Addiction

Addiction Counselling in London

Addiction counselling in London is available at Philippe Jacquet & Associates, with practices at Harley Street W1, Central London, and Bermondsey SE1. 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.

What addiction counselling addresses

This practice works with the full range of addiction presentations — alcohol dependency, drug addiction including cocaine, heroin, cannabis and prescription drugs, gambling addiction, sex addiction and compulsive sexual behaviour, and behavioural addictions including technology, work and exercise. 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 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.

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 and absolute 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.

Clinical Supervision at PROMIS Recovery Centre

For over five years, Philippe Jacquet has supervised the clinical team at PROMIS Recovery Centre — units in South Kensington, London and the Kent countryside. Founded in 1986, PROMIS is one of the UK’s oldest and most respected private addiction treatment facilities, recognised for nearly four decades of specialist residential treatment for alcohol and drug dependency, eating disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions.

Philippe Jacquet also supervises the clinical team at Cardinal Clinic — a private psychiatric hospital in Windsor rated Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. Clinical supervision at institutions of this standing — providing professional oversight to specialist addiction and psychiatric teams — is a level of institutional involvement that very few private practitioners hold.