When Dr. Alex Binazir at TranceScience Hypnotherapy in Cambridge invited me to try hypnotic therapy, I was a little skeptical. I always thought of hypnosis as belonging to the same realm of credibility as Ouija boards and tarot cards. Get hypnotized, then move along to the next tent and watch Wasp Boy and the Bearded Lady play pinochle with Matilda the Amazing Dancing Bear.
    To illustrate the power of hypnosis, Binazir showed me a video in which a hypnotist coaxes comedy-club patrons into some bizarre behavior. One woman roams around the club, stealing napkins off people’s tables. The hypnotist has convinced her that she’s invisible and the napkins are $100 bills. The premise of hypnotherapy is that if hypnosis can make you think you’re invisible, then it can certainly be used to conquer personal demons like smoking or wagering one’s children at the dog track.
    I decided to pursue two lesser self-improvement goals. First, it would be nice if I didn’t hate going to the gym. I know that working out is a good thing to do for a host of reasons, but when it comes right down to it, I’d rather be sitting on the couch watching baseball, drinking beer and stuffing my face with nachos. If I enjoyed going to the gym as much as I enjoyed that, I’d be more jacked than those Scandinavian guys who throw buses over buildings on ESPN2.
    My other goal involved one of the best applications of hypnotherapy—making yourself indifferent to frustrating situations that you have no control over, such as Carrottop’s lucrative ad deal. I chose to reduce my susceptibility to road rage. Although I usually don’t drag fellow motorists from their vehicles and beat them with their cell phones, I often fantasize about doing so. Once, after getting a ticket for speeding (and, um, running a stop sign), I bent the top of my truck’s steering wheel several inches toward the dashboard. Clearly, I have always needed to do some work in the highway anger-management area.
    Binazir’s Harvard Square office was austere. The main piece of furniture was a black leather chair with built-in motors that massage your legs and back (I forgot to ask whether he could hypnotize me into believing that the chair in my office does this, too).
After I sat in the massage chair with my eyes closed for a while, Binazir told me how I had two paths—the fat path and the healthy path—and I could choose to go down either one. The healthy path makes sense, right? And I’m paying for the gym anyway; I may as well go. What if I never went, and I gained so much weight that I’d have to buy all new clothes? That wouldn’t be fun. Good points, all. That seemed to be the basic hypnotherapy strategy: You get relaxed and then have someone tell you things that make sense anyway.
    During the first visit, I attempted to divvy up my brain a little too much. I simultaneously tried to remain relaxed, take mental notes on hypnosis techniques and answer Binazir’s questions, which usually involved nodding my head to acknowledge that I wasn’t asleep. What I was going for was basically the state of mind I was in throughout most of precalculus class in high school. You’re in your own little world, yet part of your brain is paying enough attention to know when you’re being asked a question. You’re supposed to be highly open to suggestion while in this trance state, but if that were always true then I suppose I might remember more from precalculus than the fact that Derek Chapman used to stick tacks on the end of his pen and poke Brookie Andrews in the back, which was far more entertaining than solving equations.
    The second time I visited, I knew what to expect and wasn’t trying to take note of everything that happens. That’s why I fell asleep. At least, I think I fell asleep. At any rate, when Binazir told me to flick the light switch afterward, I had no idea what that meant. Apparently, he’d told me earlier that the light switch was supposed to be the “trigger” causing me to want to go to the gym. I had no recollection of that. For all I knew, I might’ve just wandered around the building and stolen every napkin I could find.
    I suppose you want to know if any of this worked. Well, I have been pretty mellow in the car, but then again I haven’t yet encountered any major traffic snarls. As for the gym, the light-switch trick seems to work. That’s why I’ve been sitting on the couch, drinking beer and eating nachos...in the dark. *