It depends largely on the specific addiction, the person involved, and the practitioner... NLP flows best when we build models on the existing behavior and tweak those. In general tho, there are a few major methods for working with additions... swish patterns are a useful tool that are common to a few approaches (used in combination with other techniques). The swish pattern involves changing situational triggers so that instead of a craving, the subject will find resources. Depending on the addition, compulsion blowouts can be useful. These involve changing the submodalities of the way the person perceives the addictive substance, usually pushing them past a threshold that changes the perception from desirable to "who cares?" Reframing techniques can also be very useful in treating addiction. Sometime timeline techniques are useful, allowing the client to go back to when they first tried the substance and perceive their behavior from different points of view.

One general pattern that we find is that addictions are usually a symptom of something else missing or awry in the person's life. What need is the addiction filling? What positive benefit does the addiction confer that can be obtained in a safer, more harmonious way?