KEY POINTS:
Session One
I had no idea if it was going to work or how much it was going to cost. It had worked for my ferociously-addicted brother-in-law for three months once. Now he can't begin his day without a fag.
Still, I reasoned, I was willing to be hypnotised every three months if it worked. The medical hypnotist looked more like a mild-mannered physicist and I did wonder if, as the daughter of Scottish immigrants, his soft, lilting brogue would make me just want to smoke even more.
I'd arrived unclear of the terms of this first session and soon began to feel irritated by it all - hypnotism seemed the last thing on my hypnotist's mind.
He began telling me the story of how after arriving in New Zealand from Scotland he had secured a job at the oncology department of a hospital in Auckland. There, he was told that, as he had the gift of the gab, his job would be breaking the news to those poor souls who'd just been diagnosed with lung cancer.
Oh God, I thought, this is going to be a very long and tiresome rant about horrible slow deaths as a result of smoking, and yes, it was. When people who were still smokers were told they had lung cancer they reacted in one of three ways, said my hypnotist.
Some would look at their cigarettes and say "damn", then, "oh well, may as well carry on". They would then ask if it was okay if they went outside for a smoke.
These people my hypnotist dubbed the Fatalists. The second group would look at their packet, say "damn you", crush the packet and throw it in the rubbish bin. Apparently this group was likely to never smoke again. The hypnotist called them the Bin People.
The others looked at their cigarettes, said "damn, I suppose I should give up. Well, yeah, I'll get onto that." The cigarettes then went back into their pockets. These people were called Pocket People.
"Hah," I thought. "I am one of the Bin People for sure - I have given up so many times before." I have will-power of steel (in short bursts). I was sent away un-hypnotised and told not to smoke until my next session. This was going to be easy.
Session Two
Yes, I had smoked. Last week's sophisticated boredom during the detailed description of the Pocket People was haunting me as I arrived for my appointment.
At least the metaphorical loser described by the hypnotist had had the good grace to try and hide his cancer-ridden carcass as he puffed away. I was all devil-may-care as I brandished a delicious menthol in one hand and a sauvignon blanc in the other.
I had lasted four utterly sanctimonious days before the evil stunt double suggested a cigarette would be just the ticket and that, really, life was simply far too bleak an affair to be contemplated without one. "Yes, of course you're a Pocket Person," the hypnotist said as I sat down.
The only people who ever come to see me are Pocket People. The Fatalists are still smoking and the Bin People have given up." Right, yes, good point. I made myself comfortable and waited to be hypnotised. My set-up was a faux Eames recliner complete with foot-rest, a situation which was about to get very comfortable.
I was asked to relax and put my feet up and told that what I was about to experience was nothing like hypnosis on the telly. There would be no swinging watches; it would be more like my mind providing the pictures for a soundtrack, making up the scenery for a radio play. The process began with me closing my eyes.
Then the parameters of the room were described, my attention was brought to the sounds outside in the street, of the ambient noise in the room itself. The hypnotist then told me a story of when he was a young boy and had, along with his sister, nicked his dad's industrial strength magnifying glass and taken it outside.
He went on to describe in some detail the process of focusing sunlight through the magnifying glass on to some newspaper until a hole appeared and started to smoke. Eventually the paper caught alight. This scenario was used as a metaphor for the focusing of my subconscious mind which the hypnotist then set the task of relaxing each part of my body from my feet to the top of my head.
This process was likened to watching a piece of wax melting. I was told I was lightly hypnotised - I was surprised when I was told I could easily talk although I kind of didn't want to; it reminded me of being a teenager woken late in the day. But I did speak. The hypnotist asked me to describe what my body felt like. "Almost in that state before you go to sleep." "What can you tell me about the weight of your body?" "I feel heavy." "What about the temperature?"
"It's just nice and warm." "What about the size and even the shape of the body now?" And this was the really, really freaky thing; I felt like a giant foetus sitting in my faux Eames chair. "My head feels big, my head and my upper body feel big in proportion to the rest of my body." But more than this my feet and legs felt like they'd wasted away and were useless and irrelevant.
Despite feeling as if I resembled an extra from Alien this really was the most relaxed I had ever felt and it was lovely. The hypnotist asked me if feeling like this would be a better reward at the end of the day than a cigarette. "Well yes", (and apparently one can still chortle whilst hypnotised), "but it wouldn't be much good in a social situation would it?" "Ah, yes, well that is your conscious mind taking over there." Several positive messages tailored to my habit and weaknesses followed.
The most hilarious was that only rebels went for hypnosis, not head-prefect types, and the most ridiculous - that instead of having a smoko I could now have a hypno. I was brought out of the hypnosis, and I had no doubt I had been hypnotised, with the usual business of counting and opening your eyes on a certain number. Once outside I felt light, happy and very chilled out.
I was taught how to reproduce a hypnotic state myself by concentrating on the space between my fingers as I slowly drew them together. I felt great, but I had serious doubts about whether this would translate into a rebuttal of my lover, nicotine, who in an, albeit on-again off-again, part-time kind of way had been one of the most constant things in my life.
The hypnotist had his doubts too and said it was likely I would need at least another session to bring my stubborn conscious mind to heel.
Session Three
I arrived with the zeal of a soul reborn. Not only had I not smoked, I simply could not imagine smoking ever again. I had enjoyed several glasses of wine and not remotely wanted a cigarette.
I had twice hypnotised myself for what seemed very short spaces of time and emerged feeling very relaxed and positive on both occasions. Imagery had come unbidden: of me as a 3-year-old girl, my face frozen in a studio photo. I imagined offering the upturned innocent face a cigarette; it was a cruel and disgusting act.
In another scenario my skin was reborn as the petals of a rare and beautiful orchid - how on earth could I possibly put a cigarette near anything as lovely as that? I was beginning to worry about my sanity but I didn't want a cigarette. Was it that simple was I cured? Apparently so, but I was hypnotised again. I had been looking forward to it. I cried. Gentle rolling tears.
The hypnotist pointed out that it was Valentine's Day and whatever connotation it had previously held me for, from now it would be the day I became free of that nasty good-for-nothing old dependent I used to have, the cheap trickster with a great line in nihilism.
Yes I had lost my mind. Since this wildly evangelistic day I have had nights when I have been quite keen to climb the walls. I wanted something, I wasn't sure what.
Wine didn't quite do it, vodka was a small appeasement, food was great but more as a kind of background distraction. Some nights even my very rarely visited stash of sleeping pills cooed from the bathroom cabinet. Eventually exhausted from all that wanting I would stagger to bed. But even on those haunted occasions I didn't want a cigarette.
So far so good.
- NZ Herald
