THANK YOU FOR SMOKING

This is just too f'n cool ...

(I may as well tell you people now ... prepare yourself for lots of hypnosis stories over the next several years. Here's one of the early ones)

I've got this female friend at work that has tried everything to quit smoking ... right?

So when she found out I was going to become a hypnotist, she was all "You've GOT to hypnotize me and make me quit smoking."

Fine. I don't have a problem with that.

So yesterday she's badgering me "Hypnotize me. Hypnotize me."

I told her I wanted to videotape it which is neither here nor there, but it put off the inevitable for one more day.

So today I get to work and do the Charade charade of working an old timey movie camera from across the room at her.

"You brought your camera?" she asked.

"Yep," I said. "I'm ready when you are."

So we meet in the supervisor's office. It's me, Michelle and Mary Beth.

Michelle's the one who wants to give up smoking. Mary Beth's our supervisor who just wants to watch.

I hypnotize Michelle within five minutes.

I glance over at Mary Beth behind her desk and she's out like a light too.

So it takes me 20 minutes or so to get inside Michelle's subconscious and fill it full of things like "You'll feel so much healthier without cigarettes" and "Every time you smoke a cigarette you'll feel ill", etc.

We finish at 11:20.

Michelle's all "I feel groggy. I don't think I was hypnotized."

I explain that hypnosis is NOT what she thought it'd be. You DON'T fall asleep ... you hear everything I say ... you just file it all in your subconscious and I provide you with a trigger that goes off everytime you go to smoke.

So she leaves for lunch at 11:30 with two other girls.

At 11:45, Mary Beth says she's going to go grab a burger and be right back.

I run to the bank at noon, grab a sub from Subway and come back to the office around 12:30.

Michelle greets me at the door.

"I don't know what you did to me," she gasps. "But you have to reverse it or something."

"What?" I ask.

Apparently she drove the two girls to lunch.

Parks the car and notices that the car next to hers is still running with nobody in it. She thinks nothing of it.

They go inside and eat lunch ... takes 'em about 45 minutes or so.

They come back to the car.

It was HER car that was still running.

She never turned the ignition off and locked the car with her keys in the ignition.

Luckily, she had a keypad to get into her car.

They get in and she's kinda freaking out about it, thinking I did something to her brain.

(In all actuality ... you probably shouldn't drive 10 minutes after being woken from a trance state)

She lights up a cigarette to calm her nerves and immediately feels sick.

She gets back to the office and has to lay down.

She's. Freaking. Out.

"Why do I feel so weird?" she asks me.

I didn't really have an answer for her until I thought about it.

"This stuff works!" I said. "I told you you'd feel bad if you smoked. Your brain is telling your body to reject the poison of nicotine!"

"That can't be it," she says. "I feel crappy."

"Well then what is it?" I said.

It dawned on her that maybe I was right and that she had actually been hypnotized. Except rather than not craving cigarettes, she still craved them but they were making her ill.

"I NEED to smoke!" she protested. "Reverse it so I can smoke!"

"Look," I said. "You've been telling me for over a year you wanted to quit. Now you have no choice BUT to quit."

She lit up another cigarette.

And she got dizzy, lightheaded and felt like she was going to throw up.

Mary Beth finally told her to go home at 1:15.

Oh yeah.

Mary Beth

Mary Beth left the office to go get a burger.

That was her intention.

But for some reason, she drove home ... a 45 mile drive one way ... because she had an insatiable desire to change clothes for no reason.

She called Michelle, laughing hysterically and wondering what I had done to her brain.

Which I hadn't done anything ... but for some reason she was drawn like a magnet to her house.

I can't really take responsibility for that.

But tonight, Michelle is probably smoking a cigarette and vomiting simultaneously.

And I'm tickled shitless.

This stuff really works!