One of the most annoying and dangerous addictions is addiction to alcohol. First, it is ridiculously easy to get alcohol, even if you are already addicted. In addition, alcoholics often endanger not only themselves but also others by still participating in traffic when they already have quite a sip. It is therefore not surprising that many alcoholics want to kick their addiction. A while back I was asked if you can use hypnosis to kick alcohol. In this article I will try to answer that.
Alcohol and Health
Alcohol is basically not harmful if you only drink 1 glass of it per day, maximum and never more even if you have not had anything to drink the rest of the week. At a maximum of 1 glass, for example, it has benefits for your cholesterol.
The downside is that once you go over that limit alcohol does harm. It increases your blood pressure and can cause damage to your brain. In addition, alcohol often makes you crave a fatty snack which, if repeated frequently, can cause obesity and diabetes.
Ultimately, alcohol addiction can even give you Korsakov's disease.
From too much alcohol, you can also get a fatty liver that prevents it from doing its job properly. In addition, you can suffer from pancreatitis, which is super painful and it is an indispensable organ. It can also give you various forms of cancer.
If you are pregnant while suffering from alcohol addiction, your baby may be born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Alcohol harmful
It's clear that excessive alcohol drinking is physically harmful to you, but that's not the only thing alcohol addiction can lead to. Ultimately, it also affects your social relationships.
First, alcohol addiction can prevent you from doing your job properly. As a result, you may get fired and lose your job. Money problems may have already started by then, and chances are that as an addict, you will spend much or all of your money on the addiction, which can land you on the street.
Second, you may experience a deteriorated relationship with your family, such as by not repaying loans for alcohol. As an addict, you may get into regular arguments with your family about your addiction and may feel misunderstood as a result, but that feeling is probably mutual in that concern for your well-being is often the cause of a dispute.
Third, you can become a danger to those around you. This can be because, for example, you don't have a nice drink at all, but rather an aggressive one, especially if you combine the alcohol with drugs. If you get behind the wheel as an alcoholic, you can also cause serious accidents.
In addition, alcoholics are more likely to cause car accidents, commit homicide (murder without premeditation), commit domestic violence and other violent or sexual crimes.
This behavior can make you a pariah in the social environment because no one wants to be associated with someone who causes accidents and fights.
Not every alcoholic fits into this picture. There are also people who are addicted to alcohol, but otherwise actually function just fine(1). It is easier to deny that you have a drinking problem because you still have a job, can pay your bills and your relationships do not suffer. But actually you are still deceiving yourself.
So then the question is when are you an alcoholic or at risk of being one?
- The risk of physical addiction begins as early as daily drinking more than 3 glasses of alcoholic beverages per day or, for men, more than 14 glasses per week.
- If you are already taking a drink in the morning, you can also assume you have a problem.
- If you drink alone too.
- Do you sometimes just want a drink to relax, only to wake up with a hangover and a hole in your memory? Oops! A sure sign you're out of control.
- Do you deny drinking and get angry when someone confronts you about it?
- If you find that your loved ones are making excuses for you as to why you drink.
Are you reading this article precisely because you are worried about someone else and not yourself? Then in addition to the above things, check to see if people are joking about alcohol consumption.
Preparing for rehab
If these scenes seem familiar to you or you want to prevent the need for money does strike in your life when you are already struggling to leave the bottle, it is wise to kick the habit of alcohol. Unfortunately, over time alcohol is also a physical addiction and therefore withdrawal is tough. For example, if you stop drinking all at once, you may experience the following withdrawal symptoms:
- Beven
- Sweat
- Unrest
- Nervousness
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
- Nausea
- Surrender
- Overall feeling of malaise
These withdrawal symptoms can last up to 7 or 10 days, and after 3 days you've had the worst of it. However, feelings like depression, restlessness and insomnia can last for several weeks. Just when you get these withdrawal symptoms, it is very appealing to grab something with alcohol in it anyway. These symptoms are not dangerous either, but you can also suffer from seizures and delirium tremens. You may experience hallucinations or illusions. This can, but does not have to, occur after 48 to 72 hours, after your last alcoholic drink if you want to kick the habit.
It is therefore important to overcome your alcohol addiction under supervision. Then when you have a seizure, people around you can put you in a position that prevents you from choking, and the seizure is made as safe as possible. During delirium, people accompanying you can protect you from yourself. For example, you may start to see critters that are not there and want to do something against them where you can injure yourself.
Delirium and seizures are life-threatening!
So physical withdrawal should always be done with someone around and preferably with a professional who knows what they are doing.
Hypnosis Against Alcohol
As you understand, alcohol addiction is not just a mental problem, as with some drugs. Therefore, just using hypnotherapy is not enough to quit alcohol. Hypnosis can, however, play a role in preparation for withdrawal, especially if you are still a functioning alcoholic, and hypnosis can play a role in aftercare once you have physically kicked off alcohol(2).
One stroke of luck is that alcohol improves your hypnotizability(3). So if you do still function with the alcohol, preparatory hypnosis sessions that reinforce your conviction to quit alcohol are a good start. So too, you can then learn new techniques that you can apply yourself during and after withdrawal.
Mastering Alcohol
Because alcohol suppresses an addict's brain activity, which can suddenly skyrocket when you stop drinking alcohol, you can learn techniques to relax and be able to shut out stimuli during hypnotherapy. That way, hypnosis helps you stay calm during the less severe withdrawal symptoms and keep you focused on your goal of kicking the habit and never having another drop of alcohol.
Hypnosis also supports therapies because in a relaxed state you can also better reach your subconscious. The subconscious often contains patterns and beliefs related to alcohol addiction. For example, hypnosis helps to reinforce the results of cognitive behavioral therapy.
One of the things you can do with hypnotherapy is to identify patterns related to your alcohol addiction. During hypnotherapy, those patterns can be changed to patterns that actually encourage healthy behaviors. For example, if you needed alcohol after work to relax, a cup of tea can replace it.
Sometimes an alcohol problem arises out of habit, but there may also be an underlying reason why you or someone else has become addicted to alcohol. Through regression therapy , it is possible to identify the underlying cause and give you tools to deal with it in a different way than reaching for the bottle. This will also make you less likely to revert to that bad habit when faced with a problem again.
In addition, you may still crave an alcoholic drink after going through physical withdrawal. Things can go well for weeks and suddenly you want a drink. In that case, self-hypnosis can be a godsend.
Self-Hypnosis After Alcohol Addiction
Unfortunately, your hypnotherapist is not with you 24/7. Therefore, you are also often given self-hypnosis exercises to do something about it when you crave alcohol. Self-hypnosis also helps to improve your sleep and against depressive symptoms that can still affect you weeks after your addiction.
So the answer to the question of whether hypnosis works to kick off alcohol is: Not by itself, but it does support kicking off and can prevent relapse.
Want to learn more about how hypnosis and self-hypnosis works? Then come to the free online master class on Hypnosis.
or
Then check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' events and trainings.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
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