raw tobacco, specifically to chew it and spit the pulp out, or to juice the green plant. He distinguished this sharply from commercial dried, cured, or treated tobacco, which cannot be used for this purpose.

Green tobacco is seasonal, available from July through August and in some years as late as mid-September. He specified that it should be juiced through a Green Star juicer or similar green model. The quantities and dosages he provided were specific to the degree of exposure.

For light smokers and secondhand smokers, the target volume was 12 ounces of green tobacco juice consumed at a rate of 3 drops per day, which would last approximately nine months. For heavy, long-term smokers, the target volume was 30 ounces consumed at a rate of up to 7 drops per day, also over nine months.

The preparation method he specified was as follows: keep the juice in a glass jar; add 1 ounce of good well water or glass-bottled still water (if carbonated, shake until the carbon evaporates) for the 12-ounce batch, or 2 ounces for the 30-ounce batch; add 3 drops of raw apple cider vinegar for the smaller batch or 6 drops for the larger; add 3 drops of lemon juice for the smaller batch or 6 drops for the larger; blenderize for 20 seconds; then allow the mixture to ferment in the refrigerator for some period before use.

He addressed the practical difficulty of obtaining green tobacco, noting that sources should only be contacted during the green tobacco season. He acknowledged that the tobacco turns brown quickly after harvest and develops a strong odor, even when shipped overnight, and raised the question of whether browning would compromise the remedy. He noted that a farmer willing to allow direct harvest was preferable to shipped product.

He also mentioned two other modes of using raw tobacco for tar dissolution. One was chewing the raw leaves and spitting the pulp, which he said would make people repulsed to smoking very quickly. He noted this approach was hard to implement because of the difficulty in obtaining untreated raw green tobacco. The second was allowing chewed tobacco to mold and then consuming the molded material, which he said could also help dissolve some of the tars, though he presented this as an additional observation rather than a primary protocol.

Aajonus explained that the body uses fat to bind with and arrest tars, preventing them from causing severe dryness and damage in tissues. Smokers require substantially more fat than non-smokers precisely because a large portion of their available fat nutrients are consumed in trying to contain and neutralize tars rather than performing normal lubricating and energizing functions. He said there are very few smokers in whom tars do not store in the body, and that the effort to deal with those tars dries out the insides significantly. Protein is also necessary, as he noted that proteins bind with carbon monoxides and tars, help break them down, and make solvents from them.

He described cream as working better than butter for absorbing toxins, specifying that cream would work approximately one third better than butter for this purpose, though he acknowledged butter was acceptable if cost was a constraint. Raw fats generally were positioned as the primary dietary support for anyone dealing with smoking-related tar accumulation, alongside raw meat for its protein and pyruvate content.

Aajonus's practical approach to helping people quit smoking was to address the underlying blood sugar need without demanding behavioral change. He said explicitly, "I don't say, 'Stop smoking.' I just say, when you want a cigarette, have some honey or a date." His instruction was for the person to consume the honey or honey with butter before reaching for the cigarette. In his observation, following this approach led people to get through only a third of the cigarette before discarding it. Over time, this process reduced the urge to smoke without the person having to apply willpower to suppress the craving.

He described the honey and butter combination as superior to honey alone. The protocol was simply to have the honey and butter every time the craving for a cigarette arose, before lighting the cigarette. He framed this as working with the body's actual need rather than against it, because the craving was a genuine call for blood sugar and the honey satisfied that need through a direct nutritional pathway. Once blood sugar was addressed, the tobacco was no longer needed to trigger the liver's glycogen release.

He gave clear permission to people who were not yet ready to stop. He said, "It is okay for you to smoke," and framed the job as incorporating the honey and butter response into the existing habit rather than fighting the habit. His position was that guilt was counterproductive and that every craving the body generates is legitimate. He said there is no such thing as a psychological addiction separate from the body's actual needs, and that craving is always the body, always expressing a genuine biological requirement that simply needs correct translation.

Aajonus described cases in which accumulated tobacco tars were eliminated through the skin during the dietary healing process. He gave a personal account in which, years after stopping smoking, he detected and tasted smoke tox being discharged through his skin over a period of days. He said this represented his smoking years from age eight to twenty-four breaking down and exiting through the skin rather than through the lungs. He framed skin elimination as preferable to lung elimination, because if the same volume of tar were discharged through the lungs, they would fill with fluid and create serious respiratory problems.

He described a guitarist and singer who developed accumulations visible on and around the eye after a year of performing in shows with heavy smoke, specifically the vaporized hydrogenated oil smoke used in stage productions, which he described as "liquid plastic" and characterized as worse than ordinary tobacco smoke. For this individual, he prescribed topical application of fresh pineapple alternating with vinegar to help break down and remove the deposits from outside while the diet worked from inside.

He discussed a case of a nightclub singer who accumulated plastic particles in the sinuses and brain from the hydrogenated oil smoke used in her venue. He made clear that vaporized hydrogenated oil stage smoke is distinct from and in his view worse than natural tobacco smoke, and that anyone present at shows using this type of smoke is inhaling vaporized liquid plastic.

Aajonus connected nicotine use directly to the problem of morning anemia caused by excessive sleep. He explained that the body, when it runs out of dietary protein during sleep, begins consuming red blood cells, losing two to four tablespoons over eight hours and more over ten hours. People waking from long sleep are effectively anemic, and they instinctively reach for caffeine or nicotine to compensate for the resulting low energy. He presented this as one of the core biological reasons nicotine use becomes habitual in people who sleep long hours and eat diets deficient in protein and fat.

His solution to this underlying problem was to interrupt the long sleep with eating. He recommended waking after approximately five hours, consuming a small amount of protein (a little meat, a meatball, an egg, half a milkshake, or half a cup of milk), and then returning to sleep. He said this would prevent the red blood cell consumption and eliminate the need for stimulants in the morning. For hyperactive people who wake after three hours and cannot return to sleep after eating, he suggested setting an alarm for three hours, eating, and then sleeping the remaining five hours. He said this adjustment would make a "huge difference" in energy levels and remove the physiological basis for reaching for nicotine.

Aajonus gave consistent and detailed accounts of his own use across multiple workshop transcripts. He started smoking at eight years old, driven by chronic fatigue, pain from cold, and the inability to function without stimulants. His father had grown up on a farm with raw milk and fresh food and was robust, and had no understanding that his child was in physiological crisis. The household had no central heating at night, and Aajonus was in pain from the cold and could not get out of bed without stimulants.

He described stealing cigarettes from stores after his parent stopped smoking, and hiding behind bushes and in wooded areas at school to smoke between every class period, burying a partially smoked cigarette in pine needles and retrieving it at the next break. By sixteen he was at two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strike per day. He also described the physical intensity with which he smoked, pulling each cigarette until his entire chest was full of smoke and the burning tip was an inch of red-hot charcoal. His mother called him a fiend. He agreed with the characterization.

He described the nicotine as giving him approximately one to one and a half hours of energy and alertness per cigarette, keeping him functional enough to work as a systems analyst and to care for a child during a marriage that was failing. He said the nicotine, combined with eleven cups of coffee and eventually a fifth of gin per night, was how he survived. The combination of alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine ate through his stomach lining and produced a bleeding ulcer by nineteen, which led to hospitalization, a vagotomy pyeloplasty, and the beginning of a cascade of medical interventions.

He described stopping smoking as one of the hardest things he ever did, harder than stopping alcohol, and said repeatedly across multiple transcripts that he would still be smoking if it were not harmful. He described it not as compulsion but as genuine enjoyment. After stopping, his bronchials remained approximately ninety percent scar tissue from the years of burning heat. He described the bronchial damage as resulting from filling his lungs to capacity every time he smoked.