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.This is a precondition for establishing an effective channel of com-munication through the sober part to the alcoholic part which knowsabout the drinking problem and what needs it satisfies.Woman: What do you do while you hold the two anchors and theperson is confused for an hour and a half?I only have to hold the two anchors until the integration is wellunderway.Then I just make sure he is in a place where he won't hurthimself; that's about all that's necessary.It's also useful to introducelots of post-hypnotic suggestions while he is in this state of confusion.He will be utterly defenseless at that point.Make sure that yourpost-hypnotic suggestions are content-free so that you don't impose.You might say "As you continue to thrash around, notice that there's adirect relationship between how intense the feelings are now and howrapidly you'll gain the behavioral choices you want with respect todrinking."Since he can't defend against suggestions at that point, you have atremendous responsibility for the way you frame the suggestions."Youwill no longer want to drink" would be the most disastrous way ofapproaching it.It would be better to keep your mouth shut than to saysomething like that.You need to talk in positive terms about what will 184happen in the future, rather than what won't."You will be able to findalternative ways to satisfy yourself in the way that alcohol used to" ismuch better.When you talk about the alcohol, you need to speak in thepast tense, presupposing that he will no longer use it.All of thehypnotic language patterns described in Patterns I and Trance-formations are appropriate here.If he says "But I don't understandyou," you can respond "Of course you don't understand me, and theless you understand me consciously, the more you will be able toreorganize unconsciously in positive ways."Man: When you collapse anchors for being drunk and being sober,don't you run the risk of making the person act drunk all the time?That is a reasonable concern.Giving hypnotic process instructionssuch as those I've been describing is a way to make sure that theintegration you get from collapsing anchors is useful.You say thingsabout how those two states can begin to blend in such a way that theperson incorporates all that is useful and valuable in each state, losingnothing, so that the integration can serve as the foundation for morechoice, etc.Let me remind you that this is only a preliminary step.I'm deliber-ately breaking down barriers between two dissociated states and induc-ing confusion.I'm literally violating a discrimination, an internalsorting process, that the alcoholic has unconsciously used to makehimself effective in life.After doing this, I'm going to have to clean it upwith reframing.All I've done is create the precondition for reframing.Inow have access to the drunk part and the sober part at the same time.Ihave reduced a very difficult situation of sequential incongruity tosomething I can cope with: simultaneous incongruity.After he recovers and is relatively coherent, I would simply proceedwith six-step reframing to secure specific alternative behaviors, and tofuture-pace the new behaviors appropriately.At that point youreframe in the same way that you would reframe anything else.However, one thing is very important.If you're working with some-thing like drinking, smoking, or over-eating, you have to be sure thatthe new alternatives not only work better than the old choice, but thatthe new alternatives are more immediate.You need to be very sensitiveto criteria, and "best" in addictions usually has a lot to do withimmediacy.If your new choice for relaxing is taking a vacation, that'snot nearly as quick and easy as eating a piece of chocolate cake that'salready in the refrigerator.It's a lot easier to smoke a cigarette than to 185meditate or go running on the beach.You can't run on the beach whenyou're in an elevator, but you can smoke a cigarette.You can build in immediacy by specifying it at step four."Go in andfind three choices that are more acceptable, more immediate, moreavailable, easier, and faster than the one you are using now." Oftenpeople don't do that when they do refraining.Their clients then comeup with long-range alternatives that don't work, because they needsomething really immediate.Another thing you can do with any addict is to make his actualfeeling of desiring the drug an anchor for something else.The personneeds to experience the feeling itself as having a different meaning.Right now he has a certain feeling that he interprets as a craving for adrink, and it pumps him into drinking.You can put him in a trance andmake that feeling mean something else.The feeling of "craving" couldnow lead to intense curiosity about his surroundings, for instance.I've used this approach of collapsing anchors and reframing effec-tively with alcoholics and heroin addicts in one session.I have up totwo-year follow-ups now, and it's been successful.After you've done reframing and found new choices for the second-ary gain of the alcohol or the drug, you need to test your work.With analcoholic, my test is to give him a drink and find out if he can stop afterjust one.I consider that the only valid test of whether I have done acomplete and integrated piece of work.With heroin, I'd find out whatanchors used to trigger off shooting up, and then I'd send the client outinto that context to test his new choices.Lou: That's really amazing.I've worked with people in AA, and theythink that "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Are you saying it'spossible to cure alcoholics so that they can drink but not get drunk?They can go into a bar and have one drink and then walk away from it?Definitely.When I work with an alcoholic, three months later I'll goout to some bar with him and have a drink.I watch and listen closelyfor any of the behavioral shifts that used to be associated with thealcoholic state
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