We suggest that a very significant reduction in the group velocity of light occurs in a laser induced barrier-hopping process, known as "Laser Catalysis.'' In this process a system is made to hop over a potential barrier via a virtual transition to an excited bound state. As in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), the light absorption is predicted to dip to zero at a certain frequency, thereby also changing the refractive index, inducing in turn the slowing down of the group velocity of the light. In contrast to EIT, a single pulse is predicted to induce its own transparency and in contrast to self-induced transparency the process is predicted to be insensitive to the pulse area (as long as the pulse is intense enough to meet the adiabaticity criterion). Thus, the medium becomes transparent to the light, as the laser induced barrier-hopping process brings about a fundamental change in the medium.