While Julia Gillard was Prime Minister plain packaging of cigarettes became law. We have been pursued mercilessly through international courts of law by Big Tobacco, infuriated by our successful attempt at reducing their obscene profits on what are actually poisons and killers. And won every time. When most free trade agreements are enacted there is [...]
When I took up smoking again after Dad's stroke and death (I was 45) I continued to smoke for another 7 years. I had a wonderful bloke. He was the sort of person who didn't try to change me so he said nothing about me smoking. I knew he hated it though. He died of [...]
As I have already told you I gave up smoking listening to the recording I had made for someone else, just to check if it sounded O.K. At that time I was smoking more than 20 a day, more on a party day. At the age of 17 I was smoking black and gold or [...]
I beg your pardon, it was a 50% complete abstention rate and a 75% drop in consumption for the people who made their own hypnosis recordings. Oops! Still pretty spectacular. As I said, motivation to give up smoking had been found to be the most important factor in most studies. In mine motivation didn't [...]
When I began writing posts for my Website I went back to where it all began - in the late 1970's with my research into smoking and my subsequent book, "Personal Change Through Self Hypnosis". . As a Student and Staff Counsellor at University of Technology, Sydney, I made frequent use of hypnosis as [...]
Bill died a two weeks later. He died bravely. The nursing staff told me he had undergone a lot of unnecessary pain rather than call them before the pain got out of hand. He didn't want to make a nuisance of himself. The nurses loved him and some cried when he died. Two days before [...]
Every day Bill would see a doctor. I don't think he saw the same doctor twice. I don't even think he saw the same nurse twice. He would tell his story, they would take notes and say we will do X-rays and ultrasounds (they never did). And he would ask yet again to be transferred [...]
I just read an article about a woman trapped in a public hospital trying to transfer to a private hospital for which she had full cover. I decided to write about Bill's experience shortly before he died. Before I do I should tell you that Nurse Ratched is Jack Nicholson's nemesis in "One Flew Over [...]
Kevin and the Golfing Surprise. On the Sunday of the weekend we stayed at the Grand Hotel in Mt. Victoria some of us decided to have a round of golf at the Leura Golf Club and a round of drinks afterwards at the nineteenth watering hole, the Fairmont Hotel. The maggies were stealing the white [...]
Kind of a Fawlty Towers weekend, but also tragic. I have a very dear friend Kevin. We met when I was 27 and he was 17 - at the old convict gaol, East Sydney Technical College - studying Day Matriculation for the Leaving Certificate in 1964. He went on to study Law at Sydney University [...]