Drunk with Discipline - How Hypnosis Liberates the Lush

The deluge of reports on Mel Gibson’s battle with the bottle has served as a startling reminder: America’s addicted to alcohol.

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence provides some “sobering” statistics on just how addicted the country is:

- Among the leading causes of preventable death in America, alcohol is # 3

- 62 percent of high school seniors report they have been drunk

- 37 percent of all rapes occur when the perpetrator is under the influence of alcohol

- In approximately half of all homicides and assaults, alcoholism is found in the victim, offender or both

- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the leading environmental cause of mental retardation in the Western world

- Alcohol is the leading cause of liver disease

- The average annual amount of alcohol consumed by college students is approximately 430 millions gallons—enough for every college and university in the country to fill their own Olympic-sized pool

In the vast compendium of strategies, discussion groups and interventions that attempt to ameliorate this trend, hypnosis stands as one of the more effective remedies.

If you know anything about hypnosis and its effectiveness, you know that a lot of it has to do with what you contribute to each session. Do you really believe that hypnosis can work for you? Do you really believe that the hypnotherapist has the ability to root out the underlying issues that has made alcohol a problem?

Many alcohol abusers aiming at reforming their habits often start out on the wrong foot. They resign themselves to being defined as an alcoholic who will have to struggle with the disease for the rest of their life.

Richard Friesen has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and has developed a program called “Positive Changes,” a program aimed to help those struggling with addictions, alcohol in particular. It is in this program that Friesen talks about how determinate a patient’s success rate is on their frame of mind.

“They (i.e. traditional recovery circles) are right. Alcoholism can be a disease for life, especially if you believe it is,” said Friesen in a press release.

He claims that his program provides the steps needed in order to curb addictions.

But the testimonials of his program’s effectiveness serve as but one example. The history of hypnosis’ effectiveness in treating alcoholism can be traced back to the early 1900s, when hypnosis was used as a method of treatment much more liberally than in recent years. As an article in The Journal of Clinical Psychology (July, 2004) says, success rates (“success” meaning abstinence from alcohol) were as high as 80 percent among 700 patients participating in the survey.

Hypnotism has been plagued as a kind of stage act meant for entertainment, which is the main reason why it fell out of favor as a form of treatment. There has been a resurgence recently, however, a resurgence that’s employed some of the successful tactics of old as a way to decrease tension and increase positive imagery over the course of several sessions. These treatments have elicited some positive results. The July 2004 article, for example, details how nearly 80 percent of the 18 patients who have received the treatment in the past seven years have abstained from alcohol after their one-year follow-up session.

Again, this is just one example of hypnosis and its healing properties with alcoholism. The more people exposed to studies revealing its effectiveness is when you’ll see a resurgence of hypnosis as a mainstream form of treatment.

Steve G. Jones, Clinical Hypnotherapist
http://www.betterlivingwithhypnosis.com/