by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If you happen to pass de Maisonneuve W. and St-Marc with any regularity you might imagine the crazed peals of non-stop laughter as a sign that you're passing a delirious loony bin. But the chortles, chuckles and giggles are part of a much more serious project. One afternoon a month at Gilda's Club, a three-year-old support community for people living with cancer, John Gupta gets a group of apparently sane people to laugh at maximum possible volume for a half hour. And there are no jokes involved.

"It's simulated laughter. The idea is to expel the carbon monoxide and dioxide in your system when you laugh," says Gupta, who says there are 1,900 such clubs in India and 600 in Europe. "One meeting in Copenhagen attracted 15,000," he says.

"It all started because of the book Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins, who told of how he had six months to live, then started watching funny old comedy movies and learned that for one hour of laughter he could remain up to two hours without painkillers."

Gupta, whose day job is as a bigwig in the Toastmasters public speakers' group, says that chuckling away might even be getting a toehold in the health system. "A lady told me that her husband [a participant in the laughter treatment at Gilda's Club] bumped into a woman on the street and they both started laughing. So she asked her husband, ‘What's going on?' He replied that she was a nurse at the hospital and he had taught the nurses about the benefits of laughing. Her husband has since passed on but he's left his legacy in laughter."

Gupta boasts that his laughing has improved since his first training session in San Diego two years ago. "I laugh louder now and with all my heart. It's a real workout. We warn people if they have any physical incapacity to watch what we do and to stop at any time during the session if they feel they are getting dizzy."

One Gilda's Club staffer who has also participated in the sessions found unexpected results. "When I started here, I had been going through lots of tough emotions being around people with cancer," says program manager Natalie Roper. "I thought I needed a good cry but I learned that it's much more beneficial to have a good laugh. It's much more healing than crying." Some cheat and do both, she concedes. "Some of the people laugh so hard that they're crying."

Joke-telling was taken off the menu early on. "After a while the jokes all became black humour," says Gupta. Yet few have trouble turning forced laughter into the real thing. "In a group environment, the laughter starts rubbing off on each other, and everybody feels a little happier than when they came in.

The next club meeting is on December 11 at 6:30 p.m. at 1929 de Maisonneuve W. Meetings are free, but call to RSVP at 937-3636.