Hubbard on hypnosis, nitrous oxide, headaches,
and grabbing some benzedrine...

+++++++++Sacred Cult Scripture+++++++++++++

We have to have some quick method of handling
inaccessible institutionalized cases which doesn’t hang
around the neck of the auditor. One of the reasons I’m
cautioning you against the very impractical, strange
case of the psychotic as any kind of a steady diet is the
fact that the probability is that the problem will eventually
be solved. Meanwhile there is no reason to take any
beating on the subject.

Narcosynthesis is not a good answer because one is liable
to restimulate late moments of unconsciousness and worsen
the psychosis, which is not too hard to do. But sometimes
an effort to hypnotize the patient, even a neurotic patient,
will bird dog right to the engram in which he is. One is
trying to press him down toward this engram, not to
hypnotize him, and all of a sudden, Bang! the engram is
there in full view. You can use a flashing light, a Charcot
mirrors or something similar to produce the same effect
on a patient.

Nitrous oxide has a restimulative factor whenever there
have been nitrous oxide operations. It is very restimulative
to people, and it has a slightly sweetish odor which the
body recognizes instantly. In using nitrous oxide, if they
used a different type of face mask it might be less
restimulative, because the odor is the smell of stale rubber,
and that odor is more restimulative than the odor of the gas.

The series I ran on nitrous oxide cases and the use of
nitrous oxide was only three, and was all on normals, so
I don’t call it a series or even a test. But I did find that in
each case it was restimulative.

Leave soporifics strictly alone. That includes phenobarbital
or any such substance. If you get a headache, Bromo-
Seltzer isn’t too bad, it wears off rather rapidly. We do
know that it will shut down some of the headache, but
just the same the headache is still there. Aspirin would
be better, but to turn down the analytical level and then
go ahead and audit is a very bad idea, and the soporific
has a tendency to do just that.

With a so-called hypnotic its possible action is to disconnect
some of the more or less “permanent” actions in the mind
so that differentiation is therefore better, and the person
can evidently think a little better. But he pays for it heavily
in that it permits locks to be received by himself in the
form of other people’s engrams. He could get more
thoroughly restimulated in trying to come off a soporific.
I know because I made myself a guinea pig on one of
those experiments, and trying to get off the soporific was
a tough job. Completely aside from the physiological
reaction, when one suddenly ceases to take phenobarbital
one gets the kick-in of the locks. It is like hypnotizing a
person, and giving him a positive suggestion, then waking
him up. Here he has been listening for ten hours a day to
engrams, engrams, engrams, and for a few days he
doesn’t know whether he’s going or coming or walking
around the block. That’s pretty gruesome.

If you have to grab hold of anything, grab hold of Benzedrine,
if you feel the energy skipping. Benzedrine doesn’t shut
down the analyzer. Just what it does we are not quite sure,
but it seems to have the opposite effect, and if you are a
very smart auditor you will not throw away the advantages
of the power of suggestion completely.

Suggestion does have its uses when it is controlled and one
knows what one is doing. I am not now talking about
hypnotic suggestion, I am talking about just the simple
matter of cheering somebody up and a good bedside
manner and so on.

— L. Ron Hubbard
Lecture 15 June 1950: Case Factors
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