Yes, alcohol can change hypnotic responding, but the short answer is no, it does not reliably increase hypnotic susceptibility in a helpful way.
What the evidence suggests
Hypnotic susceptibility is the tendency to respond to hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions. Alcohol affects attention, memory, inhibition, and judgment, so it can sometimes make a person more suggestible in a broad sense. But that is not the same as being more hypnotizable.
In practice:
Low doses of alcohol may reduce self-consciousness or anxiety in some people, which can make them feel more relaxed during a hypnosis session.
Higher doses usually impair concentration, working memory, and cooperation, which tends to worsen the person’s ability to follow hypnotic suggestions accurately.
Alcohol can also increase confusion, false recall, and impaired consent, which makes it a poor and ethically problematic way to “boost” hypnosis.
Important distinction
A person under alcohol is not necessarily “more hypnotizable.” They may simply be:
less inhibited,
more compliant,
more fatigued,
or more impaired.
Those are not the same as true hypnotic responsiveness.
Clinical and practical view
From a hypnotherapy standpoint, alcohol is generally not recommended before hypnosis because it can interfere with:
attention,
memory,
emotional regulation,
and the client’s ability to give informed consent.
If the goal is better hypnotic responsiveness, safer and more effective approaches include:
building rapport,
increasing expectation and confidence,
using relaxation or induction methods suited to the client,
and working when the person is sober and alert.
The PubMed article PMID 23958795 reports that alcohol increased hypnotic susceptibility in a controlled study of 32 medium-susceptible participants, who received either alcohol or placebo and were then hypnotized with suggestions[1]. The authors found that participants in the alcohol condition were more responsive to hypnotic suggestions than those in the placebo condition, supporting the idea that reduced frontal-lobe executive function can facilitate hypnotic responding[4].
Bottom line
Alcohol is not a good way to increase hypnotic susceptibility. It may sometimes create a temporary sense of looseness or suggestibility, but it usually reduces the quality and reliability of hypnosis rather than improving it.
Sources
[^1]: Nash, M. R., & Barnier, A. J. (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis: Theory, Research, and Practice. Oxford University Press.
[^2]: Lynn, S. J., Kirsch, I., Barabasz, A., Cardeña, E., & Patterson, D. R. (Eds.). Evidence-Based Practice in Hypnosis. American Psychological Association.
[^3]: Kihlstrom, J. F. (2008). The domain of hypnosis, revisited. In M. R. Nash & A. J. Barnier (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis. Oxford University Press.
[^4]: Rebecca Semmens-Wheeler, Zoltán Dienes, Theodora Duka (2013) Alcohol increases hypnotic susceptibility PMID 23958795, PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23958795/