My opinion about 12 Step Programs is: They are like all metaphysical, allopathic, and spiritual approaches to healing: Beneficial and often necessary for controlling or ending the symptom (in this case an addiction) sufficiently for attending to the THERAPY that will find and eliminate the origin/causesof the symptom (in this case the need/desire for the addiction.) As the origin/causes are usually rooted in past events about which the conscious mind is in some degree of denial, such therapy must be IN the subconscious levels of mind; i.e. regression/hypnotherapy.Moreover, there are important steps not all hypnotherapists cover as a matter of course and which must be for full and complete healing of symptom (desire/need for the addiction). These steps are:

1) Recognition of what happened

2) Release of ALL the emotions AND thoughts still connected with what happened that continue to feed the symptom.(Many try to release these emotions and/or thoughts spiritually, which is not therapeutic.The level at which a thought or emotion has been created is the level at which it must be "uncreated".The astral levels in the subconscious levels of mind are as real to the subconscious as the levels of physical "reality".Thus, the ability to MENTALLY release, when in the subconscious levels, physical levels of fear, anger, guilt, shame, powerlessness, etc.)

3) Realization of why the experience happened and the positives gained by it.(This is the place for spiritual healing.)

4) Re-creating the experience by making choices that attach positive, powerful images to the experience in the subconscious memory banks.

Addendum:

A) Many therapists, especially hypnotherapists, try to heal themselves.While much can be done with self-hypnosis, therapy is not one of these.

B) There is GREAT temptation to believe one need only heal one event that is similar to many such experiences and thus all such experiences are healed.Unfortunately, this is not true.What is true is that while not all such experiences may need to be addressed, these experiences must continue to be addressed until the energies feeding the symptom are GONE.

Decades of clinical experience have demonstrated to us that 12 Step Programs without therapy generally result in "substitute addictions" and, while many of these are FAR more healthy than the primary addiction, the underlying negative emotions/thoughts creating the need/desire for ANY addiction can eventually create additional symptoms that can be of great consequence to the quality and/or quantify of life. "Imagine now and daily, the earth surrounded and filled to its core with LIGHT."

Pamela Chilton is a practicing hypnotherapist in Rancho Mirage CA and author of Odyssey of the Soul. She and her husband, Dr. Hugh Harmon, also have a non-profit research foundation concerned with mind motivation. For more information, see http://www.odysseyofthesoul.org.