Under the Spell!
A visit to the hypnotist
Three friends sign up for group hypnosis session to break their cigarette smoking habit, discovering that they’re sharing the therapy time with people trying to lose weight. Does it work? In “From Our Readers”, Jimmy Coleman goes under the spell and tells the tale.
“Everyone take off your shoes,” the hypnotist suggested. I should have checked my socks for holes. “Relax, get comfortable,” he said, a smooth, lulling voice that would put an insomniac to sleep. “Lie back on the carpet and close your eyes.” The conference hall carpet had seen better days; ingrained grungy spots originated from who knows where.
How could one person collectively hypnotize a bunch of someone’s, and do so with the scarcity of couch or pendulum? Call me a Doubting Thomas, but even a Mother Teresa would have doubts if her kid sister told her a robber broke in and ate her entire chocolate stash. You’d have to be crazier than a hoot owl if you didn’t register a little doubt; a complete stranger off the street cleverly manipulates you to do something that you would not normally do, like flimflamming a person to give up their portable therapist.
Sue and Tom, two of my co-workers, and I made the decision to participate in a group hypnosis session for those hoping to quit smoking. The event was held at a local motel that bordered less on the genteel and tasteful and more on the flimsy or cheesy side. I told myself to relax; we were about to be transmogrified into zombies. It soon became apparent we smokers were not alone. The participants also included folks wishing to lose weight.
Truth be told, Tom had no burning desire to quit smoking, not unless someone discovered a painless way to accomplish such a feat. We joined Sue in her venture to rid herself of the dastardly weed, mainly for moral support but also to keep her company in a run-down neck of the woods where the event was being held. Besides, there was more than a touch of bewitched and enchanted curiosity. On the outside chance it stuck, we would be the healthier for it! Hopefully the hypnotist would forgo extracting my ATM password once I was under his spell!
Personal attempts to kick the habit
About the time Adam went a courting Eve I made a feeble attempt to kick the habit. I managed to devour several large bags of candy and consumed untold packs of chewing gum, picking up a few extra pounds in the process. Crying in my buttermilk, I soon returned to feed my nicotine cravings.
However, my day of reckoning with nicotine, be it in the form of cigarette or pipe, hit me right between the eyes when I realized my wife was slowly but surely becoming hooked on this pesticide. Her growing habit was primarily associated with social gatherings where many of those gathered smoked. Bumming a cigarette here and there would soon become an unpleasant predicament. It was nary impossible for me to discourage my Sweet Petunia from picking up the habit when I smoked two and a half packs a day. HOW to persuade her to stop was the 64-dollar question. The answer, however, was straightforward; she promised to stop social smoking if I hung up my smoking spurs.
Making promises was simple but antithetical to keeping them. Years ago, I had promised my wife-to-be I would quit smoking after we married. An Ice Age later this Neanderthal still had not kept his promise. Once out of frustration she painted a most vivid picture of what it was like when kissing me – somewhat akin to kissing an ashtray. If not for myself, then for her sake, I had somehow to quit smoking.
Pardon my getting sidetracked, veering off the straight and narrow. Unlike Tom and I, Sue made innumerable attempts to quit smoking, unfortunately always returning to her cigs. She not only paid the price in pain and suffering with each attempt, so too did everyone in the office. Like the time she tried using the 30-day arm patch that allowed her body to absorb a prescribed reduced amount of nicotine each day, until completely weaned. Theoretically, this subdued her craving for cigarettes, giving her in drug culture vernacular, a fix.
Her office mates detected subtle changes in Sue after five days of patches and no cigs. One colleague swore the patch triggered an early form of PMS, several others swore her nails grew longer and her nose protruded; a tad exaggeration perhaps, but not by much. Regretfully, Sue’s abstinence was short lived, but fortunately for us, she quickly transformed back into her sweet lovable smokable self. She also returned to her carpool, no longer riding a broom to work.
Like Sue, I had my own reasons for trying to rid myself of the evil nicotine. I set aside my doubts and made the conscious decision to give the hypnotist an opportunity to exorcise from me any further need of my addiction.
While waiting for the session to start, we Three Amigos sat in a corner booth at the motel restaurant, encompassed in a chain smoking cloud of blessed smoke. Finishing our last cup of coffee in silence, we collectively held our breath after taking one last, long puff on our cigs. The Land of Hypnotic Enchantment waited to place us under its magical spell or conversely leaving us with the cost of three hefty entry fees and a sense of foolishness best kept under wraps!
While waiting for the show to get on the road, smokers and portly intermingled. I began to appreciate how this group could last forever. Those who quit smoking would probably gain weight, which would encourage them to attend a second hypnosis session as a paunchy non-smoker. Smokers in general have a lesser appetite than their counterparts do. A corpulent or obese-challenged person might be tempted to start smoking to help control their appetite. Of course, should a person get his/her wires crossed during a joint hypnotic session, a problem could arise; a skinny smoker, awakening from hypnosis might feel the urge to diet, thus continuing to smoke while becoming emaciated! Caught in a vicious circle between dieting and smoking – a profitable repeat business for a group hypnotist.
Time to go under the spell
We smokers and the obese ones received the same spiel. Hypnotist, mentalist, or entertainer, you decide, our Amazing Kreskin urged the multitude to relax, encouraging us to turn our minds into nothingness. Some of the throng attending would have naturally accomplished that feat with or without external stimulation. I hoped once knocked out, put under, if you will, into a sleepy stupor, I would refrain from snoring. I felt a prickly sensation on my backside while trying to find a comfortable position, a straight pin someone had inadvertently dropped on the carpet.
The hypnotist saved his best thunder for last. “Picture yourself coming out of a 7-11 on a hot, muggy evening,” he said. “You are carrying several cartons of cigarettes, equally weighed down with an armful of sweets.” Continuing, the hypnotist’s voice now filled his captive audience with distasteful, retching descriptions sufficient to gag a forklift. “Your nose is full of phlegm dripping slime, and you have a hacking cough. It starts to rain as you gobble down one Twinkie after the other.” He was now on a roll. “You have a cigarette dangling out of the side of your mouth, holding one in each hand…” Perhaps it was subliminal stimuli, but as things ended up, it would be sometime before I would eat another Twinkie, although I still wished for a carton of those cigs…
I glanced to see if anyone was in a trance-like state when the lights in the hall were turned up. One guy appeared to meet that description but he had looked that way before the initiation of the session. Nervous laughter here and there, whispered chatters, but no real zombies that I could detect.
No sooner had we walked outside, we noticed several folks from the session quickly light up. The Three Smoking Amigos missed coming under the hypnotist spell. Physically, emotionally, we were dying for a cigarette. Our yearning could not have been stronger, but each of us held back, not giving in to the temptation. Who would be the first to give into their desire, the first to fall off the nicotine wagon? To do so would discourage the others, encouraging them to follow suit. Surely I could at least wait till I was out of sight of the others and went our separate ways. Actually, one of us did quit, but well that’s another story.
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