Addiction therapy is not primarily about stopping. Most people with a serious addiction have stopped many times. The question is not how to stop — it is how to build a life in which the addiction is no longer necessary.
What therapy addresses
Effective addiction treatment works at several levels simultaneously. The immediate compulsion. The psychological function the addiction has been serving. The patterns of thinking and relating that sustain it. The damage it has caused — to relationships, to self-esteem, to physical health. And the question of what recovery actually looks like for this particular person.
Anorexia nervosa is a serious and potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterised by restricted food intake, intense fear of weight gain, and a profoundly distorted relationship with the body. But the symptom — the restriction, the weight — is not the disorder. It is the surface of something that runs considerably deeper.
Eating disorder recovery is frequently misunderstood — by the person experiencing it, by families, and sometimes by clinicians. It is not simply the restoration of normal eating. It is not the cessation of a behaviour. It is the construction of a different relationship with the self — one in which the eating disorder is no longer needed.
Relapse is a return to substance use or addictive behaviour after a period of abstinence. It is one of the most misunderstood events in recovery — typically interpreted as failure, as weakness, as evidence that the person did not want recovery badly enough. None of these interpretations is accurate.
Trauma is the wound that remains when an experience exceeds what the mind and body could process at the time. The event passes. The wound does not.
The nervous system, unable to complete its natural processing cycle, keeps the experience live — available, intrusive, ready to be triggered by anything that resembles the original conditions. The person is not remembering the past. In a very real physiological sense, they are still in it.
Addiction is a chronic condition characterised by compulsive engagement with a substance or behaviour despite significant harmful consequences. It is not a failure of character. It is not something that willpower alone can resolve. And it is not a choice in the way that ordinary choices are choices.
People with addiction are often the first to invoke freedom. It is my right. I am only hurting myself. What I do in my own home is my business.
Philippe Jacquet does not argue with the principle. He asks a question instead.
Burnout is not simply exhaustion. It is the collapse of a person who has overextended across a sustained period, often without adequate support from the other areas of life. Removing someone from the environment that caused it does not stop the process.
The twelve step programme is a peer support and self-improvement framework that has helped millions of people worldwide achieve and maintain recovery from addiction. Philippe Jacquet consistently recommends it alongside individual therapy — not as a perfect solution, but as an irreplaceable community structure that individual work alone cannot replace.
The coffin is a clinical metaphor for the protective enclosure a person builds when life becomes overwhelming — the eating disorder, the addiction, the isolation, the rigid persona. It was built for survival. But protection and living are not the same thing.
HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired — four basic human states that lower every psychological defence and make an addict most vulnerable to returning to substance use.
H — Hungry
Not metaphorically. Literally. When blood sugar drops, impulse control weakens. Eating regularly is part of recovery — not a minor detail.
Passion, in the clinical context used by Philippe Jacquet, refers to genuine engagement with life — a sense of meaning, purpose, or calling that gives the person something to move toward rather than only something to run from.
Addiction does not arrive in a full life. It arrives in a life that is missing something. The substance fills that vacancy — it provides intensity, anticipation, relief — a counterfeit version of being fully alive.
Addiction is a compulsive cycle of using a substance or behaviour to avoid pain or feel better, followed by shame, guilt and the resolve never to repeat it. The name of the game is avoiding to feel.
The myth of Sisyphus
“Addiction is a bit like the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus pushes the boulder to the top of the hill, and in the morning he starts again. Addiction is the same — every morning pushing, pushing, trying to avoid the pain. In the morning, he is again at the bottom.” — Philippe Jacquet
Recovery from addiction or an eating disorder is not the elimination of desire or the pull toward the behaviour. It is the development of the capacity to live freely in the presence of that pull.
“Generally people who think about recovery believe that suddenly the behaviour, the obsession, the desire will disappear. No. Recovery is about managing symptoms — being able to live free of those symptoms and experiencing your emotions.” — Philippe Jacquet
Relapse is a return to substance use following a period of abstinence. But the visible act is the final stage of a psychological process that began long before.
“Picking up alcohol or drugs is the last phase of the relapse. Before that, they are already in a psychological relapse.” — Philippe Jacquet