Recent advances in neuroscience have convinced some that conscious free choice is illusory. However, nature is not in the habit of giving out free lunches and consciousness is no exception. Consciousness is not just deliberative--a global access model of consciousness is empirically demonstrable to have functional properties. For example, the artificial removal of conscious access to environmental phenomena by subliminal or hypnotic suggestion has measurable effects on choice mechanisms. Examples such as the ability to excel at Stroop confusion tests or fail at prime-ignoring tasks are explored.