Hypnosis

When I was a kid, my family doctor was a hypnotist. He hypnotized my mom before she gave birth to my little sister. Mom reports that she felt no discomfort during the birth, despite being awake and having no drugs. That story had a big impact on me.

When I was in my early twenties, I enrolled in the Pierre Clement School of Hypnosis in San Francisco. I thought I could earn some extra money hypnotizing people. And I figured maybe it could help with dating. I wasn’t getting too far on my charm alone.

The Pierre Clement School of Hypnosis is named after a notable and long dead hypnotist. I don’t know if it still exists. I couldn’t find it on Google. At the time, it consisted of one instructor and a small room where the eight or ten of us met twice a week, at night for a few hours, for maybe ten weeks. I forget the details. It was something like that. That was just the basic course. You could take another class to get the advanced therapy concepts, but I didn’t.

I’ve never heard of anyone learning hypnosis from reading a good book about it. An important part of the process involves being hypnotized yourself, and watching others being hypnotized.  And frankly, it’s a bit hard to believe it works until you observe it yourself. As a hypnotist, you need to convey your confidence that the process works, or else it won’t. If you’re not personally convinced, the subject might pick up on that. I doubt you could get that sort of confidence from a book.

Let me stop here and give you some facts about hypnosis. It’s widely misunderstood. Later I’ll tell you how it’s done, but you won’t be able to reproduce it by reading about it here.

We talk of people “going under” hypnosis, or “going to sleep.” Both are misleading. A subject under hypnosis is fully aware of his environment. He’s awake, for all practical purposes, and can ignore any suggestion that might be objectionable. In the history of hypnosis, there’s no reliable record of anyone following a suggestion he thought would be harmful to himself or someone else. The subject doesn’t lose control.

So what does happen?

I describe the state of hypnosis as acquiring a power. The subject has all of his regular faculties operating plus he gains some more, if he has no objection to those new powers. For example, a subject under hypnosis would get a little extra power in one or more of these areas:

1. Extra relaxation
2. Extra imagination
3. Extra focus

Those extra powers don’t sound like much, but they are. In my experience, every person can be hypnotized, at least to the degree of getting some of those extra powers.  People who say they can’t be hypnotized don’t understand hypnosis.

About one person in five can experience what hypnotists call “the phenomena.” For those people, their powers of imagination become so strong it is almost indistinguishable from reality. Those are the people who can give birth without pain, or see an elephant in the room, or eat an onion and think it’s an orange, or have multiple orgasms on suggestion. My name for that group is “lucky bastards.” For them, hypnosis can fix a lot of problems.

For the rest of the world, hypnosis can be a great way to relax, which has lots of health benefits. And it can help focus on good habits and away from bad ones. For example, it can help some people with minor phobias and bad habits. But it’s not a cure-all, and doesn’t seem to be more effective than alternative treatments for those same problems.

People who use hypnosis to quit smoking and quit overeating have about the same success as people who use other methods. In other words, it works less than half the time. The reason is simple. Hypnosis can only help you do what you want to do. If you want a cigarette more than you want to quit, hypnosis is useless. So is every other method. And if you want to quit more than you want to smoke, almost any method, including hypnosis, can make that quitting feel easier.

A common misconception is that the people who can experience hypnotic phenomena are weak-willed or gullible. There’s no truth to that. In fact, there’s no way to know how a person will respond to hypnosis by observing his personality. Often the smartest and most powerful people are easiest to hypnotize precisely because they aren’t afraid of the process. Sometimes the meek will be concerned that the hypnotist will turn them into zombies. So if you “can’t be hypnotized,” it’s nothing to brag about. It just means you don’t understand what hypnosis is.

Some people have a problem with the idea of hypnosis because they don’t want someone else having control over them. That’s the wrong way to think of it. A hypnotist is more like a coach, or a tour guide. He shows the subject how to unlock his extra powers. He doesn’t “control” the subject. In fact, I’ve never known anyone who didn’t totally enjoy the feeling of being hypnotized. It’s like getting a pedicure on your brain. It’s deeply relaxing, and the hypnotist does all of the work. It feels a bit like being pampered.

All that most people know about hypnosis is what they’ve seen in a stage hypnotist’s act. You might be wondering if the subjects are really actors and the whole thing is fixed. They’re real people. They are the one in five who can experience the phenomena. The thing the audience doesn’t realize is that what looks embarrassing to the spectators doesn’t feel that way to the people on stage, either during or after the act. In any large group, it’s easy to find a dozen people who will get on stage and do things you wouldn’t do, whether they are hypnotized or not. Part of the illusion that makes stage hypnosis entertaining is that you think you wouldn’t do what the people on stage are doing, so therefore they must be completely under the hypnotists “control.” That’s a misperception. Everyone on stage could stand up and walk off if they chose to. Experiencing the “phenomena” is a fascinating feeling, and only extroverts allow themselves to go on stage. They know what they’re doing, although they do experience their imagination almost as if real. But it’s 100% voluntary.

Our homework in hypnosis class involved finding subjects to hypnotize for practice. I ran an ad in a local publication saying I would hypnotize people to “remember” their previous lives, for $20. (We learned you should charge for your service because it makes you more credible and makes the hypnosis easier.)

I didn’t necessarily believe in reincarnation, but I thought it would be fun to test it. Several people answered the ad, and all but one imagined something that felt like a previous life. The experience convinced me that people can’t remember previous lives under hypnosis, because all of my subjects described historical situations right out of books. Everyone was a Viking or a French peasant or something easy to describe. No one was an ancient Etrusian, for example, because they wouldn’t know how to describe that sort of life.

Hypnosis does mess with memories. That has more to do with the fragility of memory than with the power of hypnosis. We all have the experience of remembering some childhood event and later realizing we’re only remembering the photographs we saw of the event. It’s the same with hypnosis. A powerful imagined memory can get confused with real ones, if there is even such a thing as a real memory. That’s why any story you hear about someone recovering a memory of abuse or alien abductions or anything else under hypnosis is always bullshit. Hypnosis can’t recover a memory. It can only confuse it.

The power of hypnosis, for me, was in understanding how easily people can confuse the imagined with the real. You can’t hypnotize someone to kill himself, because he would reject that suggestion. But religion can convince someone to kill himself by creating an imaginary afterlife with plentiful virgins for martyrs. So on a scale of dangerous imaginary things, hypnosis is somewhere closer to advertising, well below peer pressure, nowhere near religion.

In fact, part of your hypnosis homework involved watching a well-known preacher’s television show. He was a skilled hypnotist, although it was unclear how much was from training and how much was natural. Damn, he was good. Nothing he said made any sense whatsoever, and by that I don’t just mean it was hard to believe. I mean you couldn’t even discern his point. Yet somehow, it a-a-a-almost, kind of, sort of, made sense, so it drew you in. A half hour later you realized the only thing that made sense was “send me money.” That’s a standard hypnosis trick: You create a sense of confusion in the subject’s mind, and it makes him cling to the first clear thought that comes in. People don’t like to be confused for long, so the one clear thought in the mess of confusion takes on a higher power of influence. But it’s important to note that the hypnosis wouldn’t have been that effective, and evil, without the religion part.

Let’s talk about technique. First, hypnosis has nothing to do with the sound of your voice or swinging a watch in front of someone’s face. Hypnosis is done entirely with choice of words. You could do a Mickey Mouse impression and still hypnotize a blind guy, assuming it didn’t make him laugh.

Half of the process of hypnosis is performed before the subject knows you started. It’s called the pretalk. That’s where you describe to the subject, as I have in this post, what hypnosis is and isn’t, and answer any questions. The goal is to make sure the subject knows it’s not some sort of contest of willpower. The second goal of the pretalk is to convey your certainty that the hypnosis will work. If you’ve hypnotized lots of people, that part comes easy. You’ll have a natural confidence and matter-of-factness that the subject will pick up.

Then comes the induction, commonly known as “putting someone under.” The hypnotist has two goals in this phase. You want to relax the subject, and you want to show them the connection between your words and the changes they feel.

There are a variety of methods for hypnosis. I’ll describe the one I use the most. I ask the subject to sit upright in a comfortable chair, with feet on the ground. I ask the subject to pick a spot on the wall and concentrate on it. Hypnotists repeat themselves many times, so this is the highly edited version of what I might say:

“Concentrate on the spot you picked. Take a deep breath. Inhale, then exhale. Again. As you watch the spot, you’ll feel yourself relax. Your eyelids will feel heavier because it takes energy to keep them open. The natural position of your eyes is closed. It takes work to keep them open. As you relax, it will get harder to do that work. You’ll find yourself blinking, and with each blink, it might get harder to blink open. You might find yourself blinking more often. Eventually, the blinking will increase, and the eyelids will get heavier, and one of those blinks might keep your eyes closed.”

That’s a highly abbreviated version. I’d find five ways to say each of those ideas, and repeat as many times as it took. People who are in the one-in-five category flutter their eyes and shut them in about a minute. My objective is to convince the subject that something happened with their eyes because of something I said. Once they believe my words are having a direct influence on their relaxation, the effect snowballs. Imagination merges with reality.

Anyone will want to blink more often if you call attention to their rate of blinking. To the subject, it will seem as though he is blinking more because of something I said, when all that is happening is I made him think about his eyes.

By the way, I know you’re blinking a bit extra just reading this. I’m not hypnotizing you. It’s just a good example of the process.

If the subject’s eyes don’t close on their own, eventually I just tell him to close them. He will, because he’s the subject and I’m the hypnotist. And this starts a pattern of the subject experiencing a physical change because of the hypnotist’s words.

Then I tell my subject to relax his right hand, and feel the energy draining out of it. I work around the rest of the limbs, spending a minute on each. Any normal person will become quite relaxed just by focusing on his tension and releasing it one muscle at a time.

A hypnotist might also do something called pacing and leading. Pacing means matching the subject in some way, a mannerism or habit or style, then causing him to match you unconsciously. People copy other people automatically. For example, you know if you yawn, it often causes another person to yawn. Hypnosis is an extension of that process. So a hypnotist might first match the breathing pattern of the subject, in a very subtle way, and then start breathing slower to see if the subject matches the slower breathing without noticing.

Next comes the wordy part of the induction. I’d start by describing how relaxed the subject is, and ask him to imagine a walk in the forest. I’d leave out specifics, because the subject might be imagining an oak tree and I don’t want to say, “You notice a pine tree.” You never want to leave a clue that there’s any conflict between what you’re saying and the subject is experiencing.

After the forest, I take the subject down an imaginary set of steps that each have the word “sleep” written on them. With each step, I tell them they are getting deeper, and deeper. From there, they float onto an escalator, then an elevator, and then I ask them to see a floating pendulum. (I’m leaving out details of each scene.)

Part of what a hypnotist learns is how to read extremely subtle changes in the subject’s breathing, posture, and muscle tone. That’s how you can tell if what you’re doing is working or if you need to take longer. You would have to be a gifted actor to pretend to be hypnotized. It’s a distinct look that would be hard to fake. Neck muscles are the biggest tip off, as the subject’s head starts bobbing slightly, or the chin goes down to the chest. But you can also see the face relax to an unusual degree. And breathing becomes slow and regular.

By this point, the subject is so relaxed and so in synch with the hypnotist, that anything the hypnotist says (within reason) is as acceptable as if it had been generated by the subject’s own mind. It’s the extreme version of a yawn setting off another yawn.

Now comes the fun part. I typically suggest that the subject’s arm is becoming so light it will begin to float in the air. This can be a lengthy process, involving a series of suggestions starting with the thought that “your fingers might become light first, and that will cause one or more to twitch.” At this point, almost everyone will experience a finger twitch, and it will feel oddly involuntary. From there, it’s an easy road to suggest the arm is lighter than air and eventually, if the hypnotist persists, the arm starts to float. This is generally the “holy shit” moment for the subject who didn’t think he could be hypnotized. Almost everyone can experience the floating arm under hypnosis. It’s freaky. And it accelerates the “trance” if I can use that misleading word.

From there, I would suggest that any time I count from one to twenty, the subject would go deeper, and anytime I count toward one, the subject would be more awake. I’d run through the numbers slowly, changing directions, and observe the affect. Almost everyone is totally responding by this point. They are clearly more relaxed toward twenty, and visibly more awake toward one.

Now it’s time for the suggestions. You might suggest that a person feels comfortable flying on a plane, or dogs are cute and not dangerous, or the person is confident speaking on front of strangers, or whatever. This sort of suggestion rarely works in one session. You need about five sessions to make a difference. (The people who experience the phenomena might take fewer.)

To end the session, I suggest that when I count to zero the subject will awake and feel refreshed and happy and have a great day. I count to zero and they wake up. And they smile broadly. Every time. It’s a fun ride.

I’m leaving out plenty of details and side information, but this is enough to give you a flavor of the process.

What’s in it for the hypnotist? Lots. For one thing, you learn to read body language at a level that borders on psychic. You go beyond the obvious stuff like crossed arms and who is leaning toward whom, and see meaning in everything from skin tone, to breathing, to pupil dilation, and even choice of words. Never lie to a trained hypnotist.

The other super power you get from being a hypnotist is the knowledge of how to weave it into your normal life. For example, Dilbert is designed using tricks I learned from hypnosis. The reason Dilbert has no last name, and the boss has no name, and the company has no name, and the town has no name is because of my hypnosis training. I remove all the obvious obstacles to imagining Dilbert works at your company. That seems to work.

You can’t turn people into puppets with hypnosis, but it does tell you how to get in synch with them in a way that they are more likely to trust you and want to have you around. That’s handy in every walk of life. And you can tell if what you’re saying or doing is having a positive or negative impact as you are doing it. That helps a lot too.

But the best super power that hypnosis gives you is a different world view. Nothing in this life makes sense if you assume people are rational most of the time. Hypnosis teaches you how easily people’s memories and impressions can be altered. And it’s not just the gullible people, it’s all of us. It’s humbling. And it’s the most useful skill I’ve ever learned.

While hypnosis can't make a person do what he doesn't want to do, sometimes it can change what he thinks he wants, just as advertising and peer pressure do. It's not magic, but you shouldn't underestimate its power.

Comments

[Diana W]

I've tried 2 different hypnotists in the past, but with both of them I felt like I was "faking it", lifting my hand because they asked and I wanted to keep things moving, not because it floated up. But I'm certain I *could* be hypnotized, because for me, that's what a well written book does. I become part of the story, becoming completely oblivious to my actual surroundings. Maybe if J. K. Rowling or Tom Clancy were my hypnotist I'd have better results.

[Craig Fluck]

The late Milton Erikson, comes to mind whenever I hear/read about hynosis. His use of observation in hypnotherapy and his positive view of the unconscious mind are most enlightening. The foundation named for him still provides wonderful training opportunities.

[Alien]

You forgot to end with "Send me money."

[Scott (Not Adams)]

In your opinion, Uncle Scott, is Derren Brown doing hypnosis, or something else, particularly in "The Heist" episode where a few of his subjects end up robbing an armored car at gun point, and in "Photo Booth Hypnosis" where he gets a guy from London to Marrakech without him waking up?

[Dave]

Hypnosis transformed my love life. My girlfriends didn't realise there were so many rude things they actually wanted to do. It was incredible.

[ken]

Holy Shit!
I went to a Catholic High School in Washington, DC, and during our Junior year we were required to go on a "retreat" with the Christian Brothers (nothing morbid or perverted coming)....
At the end of the retreat, we all gathered together and one of the Brothers took us through almost the exact same scenario that you described.
Sit down. Get comfortable. Feet on the ground. Close your eyes. Imagine yourself walking through a forest. You come across a stream and you follow it. You come to a meadow. In the distance you see someone walking towards you. You begin to recognize this person as he gets closer. He greets you and introduces himself as Jesus.

[/vpr]

There is a danger, you can implant false memories that never happened. You only have to look at the cases were families were wrecked by someone who under hypnosis "discovered" that a relative or father raped them. By asking the question a false memory is introduced and the damage is done. It's an occultic practice thats a lot more dangerous than you think.

[Marco]

"That’s why any story you hear about someone recovering a memory of abuse or alien abductions or anything else under hypnosis is always bullshit."

My cousin remembered a trip to Austria she took with her parents as a little child. She remembered this under hypnosis, and of course if it were a memory that was "planted" there by the hypnotist then the illusion of "remembering" it would only last until her parents told her that they had never been to Austria.

Could this be a case of hypnosis increasing the power to "focus"? Or is it another case of constructing a memory around a partially remembered photograph?

[LA Clay]

That was really long, you should write books

[Trillium]

How do you come out of Hypnosis?

[Lea Johnston]

This sounds very simlia to NLP, which covers most of the topics you descibe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming
Its an incredible tool when used by an expert, as with most things, its not what you know, but how you use it.

[Instinctive Traveller]

thank you! that was most entertaining and informative.

you know what? my friend is into this hyponsis thing and he makes a great deal of it, as in he says you can be controlled. i suppose everyone i know thinks the same. you've really turned a light on.

thanks again.

[Mac]

I've often heard the claim that someone can't be 'hypnotised' into committing a crime, but that doesn't seem consistent with what I've seen.

In one example, I've seen someone hypnotised and given a bucket of water. They were then told if they saw someone on fire, they should not panic but simply throw the bucket of water on the person to put out the flames.

Then (of course) they were told that a particular audience member was on fire.

The result - as expected, they threw the bucket of water on the audience member.

Clearly, the person under hypnosis had committed (or potentially committed) a crime - throwing a bucket of water over someone is clearly the crime of assault. (If you don't believe me, pick a random politician and try it. I know of at least one prison sentence for assault after someone threw a single egg at a politician) Remember that the person being hypnotised had no way of knowing if the audience member had agreed to be on the receiving end of this prank - so they had no way of knowing if was honestly a crime or not.

Surely, then, it is clearly possible to convince someone to commit at least that crime by hypnosis.

Surely there are others ?

If you can give a bucket of water to a person under hypnosis and convince them to dump it on a random person (because you are told that they are on fire) surely you could give the person under hypnosis a gun and tell them it is a water pistol, and that they are playing a water pistol game with the audience member.

What would the result be -- assuming that the person being hypnotised is the 1 in 5 group?

What if the person was a bank teller (or at a change counter) and you hypnotised them into 'imagining' a genuine $100 dollar note everytime you gave them Monopoly money?

Surely once you can fool someone into imagining things you suggest, you can commit many crimes ?

Mac

[jerry w.]

Relax, just sit back, make yourself comfortable. You deserve it, don't you?

Very soon you won't feel the discomfort of that massive wallet in your pocket.

It really stopped this afternoon, it's almost like as soon as you took all those dirty $20.00 bills out and left them in your home.

You know, in an envelope with my name and address on it.

The one you'll mail later today when the sun is shining and the birds are singing.

You know how much you like that feeling, the only thing holding it back is that envelope with my name and address that you forgot to mail, we should take care of that soon, huh? Free your mind and your heart will follow. Into the sunshine.

If you're feeling too tired to mail it, paypal would be o.k. The birds will sing for that too, maybe where the sun doesn't shine.

We like that, don't we?

Just keep your eyes closed and think about all the nice things you could do when you're more in tune with the sunshine and singing birds.

I'm waiting for you to take us there......

Tweet tweet tweet......

Mmmm, sunshine....

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Aditya Simha]

Hell, if hypnosis helps with dates, then sign me up for it!

[Joseph Zastrow MD FAAFP]

Rich's comment; {Scott, I have been diagnosed with cancer, and having been subject to two separate "miracle healings" earlier in life, for lack of better terminology,}

See David Spiegel's work at Stanford regarding metastatic breast cancer. The hypnosis group on average lived 18 months longer than the control group.

http://med.stanford.edu/school/psychiatry/PSTreatLab/

Spiegel D; Bloom JR; Kraemer HC; Gottheil E
Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer.
Lancet, 1989 Oct 14, 2(8668):888-91.

Abstract: The effect of psychosocial intervention on time of survival of 86 patients with metastatic breast cancer was studied prospectively.

The 1-year intervention consisted of weekly supportive group therapy with self-hypnosis for pain. Both the treatment (n = 50) and control groups (n = 36) had routine oncological care.

At 10-year follow-up, only 3 of the patients were alive, and death records were obtained for the other 83. Survival from time of randomization and onset of intervention was a mean 36.6 (SD 37.6) months in the intervention group compared with 18.9 (10.8) months in the control group, a significant difference. Survival plots indicated that divergence in survival began at 20 months after entry, or 8 months after intervention ended.

{When I was a kid, my family doctor was a hypnotist.}

Not too many of us around anymore... but hopefully we will make a comeback. Sadly this therapy is not re-imbursed well and so many doctors have little time to give such a wonderful therapy. It receives regular false ridicule by stage hypnotists. But for the few of us who practice "clinical hypnosis" within family practice I assure you it is rewarding.

Scott, maybe Dilbert the hypno-mythbuster can make an appearance? What you could do to convince the public in one Sunday strip would take us physicians years.

We have cocaine that can be used as a perfectly good topical nasal anesthetic, but it can also be abused for fun and frolic. Hypnosis is quite similar; it is a powerful medical tool in medical hands and a potential problem in the wrong hands.

It is about time the public gets a proper education on how hypnosis can help them and stop the chicken quaking stories. Thank you for your Blog!

[standgale]

I wonder if you will create a sudden increase in the demand for hypnotist classes. I want to learn it!
You know how they always have those things where a great hypnotist comes to town to hypnotise people into losing weight or quitting smoking and so on? From what you've said then these are perhaps more real than I had thought, but still scams. Yes, real hypnosis might be going on, but it will probably require more than one session, and at least up to 5, to create a change in that person's life as a result of the hypnosis even if the person does want to change. So all that money people pay to go is not well spent.
I also read in some science magazine (New scientist or scientific armerican) that some people cannot be hypnotised, whereas you say everyone can be. It may depend on the exact definition. They did have research showing that belief in hypnosis was not a factor in being able to be hypnotised. You could believe in it and not have it happen or vice versa.

[abdullah]

"But religion can convince someone to kill himself by creating an imaginary afterlife with plentiful virgins for martyrs. So on a scale of dangerous imaginary things, hypnosis is somewhere closer to advertising, well below peer pressure, nowhere near religion."

I think you have to be fair and differentiate between religion itself and the actions of adherents. You are clearly referencing Islam in this sentence and falling into the trap of putting religion as the root of all evil. It is not religion that is evil, it is an ideology teamed with a corrupt, persuasive leader that causes people to forgo reason and commit crimes. This is what the anti-religious ideologies of the 20th century and the destruction they caused taught us. No one blames science for Nazi killing of handicapped people although they tried using social Darwinism to justify it. The scientific community rejects it. So just as there is such a thing as responsible science, there is such a thing as responsible religion. When people understand this and start blaming *humans* themselves and not religion or science, only then can the secular and religious communities move forward for the betterment of humanity.

See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ5f8N2zlQ0

Sorry, I know that was off-topic but just some thoughts. Nice post nonetheless.

[Glenn]

So if a person's mindset can be altered with hypnosis, even subtly, and they volunteer for it. Wouldn't this be an example of a Moist Robot re-programming itself, even if with a third party, and therefore, a point in favour of Free Will?
;)

[Colette]

Simply fascinating! It is the clearest explanation of hypnosis I have ever seen. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

[Matthew Kovich]

Any tips on finding a qualified hypnosis instructor?

I've been hypnotized (and experienced "the phenomena"), and also studied it in a psychology class - it is everything you say it is.

I'm going to be a teacher, so besides the obvious benefits of the "super powers", I think it could help me tremendously.

If you have the time, any tips would be appreciated - beautifulquestion@gmail.com

[Matthew]

Psychologists have been doing research with & on hypnosis for about 100 years. For lots of information on the science behind hypnosis and suggestion check out:
http://www.HypnosisAndSuggestion.org

[Vics]

I was hypnotized many years ago in a pub. My Nana had talked me into going out with them for this hypnotists show a few days earlier, I was absolutely shattered on the night but couldn't talk my way out of it because she was so excited about going.

The guy had some interesting patter but I was basically tuning out and wishing for bed, then he asked everyone in the audience to lace their fingers together and imagine their hands were fusing together at the joints.

He then told everyone to pull their hands apart - I and about 8 other people couldn't so he 'invited us on stage'
In all honesty I don't remember much, it was a long time ago and my thinking was a little fuzzy, there was a non-stripping strip tease and some messing about, but there started off with a stage full of people and by the end of the night there was just me and I don't know when the others were dismissed.

It was an interesting experience, it was like I was watching the room through a partition or window, I was present but not.. it was like I was just too tired to care and so did practically anything the guy suggested. If he'd have asked me to do something I found repugnant i knew I could 'come out of it' but I wasn't so against any of his suggestions that I could be bothered to.
When he 'woke me up' again I was Sooooo not tired anymore, I was buzzing and raring to go, so much so I was almost manic according to my friends. I went from the pub to the local club had a brilliant night and woke up the next morning feeling fabulous.

Methinks that must make me one of the 'lucky bastards' you describe.

*grin*

I'd definitely do it again that's for sure.

[Listo Cómics]

Highly educational! Thank you for sharing!

[Kent]

Great post Scott! It got me thinking about the time I was hypnotized by the Great Kreskin, which I just blogged about here.
http://www.newsome.org/2007/07/kreskin-me-my-hypnosis-story.shtml