Contrary to popular belief, however, caffeine use and addiction is not harmless. Even small amounts of caffeine intake can raise blood pressure in susceptible people. Caffeine can interfere with sleep. It can also interfere with the absorption of certain vitamins and enzymes from our food…. and it’s also a mild diuretic. Dehydration can cause fatigue and headaches, even in mild cases.

Just as with any addiction, hypnosis can “move you through” the habits built up over a lifetime to allow you to make the changes at the deepest level that you wish to make.

Very often Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnosis are used jointly to treat difficult or deep-seated problems. NLP, among other techniques, asks us to look at the language we use about ourselves. For instance, one might say “I’m useless without my coffee, I have to have three cups or so before I can think a coherent thought or get anything accomplished.”

An NLP practitioner might ask, “Is that really true? What if the house was on fire, or your baby needed you? Would you have to wait until you had brewed and consumed some coffee before seeing to the child or leaving the burning building?”

There is a school of thought and therapy that teaches that our lives are essentially the product of our deepest beliefs and the questions that we ask ourselves. Those do not have to be fixed things, however. Once one has identified a “deep belief” or an erroneous line of thought or questioning, then one has the power to replace it with something that is more in line with the shape you want your future to take.

Addiction of any kind is built at least partially on a conditioned response; you wake up, and you are conditioned (because it’s what you’ve done the last five thousand days) to have your coffee. However, you can change that conditioned response, and hypnosis and NLP can help you to do so. What might be a better thing to “crave” when you wake up in the morning?

• A tall glass of water?

• A quick walk or some strength building exercises?

• A five minute writing session in your diary or blog?

Hypnosis can be used to reinforce behavioral changes, and to put the suggestion in your subconscious mind that you will not even crave caffeine. For many people this is effective from the very first session.

When asked why hypnosis works, Dr. David Spiegel, psychiatry professor and medical director of the Complementary Medicine Clinic at Stanford University, answered “Because the patients are in an altered state, solely focused on the message, soaking it up, rather than in a psychological mode in which they can trivialize or ignore it.”

Make no mistake, caffeine is a drug and one can become addicted to it. However, hypnosis has been shown to be effective in another, potentially far more serious addiction by helping methadone addicts to stop using drugs. In fact 94% in this study remained drug free. (A comparative study of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy in the treatment of methadone addicts. Manganiello AJ. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 1984; 26(4): 273-9.)

If hypnotherapy is so effective for methadone addicts it is a very reasonable expectation that it will be equally so to assist in overcoming a caffeine addiction.