It's a blustery Saturday morning and a group of strangers - 14 women and one man - are discussing their drinking habits in a West London hotel. It's not an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but everyone at this one-day workshop, run by the clinical hypnotherapist Georgia Foster, is concerned about how much they are drinking.

Many of them have fibbed to their families about where they are. One neat young mum, who would look more at home at an NCT coffee morning, admits that she can't remember when she last managed a day without a drink. An older woman, with big curls and an emerald kaftan, says she feels deprived if she can't look forward to several glasses of wine in the evenings. Her neighbour, elegant and fortyish, says she got so worried when she found she was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day that she went to Alcoholics Anonymous, but it wasn't for her.

These women could hardly be described as binge drinkers or ladettes. Yet, along with other middle-class wine-lovers, they are the latest focus of government concern about alcohol. This month the Department of Health fired the latest salvo in its Know Your Limits campaign, after comments by the Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo in March: “Professional women who drink too much, but do so without causing harm to others, have for a long time gone under the radar. People need to be reminded of the health consequences. It is not only the issues around breast cancer but also, increasingly, liver disease and ruptured bladders.”

Because they drink at home (or in bars with oversized glasses) it's easy to knock back far more than the recommended limits without even noticing it. The consequence has been an alarming rise in women's alcohol consumption and related health problems: the number of women aged 35 to 54 dying as a result of alcohol-related damage has more than doubled over the past 15 years.

When “me-time” means opening the wine

About 80 per cent of Foster's clients are women in their thirties and older, mainly high-flying professionals who have little time to relax and working mums for whom “me-time” means uncorking the pinot grigio as soon as the kids are in bed. Foster says the body quickly gets used to that extra glass, and before they know it people may be downing a bottle or more a night. “I mainly deal with people who are not ruining their lives with alcohol but recognise that they drink more than they should, and they have got into a bit of a rut. Many people have got themselves into an automatic pattern of drinking, which is pure habit. They start drinking because of social shyness, or to de-stress and turn off from the difficulties they face daily, and that slowly creeps up because the more they do it the more the mind thinks it's normal.”

Foster helps people to unlearn these habits and establish healthier ones.

Imogen Forbes, 43, a career consultant, is fairly typical of the professional women who attend Foster's workshops. She says: “I'm not someone who goes out and gets blind drunk but, like many people, ever since university I've had a habit of drinking wine to relax and treat myself, and to numb difficult situations and emotions. It's easy to get in the habit.”

Forbes was drawn to Foster's workshop after trying unsuccessfully to cut down her drinking for a few years. She even had four hypnotherapy sessions (not with Foster), but it didn't stop her drinking more than she would like, between two and four glasses a night. “I've got strong willpower and I'm usually very resourceful in changing habits,” she says. “I gave up smoking three years ago without support. But I felt frustrated that I couldn't crack this by myself. Although I never had a hangover, I often woke up annoyed with myself because drinking wine was stopping me doing even simple things such as phoning friends. I found it so easy to sit at a computer or watching TV and would top up my glass almost unconsciously.”

Everyone has to lie on the floor

Foster's workshop kicks off with a stern session about the liver, much of which is news to the participants, although they seem a well-educated bunch. Their brows furrow when they hear that the symptoms of liver damage often don't emerge until it's too late. They look even more uncomfortable when the nutritionist bangs home some unpalatable truths about alcohol: that a small (125ml) glass of wine contains about 1.5 units, depending on its strength.

But there is good news, too. The nutritionist recommends foods, vitamin supplements and a detox potion to cleanse the liver (and to ward off vampires; it contains freshly squeezed garlic). Then, before everyone gets out their blankets and lies down on the corporate-carpeted floor for the first of four hypnotherapy sessions, Foster explains her approach. An Australian who likes a drink herself, she does not advocate total abstinence; the aim is to halve one's intake, whatever that may be. “That's a comfortable goal for most of the people I see, a lot of whom haven't had an alcohol-free day for 20 years,” she says. “For them the anxiety of not drinking gets too difficult. A reduction programme helps them get to the point where they are drinking so much less that the next step - alcohol-free days - is more comfortable. Not drinking for a couple of days really liberates people: they have more energy and they get more done.”

Once everyone is settled on the floor, Foster's voice becomes deeper and slower. Within minutes most of the group are in a hypnotic state.

This is less strange than it might sound; it is rather like daydreaming, or the feeling you get when the mind wanders while reading. According to Foster, this is when the unconscious mind is at its most receptive. She starts to talk about quietening the “inner critic” (her name for the negative inner voice which undermines self-esteem and which many people use alcohol to suppress) while strengthening one's “healthy confident part” - the positive voice which represents the desire to drink less.

At first, some people at the workshop find it hard to settle into the hypnotherapy. It's weird, after all, to be lying down in a dim room with a bunch of strangers. By the fourth session at least one person is snoring. But, even when people drift off, they are still absorbing the message.

Hypnosis has an immediate effect

Foster insists that for most of the participants the hypnosis will have an immediate effect, and from now on each time they drink the stronger the new habits will become. A self-hypnosis CD and book keep up the momentum. But surely it's a bit ambitious to expect to undo a lifetime's drinking habit in a one-day workshop? Foster admits that some clients drink as a way of coping with impossibly difficult lives - they're in abusive relationships, for example - while others need to grapple more deeply with their inner demons. Some come back for individual sessions or seek counselling or psychotherapy.

So far, it has worked for Forbes. Since the workshop in March she has managed a couple of nights a week without alcohol and when she does drink, a glass or two is enough. But she did have one lapse: after a teetotal ten-day retreat, Forbes treated herself to “more than I should have”.She adds: “Hearing other people at the workshop share their experience made me feel better because you realise you're not alone. And I've found it quite easy to adopt the habits Georgia recommended, such as slowing down when you drink, and drinking red rather than white wine because it's easier to savour and drink slowly. I went to a party recently where I drank only two glasses and had a lovely time. I thought, I don't need more than that, ever.”

For more information about Georgia Foster's work or to buy her book, The Drink Less Mind (£17.99), visit www.georgiafoster.com

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