Alcohol addiction treatment in London
Alcohol is the most common dependency among high-achieving professionals, and the hardest to recognise from the outside. This practice offers confidential, specialist alcohol addiction treatment in London and online, one-to-one, with Dr Philippe Jacquet, a Hazelden-trained addiction specialist with 25 years of clinical experience at Harley Street.
Treatment is not primarily about stopping drinking. It is about understanding what the drinking has been doing, what it manages, softens or makes bearable, and addressing that, so that recovery is real and lasting rather than a matter of willpower.
High-functioning alcohol dependency
The most frequent presentation is the person whose professional and outward life remains intact while their relationship with alcohol has crossed a line they can no longer manage privately. There is often no rock bottom, no obvious crisis, simply a growing private knowledge that something has changed. This is exactly the presentation that residential models, built around visible breakdown, serve least well, and that one-to-one specialist work serves best.
Alcohol, sugar and the eating disorder beneath it
In chemical terms, alcohol is liquid sugar, and for many people, particularly men, a drinking problem is not only about alcohol. It often sits on top of an untreated eating disorder. Where solid sugar and food have long been used to manage difficult feelings, through bingeing, restriction or compulsive eating, alcohol can quietly become the same mechanism in a different form.
This is why a great many men relapse on alcohol again and again: the eating disorder beneath the drinking was never recognised or treated. Stop the alcohol, and the underlying need the sugar was meeting simply finds another route. Treating the two together, rather than the drinking alone, is often what allows recovery to hold.
This connection is a particular specialism here. Dr Jacquet holds Europe’s only doctorate specifically on male eating disorders, and treats eating disorders and male eating disorders alongside addiction, as the linked difficulties they so often are.
The approach
The work draws on Dr Jacquet’s training at the Hazelden Foundation, the international benchmark in addiction treatment, and his experience as a clinical supervisor at PROMIS Recovery Centre and Cardinal Clinic. It addresses the underlying psychological patterns, builds emotional regulation, and processes the trauma or distress the drinking was managing in the first place. Recovery is treated as a long arc, not a quick fix.
Alcohol treatment sits within the practice’s wider addiction counselling in London, alongside specialist help for cocaine and stimulant addiction, gambling addiction and sex and pornography addiction. Sessions are available in person at Harley Street W1, Central London and Bermondsey, and online across the UK and internationally.
Common questions
Do you treat high-functioning alcohol dependency?
Yes. This is one of the most common presentations: professional life appears intact while the relationship with alcohol has quietly crossed a line that can no longer be managed privately. It is treated with the same seriousness as any other dependency.
Is this an alternative to residential rehab?
Yes. Intensive one-to-one treatment offers a private, flexible alternative to a residential programme, in person in London or by secure video. Where a medically supervised detox is required, that need takes precedence.
Is treatment confidential, and in English or French?
Strictly confidential, one-to-one, in English or French, in person or by secure video. Nothing is shared with any third party without your explicit consent.