Good story, Gerald. I don't have anything like that much time or professional practice but I did work intensely in both clinical and experimental hypnosis for some years. I think it takes both experiences to get a comfortable handle on it. Certainly no dis intended but generally, experimenters and clinicians don't speak to each other or read each other's articles.

We came home once to find a teen-age girl who had taken a full bottle of sleeping pills. Possibly she had timed the act so we would find her but we lived far out in the country and it took the ambulance some 45 minutes to arrive. She was passing out and breathing and heart rate nearly stopped. Fortunately, I'd previously given her a suggestion that she would go into "trance" whenever I said a cue word. I was thus able to hypnotize her with the single word and suggest she was wide awake. It actually worked well enough she walked to the ambulance when it finally came. They did find the pills when they pumped her stomach so the whole thing was real. I like to think this actually saved her life -- but who knows?

One significant experimenter I knew on hypnosis, Martin Orne, believed it didn't exist - yet he used it daily and accomplished much with it. I believe hypnosis is a "small" event but real. I've seen it induce many, many situations that simply would not normally happen. BUT, it can never induce the impossible - all hypnotic phenomena are events that frequently occur in a "normal" state. Just not so easily controlled.

Ok. Guest: Post-hypnotic amnesia (not recalling what happened) is a function of either the suggestions given by the hypnotist or the "set" - the expectations of the subject; not of hypnosis per se. If the hypnotist simply says "you will remember," then you will. BTW, sleepiness or lethargy is also a function of suggestion and not at all of hypnosis per se.

I'd take that suggestion to see a therapist. Make life easy and go in relaxed in the first place (bring a friend to "protect" you or have a drink or two, if needed [but not 3 or 4!]). Have the therapist be sure to give you two suggestions along with what ever else goes on.

1) That you will remember everything that happens in the session.
2) That you will always remember the feeling of being hypnotized...(it is the same as the state you feel when falling asleep normally - between sleep and wake) and that you will always recognize it happening to you and that you will NEVER become hypnotized accidentally (happens all the time, eg falling asleep in church or "white line hypnosis" when driving at night) or when you don't specifically want to be.

These should always be given anyway but in your case will ensure no future problems occur. Really, I think there's a one in a million chance you've hypnotized without your knowledge and that "a lot odd incidents" could possibly be related to it. Less than one in a million.

Really (in spite of some of the claims above) it is quite possible to force people to do things (at least brief, simple things not complex behavior over a long period) genuinely against their normal morality or inclinations. Also possible to hypnotize people without their knowledge that it's being done (without using drugs at all.)

I read of these events in the legit academic experimental literature and then successfully did both myself several times. But the point is that they are very hard to do, usually don't work, are time consuming and generally dopey. If someone really has it in for you it's far easier just to hit you over the head with a baseball bat and be done with it.