Hypnosis for addiction: looking beyond the chemistry

A lab rat in a gloomy gray cage, filmed in stark black and white. Ominous music. The rat chooses water laced with cocaine over plain water, again and again, until it lies dead in the cage. This television spot by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America helped cement a powerful idea: addiction as an unstoppable monster, a purely medical problem. Dr. Fredric Mau, an NGH Board Certified Hypnotherapist from the USA, invites you to look again. His view helps explain where hypnosis for addiction can play a role, and where it cannot.

One thing first. Addiction is a serious condition, and its treatment belongs in medical hands. Hypnosis is not a cure for addiction. It can be one building block alongside medical treatment, counseling and support groups. This article explains why that building block is worth taking seriously.

Addiction is not what you think it is

During his master’s studies, Dr. Mau became interested in approaches that help clients find new meaning and new insight on an emotional level. Hypnosis was central among them, along with related approaches such as motivational interviewing, solution-focused brief therapy and narrative therapy.

He started from the familiar view that addiction is a medical problem. That argument goes back to Benjamin Rush, often called the father of American psychiatry and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who shaped the concept of addiction to psychoactive substances around 1784.

Then he came across an idea that gave him pause. Whether a trip on LSD is a good one or a bad one depends more on the user’s mood and expectations beforehand than on the quantity or quality of the drug. For a purely medical problem, Dr. Mau notes, that does not really make sense.

What happens when the cage changes

Back to the rats. The television spot showed one rat, alone, in a bare cage. What happens if the environment is friendlier: sawdust, running wheels, places to hide and, probably most important, other rats?

Researchers tested exactly this in the late 1970s. Rats housed in a spacious, social environment consumed far less of a drug-laced solution than rats kept alone in standard cages (Alexander et al., 1978).

Dr. Mau puts it bluntly. He does not particularly like rats, he says, but if he were a rat in a horrible gray cage, he would probably choose the drug as a way out, too.

Addiction is a biopsychosocial problem.

In his view, addiction has less to do with the chemical effects of a substance and much more to do with the personal and social situation of the person using it. Drug use is quite common. Addiction, by comparison, is rare. He sees a lack of human connection as one of the main factors in how an addiction develops.

Perception creates reality

A study on wine illustrates how strongly expectation shapes experience. Participants tasted wines labeled with different prices, among them $90 and $10, without knowing that some of the “different” wines were in fact identical. When they believed a wine was more expensive, they not only rated it as more pleasant. Brain imaging showed more activity in a region linked to the experience of pleasure (Plassmann et al., 2008).

Perception creates reality on a neurological level.

For addiction, this matters. Every substance is taken in a psychological and social context. The effect of a psychoactive drug depends on the person’s history and expectations. Dr. Mau sees psychological dependence, not only physical dependence, as one explanation for why people keep using.

Habits and the subconscious

Drugs produce bodily sensations that, on their own, carry no meaning. We give them meaning by linking them to a story: this is how I relax, this is how I cope, this is who I am when I use. Over time, that story becomes a habit, and habits live in the subconscious.

That is why willpower alone so often fails. You can understand perfectly well that a behavior harms you and still repeat it, because the part of you that drives it does not respond to arguments. Dr. Mau summarizes the chain like this: emotions drive behavior, stories shape emotions, and stories create meaning.

Dr. Mau also points to behavioral epigenetics, a young field of research that looks at how life experiences, including trauma, may influence the way genes are expressed and whether such changes can be passed on. It is an active area of research, and many questions are still open. For Dr. Mau, it adds weight to one idea: experience and environment shape addictive behavior at least as much as the substance does.

Where hypnosis for addiction fits

If addiction is about meaning as much as chemistry, then change has to reach the level of meaning. According to Dr. Mau, the way out of addictive behavior involves a shift in how the client perceives what the substance or behavior does for them.

This is where hypnotherapy for addiction can contribute. Hypnosis works directly with the subconscious, where habits, emotions and the stories behind them are stored. In a session, a trained hypnotherapist can help a client uncover what the substance has come to mean and build a different response. Medical interventions work on the biochemical level. Hypnosis works on the emotional level. The two approaches can complement each other.

Dr. Mau is also clear about what is still missing: “We need more serious studies investigating specific hypnotic interventions for addiction.”

Safety comes first

If you or someone close to you is dealing with addiction, talk to your doctor first. Stopping some substances abruptly, alcohol among them, can be medically dangerous and needs medical supervision. A hypnotherapist does not diagnose, does not recommend changes to medication and does not replace addiction treatment. Hypnosis can support the process, as one part of a plan that your medical team knows about.

The short version

Addiction is more than a chemical reaction. Environment, expectation and meaning play a large part, and much of that meaning is stored in the subconscious. That is why hypnosis can be a valuable building block in addiction treatment: not as a cure and not instead of medical care, but as a way to work on the level where habits and their stories live.

Dr. Fredric Mau, D.Min., M.A., M.Div., LPC, NCC, DCC, BCH, CI, is an NGH Board Certified Hypnotherapist and an NGH Certified Instructor of Hypnosis in the USA.

Your next step: if you want to learn how hypnosis works with habits and the subconscious, see the OMNI training paths and find the way into hypnosis that suits you.

Sources

Alexander, B. K., Coambs, R. B., & Hadaway, P. F. (1978). The effect of housing and gender on morphine self-administration in rats. Psychopharmacology, 58(2), 175-179.

Plassmann, H., O’Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050-1054.