Dave, on your last sentence, I agree comepletely. As I said previously, I have plenty of ways to relax, substance-wise; Kava root, Valerian, Milk Thistle, a long list of pleasant effects from much safer homeopathic herbs. You know, interestingly, just for the hell of telling a story, I have quite a history with my AICDs. I have had 3 replacements in the last 4 years, believe it or not. The first surgery didn't take, the lead did not fully assimilate into my atrial tissue (I think thats right) and it basically shorted out, misreading my heart rythyms. I was shocked about 8-9 times in under 2 minutes, with the last 4 shocks at full blast, it felt like somebody layed a board on my chest and whacked it with a sledgehammer. It was quite painful. (side note; during the first surgery, while I was under, they induced a-fib, which I would not have come out of, so they thumped me with my brand new AICD, and it actually woke me up!, I muttered something to them, in fact, while I was supposed to be out, I actually remember feeling the catheter travelling up my innards and feeling it move past my midsection entrails or what-have-you, as well as the shock.) The doctors felt really bad about this. the second surgery took, but they failed to take into account I was at the time, 22 years old, and muscular, with a strong heart as they said, so they did not have the BPM fibrillation, or dysplasia cut-offs programmed into the onboard computer. As a result, I was having sex with a girlfriend about 2 weeks after the 9 shock episode, when, after 8 minutes of really *good* lovemaking (she was a hell of a kisser) i got thumped TWICE, just at the, ahem "good moment". No lie. I was not wearing a rubber, she had birth control, and as a result, she felt a giant "click" is how she described it, go from her toes to her head. I left her house in an ambulance. now one of my Docs is a Polish fellow I believe, with a very thick accent, and I remember very well, him sitting at my hospital bed saying "you know, Dan, it is very much not funny, but it seems, I'm sorry, it's not like we are trying to....hah hah, you know. Torture you." I wanted to strangle him! Last surgery, I was, uhmm...a wee bit detained, I'll say, by my local government. I was sitting in bed one night, reading a book, and whump! got me with 115J that time I believe, a real low dose. At the time, I had a sub-dermal implant. Now, I'm muscular where it matters, but fairly slender in the chest and pectoral area, and because of this, my doc tells me that it can be cause for lead failure. So another brand new AICD, this time implanted sub-pectoral, all payed for by the state of Alaska. Funny enough, is that, including my quarterly hospital checkup, so multiply that 2 years by $1000 per visit, transport fees, hospital stay, surgery, hardware costs (I believe the St Jude V70 costs in the ballpark of $20,000). So doing all the math, a prison inmate in alaska MAKES the state about $30,000. However, I COST the state about $95,000 per year!!! So, now on probation, it seems they really want to keep me out!!! But I'm reformed so they don't have to try to hard to convince me freedom is worth keeping.

long story short. heart problems suck. prison sucks worse. and I like halibut.