An addiction therapist, not a programme
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.
This page is for that person.
The choice is rarely rehab or therapy
It is usually therapy or nothing.
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, and by the time it arrives a great deal has usually been arranged around keeping the drinking in place.
Working one to one means the addiction gets addressed while the life stays standing. No absence to explain. No colleagues wondering. No entry in a file somewhere.
What the work actually addresses
Stopping is the beginning of the question, not the answer to it.
Most people who come here about addiction have stopped before, often many times. The question is not how to stop. It is how to build a life in which the substance or the behaviour is no longer needed, which means addressing what it was doing: the feeling it was managing, the intensity it was providing, the gap it was filling between the outward picture and the inward one.
An addiction is an intense relationship. Removing it does not remove the appetite for intensity. If nothing is done about that appetite it finds a new object, which is why so many people leave a drinking problem and arrive at work, sugar, food or the gym without ever noticing the handover.
What is treated
Alcohol, including the functioning drinker whose consumption looks unremarkable against everyone around them.
Cocaine and stimulants, which in central London very often travel with the drinking rather than separately from it.
Gambling, sex and pornography, cannabis, and behavioural compulsions including overwork and compulsive exercise.
Dual and complex presentations, where addiction sits alongside trauma and often an eating disorder. These are usually one psychological profile presenting in three directions, and treating one while ignoring the others is why people relapse.
Why the training matters here
“Addiction therapist” is not a protected title. Anyone may use it.
Dr Jacquet trained in addiction at the Hazelden Foundation, the international benchmark in the field, and at Hope-One. He spent close to a decade working inside private residential treatment and continues to supervise clinicians who work in it.
That matters for one practical reason: it means he can tell you honestly when residential care is the right answer, because he knows what it does well and where its limits lie. If that is what you need, you will be told at the assessment rather than six months in.
When medical treatment comes first
This is psychotherapy, not medical treatment. Withdrawal from alcohol or benzodiazepines can be dangerous and occasionally life threatening, and needs to be managed by a GP, an addiction psychiatrist or a medically supervised detox rather than attempted alone. Where that is what is needed, it is said at the assessment and the referral is made.
The same applies where a psychiatric assessment should come first or run alongside the work, and where the right answer is residential treatment rather than weekly sessions. Therapy does the work that follows stabilisation, and it does that work better once stabilisation is in place.
Practicalities
Sessions are fifty minutes, weekly, in person at Harley Street, Central London and Bermondsey, or online anywhere in the UK and internationally. In English or French.
Clients may be seen by Dr Jacquet or, where appropriate, by an Associate working under his clinical supervision.
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.
Further reading: The Functioning Alcoholic · Executive addiction treatment
Common questions
What does an addiction therapist do that a rehab does not?
A residential programme asks you to step out of your life for a month or more. An addiction therapist works with you inside it, weekly, while your job, your family and your privacy stay intact. For many people that is not a compromise, it is the only version they will actually agree to. Residential care is right for some presentations and is said so plainly at the assessment, but for a great many high-functioning people the choice is not between rehab and therapy. It is between therapy and nothing.
Can I be treated for addiction without anyone knowing?
Yes. Sessions are private, held at Harley Street, in Fitzrovia, in Bermondsey or by secure video, and no absence from work is required. Confidentiality is the ordinary professional standard, and for people whose employment or public position would be affected by a residential admission, this is usually the deciding factor.
What addictions are treated?
Alcohol, cocaine and stimulants, cannabis, gambling, sex and pornography, and behavioural compulsions including work and exercise. Dual presentations are common and are treated together rather than sequentially: addiction, trauma and an eating disorder are frequently one psychological profile presenting in three directions.
What training does an addiction therapist need?
There is no protected title, which is why it is worth checking. Dr Jacquet trained in addiction at the Hazelden Foundation and at Hope-One, spent close to a decade working inside private residential treatment, and supervises clinicians who work in it. He is registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and the Health and Care Professions Council, both of which hold public registers you can search.
Do I have to stop drinking before I start therapy?
Not necessarily, but sequencing matters. Processing trauma while a substance is doing the regulating tends to destabilise rather than resolve, so the order of the work is part of what the assessment decides. Where withdrawal needs medical supervision, that comes first and the referral is made.
How long does addiction therapy take?
Longer than most people hope and shorter than they fear. Stopping can happen quickly. Building a life in which the drinking or using is no longer needed is the slower part, and is usually a matter of many months rather than weeks. An honest estimate is given at the assessment rather than after six sessions.
Is addiction therapy available online?
Yes, and a substantial part of this practice is delivered that way, including internationally. For clients in small communities or expatriate circles, the online setting is often more confidential than a local consulting room.