Abstract: One of the major social and health problems across the world is drug and alcohol abuse. It is endemic to many societies. This has been the case for thousands of years with the use of cocaine in ancient Egypt, alcohol in ancient Rome, opium in China in the 19th century, and a new plague of cheap recreational street drugs now flooding the modern world.

Hypnosis in its different forms has also been used for many millennia in healing the body and mind, as well as changing behaviours and human experience. Historically, the use of hypnotic techniques has been prevalent in ancient Egyptian healing temples, Greek Asclepeion temples, the salons of Mesmer in Paris, American Pentecostal churches, and in the modernday practice of clinical hypnotherapy and medical hypnosis. Today, hypnotherapy is utilised as a potent treatment modality for many presenting problems and in particular has helped tens of thousands of patients in the field of substance abuse cessation.

This paper examines four case studies of long-term drug abuse where all patients ceased their addiction after one two-hour session of the Clinical Hypnotherapy Stop Drugs and Alcohol 6 Step Program (6 Step Program) created by the author, with the patients transitioning from drug and alcohol dependency to becoming clean and sober. The first case was a long-term methamphetamine user. The second case is a daily cannabis (also known as and referred to in this paper as ‘marijuana’) user who imbibed through a pipe for 36 years. The third and fourth cases are two brothers who used marijuana three or four times a day for five years and enabled each other in their co-joint addiction. In all four cases, the clients attended one initial session, as well as follow-up sessions.