Stop Drug and Alcohol Addiction: A Guide for Clinical Hypnotherapists

A 6-Step Program on How to Help Clients Overcome Drug Addiction and Alcoholism - Fast - Through Hypnotherapy

Tracie O'Keefe

• Editorial: Australian Health & Education Centre
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780987510938
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Medicine
• Categoría: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Do you want to be a hypnotherapist who successfully works with drug and alcohol addiction? Have you been confused around effective methods for fast drug and alcohol recovery? This book will give you the clinical hypnotherapy theory, structure and practical help on how to assist clients to recover from drug and alcohol addiction - quickly. Written specifically for hypnotherapists, it will guide you step by step on how to organise your clinical practice to maximise results.

- Learn about the different drug addictions that you will encounter in your practice

- How to address alcohol addiction with your clients

- What steps you need to take to help the clients recover from addiction fast

- What you should ask and expect your clients to do in recovery

- How to work in light, deep and somnambulistic trance with addicts

- What health measures you need to address as the client recovers from addiction

And much more.

1	Drugs in a Global Society

Shamanic practices around drugs and alcohol

The use of drugs and alcohol in shamanic practices has been a global, time-honoured tradition and little understood by Western academia or society. The word ‘drug’ is derived from the French word ‘drogue’, meaning supply stock or provision, referring to dried plants, spices or herbs that have been used by apothecaries. In less-developed cultures these were collected by shamans.

Potterton (1983) shows us how Culpeper used plants from an apothecary perspective in the 1600s for healing purposes. When we look back thousands of years at cave paintings we can see shamans using plants to induce altered states of awareness for healing practices, festivals, rites of passage, fertility worship and celebrations. McKenna (1992) opines that this is a different use of plants from apothecaries because the substance is specifically used to create altered states of awareness, such as psychedelic or hallucinatory experiences.

From an anthropological and philosophical point of view, we can see that those experiences do not fit into the Western medical model, as proposed by, for example, the American Psychiatric Association (2013), as that model is bourgeois, where the doctor is the authority and the patients largely submissive. What we have to be careful of when we look at the use of mind-altering substances in cultures is that we do not see this solely as substance abuse, because it can be ceremonial and not generally a day-to-day occurrence. In shamanic experiences the patient is guided on their own exploration by the shaman. It is important to note that this is a different kind of drug use from drug abuse seen in Westernised societies.

Harrelson (1969) shows us that early pagan matriarchal cultures used menstrual blood, probably mixed with alcohol, to induce altered states of awareness during fertility festivals. Pagan cultures fermented vegetables, grain and fruits to produce alcoholic beverages to mark their ceremonies. The Christian church uses wine to celebrate Holy Communion and represent the blood of Christ. Menstrual blood was also seen as strength to defeat the enemy. Alcohol was also used to celebrate intertribal battles in war-like and invading cultures.

Belief systems change from country to country and region to region, as does the use of different mind-altering plant sources. Kilham (2014) describes how in South America, native cultures use herbs such as ayahuasca, under the guidance of a tribal shaman. The person is under a hallucinogenic influence which is supposed to transport them into other worlds on a spiritual quest. The trip can last up to a week and members of the tribe stay with the person to look after them during their internal journey, sometimes guided by the shaman.

Carlos from South America came to see me as he had suffered severely from Crohn’s Disease. He went into the jungle in South America with a shaman and took ayahuasca. He was hallucinating for a week and reportedly weak for several weeks afterward. He explained, however, that it was a life-changing experience for him where he came to terms with his diagnosis and was able to cope with the treatments he needed far better and with less stress. When I saw him 18 months later he had never used ayahuasca again.

Endredy (2015) reports that peyote, a psychedelic substance from a cactus, is used by Native American cultures which is part of the culture of native Mexicans. Taking it is part of their journey to discover the spiritual world and explore who they are as a person. It is called ‘humble learning’. The experience varies from tribe to tribe, region to region and language to language. In some cultures the person connects with their animal guides and ancestors for guidance and in others the experience is more about personal transformation. These experiences are profoundly influenced by rituals and non-Western belief systems that have a close association with the land and nature.

I met Napewastewin in the 1990s. She was from the Native American Sioux tribe and a psychotherapist. We met at a medical conference in Bavaria, Germany, and she explained how she took peyote and walked on the land to speak to her spirit guides. I remember we stopped at a poster written by some geneticists who proposed that a particular gene was responsible for a particular behaviour. In the garden having tea afterwards, I asked what she thought of that presentation and her reply was: “I never trusted people in white coats.” As it happens, when the mapping of the human genome was completed, she was proved to be right and the scientists were wrong but there was great wisdom in her considerations given that spirituality in her culture was valued over science.

Stamets (1996) says magic mushrooms (psilocybin) have been used since human culture began. There are ancient cave murals and rock paintings in Algeria that go back to prehistoric times depicting humans’ use of hallucinogens. Since mushrooms will grow virtually anywhere, there are many different kinds of mushrooms with varying strengths of hallucinogenic effects. While they are used in divinatory and spiritual ceremonies, they are also used in personal exploration and transformational experiences. Letcher (2008) suggests this usage traditionally belonged to shamanic practices that have also been used by artists and intellectuals throughout time for inspirational and creative thinking.

Sharna, 32, came to see me for help with confidence when she was starting a business making face creams from natural substances. She already had a clothing line that sold very well at music festivals. Her parents had been pagans and festival organisers who took magic mushrooms, and she did too until she was 25 when she gave birth to her son. Many of her clothing and material designs were inspired by her hallucinogenic journeys on magic mushrooms. She had taken magic mushrooms in excess of 50 to 60 times and had no adverse effects. She had never drunk alcohol, smoked or used any other drugs.

According to Maragh, Howell, & McPherson (2001), Leonard Howell set up a Rastafarian community called the ‘Pinnacle’ where they grew and smoked marijuana. Future generations adopted the biblical interpretation of a Rastafarian’s rights to smoke weed daily as a sacrament. In Jamaica Rastafarians smoke marijuana sometimes every day. For some it is seen as part of their religious practice which is a hybrid between the Old Testament and some of the New Testament. It is very much a male-oriented community, with men sometimes seen as having the right to father many children with different women.

I (the author) remember back in London in the 1970s living a few doors away from where Bob Marley, the Rastafarian singer and musician, was staying in Chelsea. The summer was hot with a light breeze that continually blew the smell of weed out of his apartment. Of course it was illegal to possess and imbibe marijuana, but the British imperial white government did not want in any way to be seen arresting such a popular religious black man at the height of his fame. A court case around religious freedom is something the British Crown Prosecution Service knew they were unlikely to win.

Long & Mongan (2014) say that 75% of alcohol consumption in Ireland is due to binge drinking. Celtic cultures such as the Irish celebrate a person’s life after their funeral by holding a wake where there are liberal amounts of alcohol and people are excused if they get drunk and make fools of themselves as they tell long stories about the deceased. Ireland is a country where alcohol flows freely to mark many occasions.

Paul, a 24-year-old Irishman, came to see me to stop smoking. He was a regular at an Irish pub in Sydney. Going to the Irish pub was a chance for him to catch up with other Irish people after work, so he went most nights a week. It was an unwritten social code that the men would drink at least four or five long glasses of beer and some whiskies every night to be sociable. When he did some calculations, he found he spent more money on alcohol than he did on his rent. He did not think he had a major problem with alcohol, nor did the people he mixed with who did the same.

There are a wide range of substances used from nature to induce altered states of awareness and I cannot touch on all of them in this book due to space. There are many concoctions, mixtures and blends that are not artificially manufactured drugs and originate from transformational and mind-exploring experiences in specific cultures. What we need to bear in mind when we consider those experiences as hypnotists is that the altered states of awareness begin before imbibing the substance. The trance of expectation and imaginary experience begins at the very first thought of taking those substances and is shaped by the cultural experiences before, during and after the intoxication.

Reynar (2008) reminds us that the production and use of alcohol in modern societies has a history that continues from ancient times when monks produced alcoholic drinks to make a living for a thousand years. Gately (2002) states the introduction of tobacco into Europe in the 15th century started the long-term intoxication through smoking that spread throughout the globe over the past 400 years. Booth (1999) explores the introduction of opium dens into Europe and America which were brought from the orient due to exploration and trading. Rasmussen (2011) researched the wide use of amphetamines within military personnel from all sides in the Second World War to increase battle performance.

As therapists it is paramount that we understand the world in which our patients live, even though we cannot follow them around with a magnifying glass. We need to understand the socio-political context that creates the environment in which addictions exist and thrive. Only by understanding social contexts can we understand the addictive trances that our clients are living inside their minds and performing in their lives.

Perhaps you have never had contact with drug or alcohol users or abusers, or you may have some training in addiction recovery. If you appear naive to clients coming to see you for cessation of addiction, the client will not appreciate your skills as a clinical hypnotherapist and clinician. For me professionally as a therapist, studying medical sociology has greatly increased my ability to understand my clients’ worldview, their circumstances and what a diagnosis means to them, and increased my clinical success with addiction cessation.

I see the thousands of people I have worked with who suffered addictions to drugs and alcohol as much a product of their environmental influences and circumstances as well as being biochemically, physiologically, behaviourally and cognitively dysfunctional. The patient never exists in isolation to their environment, so to help these people stop the addictions, we are wise to also treat them in relation to the world in which they live.

Examination of Egyptian remains has revealed that there was widespread use of cocaine in those times. Scholarly texts of ancient Rome show that the use of alcohol became a public order issue at times. Drug use in ancient American culture extended beyond using psychotropic mushrooms, to licking toad skins that produced secretions which induced hallucinations.

The addiction to drugs and alcohol is a worldwide problem, always has been, and always will be. Indeed, the 2013 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2012) World Drug Report states that substance abuse affects 27 million people.

Even in cultures where there are prohibitions on drugs and alcohol, there are still those individuals today who are secretly involved in substance abuse. Okrent (2011) examined how the North American prohibition on alcohol in the 1930s produced a whole industry of speakeasies where illegal alcohol was sold. Chalabi (2016) strongly contests that the global strategies of criminalising drug use have proved effective in stopping people experimenting with drugs and helping substance abusers overcome their addictions. This becomes more evident when we consider that the use of the term ‘substance abuse’ is wide and includes alcohol and prescription drugs that are obtained both legally and illegally, not just illegal drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines or opioids.

In countries such as Saudi Arabia where there is a complete ban on alcohol because it is a Muslim country that complies to the strict teachings of the Quran, people brew alcohol at home and there is a level of alcohol use and abuse (Cacciottolo, 2015). T. W (2015) of The Economist reviewed how dealers still supply addicts in countries where dealing drugs is punishable by death.

The US ...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Drugs in a Global Society
• Chapter 2: The Drugs You May Meet in Your Practice and Their Effects
• Chapter 3: Prescription Drug Abuse and Alcohol
• Chapter 4: Stop Drugs and Alcohol Hypnotherapy
• Chapter 5: Stay Out of Denial
• Chapter 6: Stop Taking the Substance
• Chapter 7: Do Something Different
• Chapter 8: How Did You Get There?
• Chapter 9: Boundaries
• Chapter 10: Being an Emissary
• Afterword
• Resources
• Glossary