Addiction counselling for internationals in the Netherlands
Expatriate life is unusually good at concealing a drinking problem. Nobody present remembers how you used to be. The drinks after work are the social structure. There is no parent, no old friend, nobody with a point of comparison to say that something has changed.
Dr Philippe Jacquet works with addiction online by secure video from his Harley Street practice in London, in English and French, for people in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and across the Netherlands.
The approach
Not a twelve-step programme, though the practice does not dismiss what twelve-step work offers.
Addiction is treated here as a solution to something rather than a failure of character: a way of managing pain, anxiety, disconnection or an inner life that had become unmanageable by other means. Effective treatment starts there, with what the behaviour has been doing, rather than with the behaviour alone.
Dr Jacquet is Hazelden trained, spent nine years working inside residential treatment, and today supervises the clinical teams of a private residential addiction clinic and a private psychiatric hospital. That vantage point matters: he has watched, week after week, what residential treatment does well and where it falls short.
The last call before, and the first after
For senior professionals the obstacle is rarely motivation. It is exposure. Residential treatment means weeks away from work and a public statement about yourself that you are not prepared to make. So the decision quietly becomes not yet, and not yet becomes years.
Specialist therapy attended privately, without stepping out of your life, is often the step a person can actually bring themselves to take early, while there is much less to repair.
The other half is discussed far less. Someone returns from four or six weeks in a clinic to the same job, the same marriage, the same flat and the same reasons, and the structure that held them ends on the day of discharge. Relapse after a stay is common and it is rarely a failure of will. It is the absence of anything continuous. That continuity is what individual work provides.
What often sits underneath
Trauma, frequently, in which case EMDR may be used within the wider work. Burnout, where the drinking began as the only reliable way to stop working. And eating disorders, which in men are routinely missed and which can quietly drive relapse. See eating disorders.
How it works
Online by secure video, in English or French, on Dutch time, one hour ahead of the UK.
No waiting list. Dutch mental health services had more than 101,000 people waiting to begin treatment in October 2025, averaging twenty-four weeks. For someone whose drinking is accelerating, that is not a wait; it is the period in which the problem becomes much harder to treat.
Beginning
A first conversation is confidential and without commitment. Book here.
Back to psychotherapy in the Netherlands.
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 Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology 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.
Common questions
Is this a residential programme?
No. There is no bed, no detox and no medical supervision here. This is specialist weekly psychotherapy for people who will not go residential, and often the last conversation before that decision, or the first one after leaving. Where residential care is genuinely needed, that is said plainly at assessment.
What is treated?
Alcohol, cocaine and other drugs, gambling, sex and pornography, and the behavioural compulsions that pass as discipline. Where an eating disorder or trauma sits underneath, those are treated as part of the same work.
Will anyone find out?
No. Nothing is disclosed to any employer, insurer, GP or family member without consent, save for the narrow legal and safeguarding limits every registered practitioner is bound by, which are explained at the outset. Working with a practitioner in another country adds a further degree of separation from your professional world.