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.
Am I an alcoholic?
If you are asking the question seriously, the honest answer does not start with quantities. It starts with consequences: whether costs are piling up in your work, your relationships or your health while the drinking continues, and whether promises to stop or cut down keep failing. When you are no longer choosing, the label matters less than the fact. Two more things from long practice with this presentation. First, the “functioning” in functioning alcoholic is temporary: it is a phase, not a type, and the mask eventually breaks. Second, the drinking rarely travels alone; in successful people it is often woven with overwork, and sometimes with cocaine and other compulsions, in a ritual where one addiction opens onto the next, driven underneath by the gap between the outward image of success and the inward sense of failure. Dr Jacquet explores all of this in The Functioning Alcoholic.
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 from an analytical psychology perspective, and treats eating disorder treatment in London 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 supervising clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. 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.
In person: addiction therapist in London, at Harley Street and online.
Common questions
Where can I get alcohol addiction therapy in London?
Dr Philippe Jacquet provides confidential alcohol addiction therapy at Harley Street and 45 Fitzroy Street in Fitzrovia, in Bermondsey, and online. He trained as an addiction specialist at the Hazelden Foundation, spent nine years working within private residential treatment and five supervising clinical teams, and has practised for 25 years. Sessions are available in English or French.
Is alcohol addiction therapy an alternative to rehab?
For many people, yes. Where there is no physical dependency requiring supervised detox, intensive one-to-one work is a proportionate step that can be taken earlier, without stepping out of your life. Where residential treatment is genuinely needed, Dr Jacquet will say so plainly and help you prepare for it. He is not against rehab; he is for the right level of help at the point you are ready to use it.
Can I be treated if I am still functioning at work?
Yes, and that is a large part of this practice. Continuing to function professionally does not mean the drinking is not serious; it usually means the costs are being paid somewhere less visible. There is more on this in the article on the functioning alcoholic.
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.
Am I an alcoholic?
It is not about how much or how often you drink; it is about consequences and what you do with them. If costs are piling up in your work, relationships or health and you keep drinking anyway, and if you have promised yourself you would stop or cut down and cannot, you are no longer choosing. That powerlessness, not a quantity, is the honest marker, and it is the beginning of the conversation, not the end of the world.
Can someone stay a functioning alcoholic indefinitely?
In twenty-five years of practice, no. The functioning is a phase, not a type: the mask of success eventually breaks, through family, work, relationships or health. The most effective moment to start treatment is before that collapse, while the choice is still yours.