Addiction Counselling & Therapy in London

Addiction counselling & therapy in London

Addiction counselling in London is available at Philippe Jacquet & Associates, with practices at Harley Street W1, Central London, and Bermondsey SE1. Dr Philippe Jacquet works as an addiction counsellor in Central London (Fitzrovia, W1), as well as at Harley Street and Bermondsey. The approach here is not primarily about stopping a behaviour. It is about understanding what the behaviour has been doing. Addiction is rarely a failure of character or willpower. It is, in most cases, a solution to something: a way of managing pain, anxiety, disconnection, or an inner life that has become unmanageable by other means. Effective treatment starts there.

Philippe Jacquet is a Hazelden-trained addiction specialist with 25 years of clinical experience. Hazelden is one of the most respected addiction treatment institutions in the world, and its model (which treats addiction as a relational and psychological problem, not merely a physical one) informs the depth of work offered at this practice. You can read more about the history of Hazelden and the Minnesota Model. You can also read about the history of the Twelve Steps, from AA to Narcotics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous.

What addiction counselling addresses

This practice works with the full range of addiction presentations, alcohol dependency, drug addiction including cocaine, heroin, cannabis, ketamine and prescription drugs, gambling addiction, sex addiction and compulsive sexual behaviour, and behavioural addictions including technology, work and exercise. On ketamine specifically, which now accounts for more people entering treatment in England than at any point on record, see what the UK data shows and what sits underneath it. Many people who come here are not certain whether what they are experiencing constitutes an addiction in a clinical sense. That uncertainty is itself worth exploring. The question of whether the behaviour has become compulsive (whether it persists despite harm, despite genuine desire to stop) is what matters clinically, not the label.

Co-occurring presentations are common and are taken seriously here. Depression and anxiety frequently underlie addiction, and addressing the addiction without addressing what it is managing is rarely sufficient. This practice has the clinical depth to work across all of it, not sequentially, but as an integrated whole.

The choice is rarely rehab or therapy

It is usually therapy or nothing.

Most addiction services are built around a break in your life: an admission, a month away, a return. That model works, and for some presentations it is the right one. It is also the reason a great many people never get treated at all.

If you are functioning, if your work is intact, if nobody around you has said anything yet, then going into residential treatment is not simply inconvenient. It is a public statement about yourself that you are not prepared to make. So the decision quietly becomes: not yet. And not yet becomes years, and by the time something forces it there is usually a great deal to repair.

Someone who will not go residential this year will not go next year either, unless something collapses. Waiting for the collapse is a treatment plan of a kind, but it is an expensive one.

A private, confidential alternative to residential rehab

For many people, particularly executives, professionals and those in public-facing roles, the obstacle is not motivation but exposure: rehab means weeks away from work and family, and can feel like an admission that everything has collapsed. Specialist addiction therapy you can attend privately, without stepping out of your life, is often the step a person can actually take early, before things reach that point. It is confidential, consultant-led, and works within the life you actually live rather than a protected bubble, which is where recovery ultimately has to hold. Where residential care is genuinely the right step, Dr Jacquet will say so plainly and help you prepare for it, and for those returning from a clinic he provides confidential aftercare and continuity. Read more about this confidential, executive-level approach to addiction, or about when rehab helps and how to choose one.

Alcohol counselling in London

Alcohol dependency is one of the most common reasons people seek help here. Alcohol counselling in London at this practice treats drinking not as a failure of willpower but as a solution to something that has become unmanageable, addressing the underlying causes alongside the drinking itself, rather than the drinking in isolation. Where alcohol use is bound up with trauma, EMDR is available within the wider therapeutic work.

The approach

The work is integrative and depth-oriented, drawing on Jungian analysis, psychodynamic frameworks, and addiction-specialist training. This is not a 12-step model, though the practice does not dismiss what 12-step approaches offer. It is a model that takes seriously the question of what the addiction has been doing for the person, what needs it has been meeting, and what needs to change at a psychological level (not just a behavioural one) for recovery to be durable.

EMDR is available for people whose addiction is bound up with trauma, which is frequently the case. Philippe Jacquet is an EMDR practitioner with over 20 years of experience, and uses it within the broader therapeutic relationship rather than as a standalone protocol.

Addiction therapist in London

Philippe Jacquet is a Hazelden-trained addiction therapist working across Harley Street, Central London and Bermondsey, as well as online. As an addiction therapist, his focus is not only on stopping a behaviour but on understanding what it has been managing (the anxiety, pain or disconnection beneath it) so that recovery holds at depth rather than relapses once the immediate crisis has passed.

Codependency and addiction

Partners, family members and close friends of people with addiction often find themselves caught in a pattern of their own, managing, rescuing, enabling. That has come to organise their lives as much as the addiction organises the addicted person’s. This practice offers individual therapeutic work for codependency alongside or independently of work with the addicted person. Both patterns require attention in their own right.

Confidentiality and discretion

All sessions are conducted under strict confidentiality. Nothing shared in sessions is disclosed to any employer, insurer, GP or family member without explicit written consent. This applies without exception. For many people seeking addiction counselling in London, particularly those in professional or public-facing roles, this level of discretion is not incidental. It is essential. The practices at Harley Street, Central London and Bermondsey are all designed with privacy in mind.

London locations

Sessions are available in person at Harley Street W1, Central London, and Bermondsey SE1, as well as online via secure video link. For clients who travel, sessions can continue at any location or online, maintaining therapeutic continuity. An initial consultation is the first step, a private conversation about what has brought you here, with no obligation to continue beyond it.

Supervising the clinicians who treat addiction

For over five years Philippe Jacquet has supervised the clinical team of an established private residential addiction clinic, and he also supervises the clinical team of a private psychiatric hospital. It matters here only for what it tells you about the vantage point: the work below is informed by seeing, week after week, what residential treatment does well and where it falls short. Clinicians and services looking for that supervision themselves should see clinical supervision.

“I can help someone stop. That is the easy part. The hard part is helping them build something worth staying sober for.”

Philippe Jacquet

Dr Jacquet has also written about coming into this work through his own addiction, and about what lived experience gives a clinician and what it costs: from junky to doctor.

The addictions treated here

Treatment is tailored to the particular addiction: alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction, gambling addiction, and sex and pornography addiction. For senior professionals who need a discreet alternative to residential care, see confidential executive addiction support.

In person at Harley Street W1, Central London and Bermondsey, with help also available in Colchester and online across the UK. Dr Jacquet also works with international clients online, in Zurich, Geneva, Dubai, Tokyo, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

For an independent view of residential treatment, when it helps and how to choose one, read Rehab, Honestly.

Addiction rarely travels alone. Where an untreated eating disorder is quietly driving relapse, see why an eating disorder can undermine recovery on Men Who Heal, Dr Jacquet’s specialist site for men.

Arrange a consultation with Dr Philippe Jacquet, addiction specialist and psychotherapist, London.

Further reading: What is addiction?.

Specialist pages: gambling addiction counselling in London and sex addiction therapy.

Addiction and eating disorders often travel together. For the eating-disorder side of that work, see eating disorder treatment in London.

Dr Jacquet worked inside residential treatment for close to a decade and supervises clinicians in residential centres today, so he knows what that setting does well and where it falls short. Where residential care is the right answer, he will say so at assessment. Where it is not, or where a person cannot step away from their life without cost, this is the same clinical depth delivered privately.

Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.

How the work is delivered from here

All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.

For clinicians and treatment services

Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.