Substance Use and Addiction Therapy
When something you do or use has stopped feeling like a choice.
The short version
If your relationship with alcohol, substances, or a behavior isn't working for you anymore, that's enough to start. This work is for anyone questioning their use at any level, whether you want a different relationship with alcohol, are noticing a shift toward more frequent drug use, or have habits like shopping, gaming, or social media that have started to feel out of control, becoming behavioral addictions.
Substance use and compulsive behaviors usually develop for a reason. They often start as ways of managing something real: stress, anxiety, emotional pain, burnout, trauma, loneliness, or simply not wanting to feel whatever is underneath. Understanding what the behavior has been doing for you is the core of the work, because change that doesn't address that tends not to hold.
People reach out at different points. Some are quietly questioning. Some are noticing consequences. Some bring it up in the middle of working on something else entirely. We work with it wherever it shows up.
Common Patterns
Relief and Escape
Substances and behaviors work in the short term. They're immediate and reliable at changing how you feel, whether that's numbing pain, quieting anxiety, or coming down at the end of a hard day. Over time, what started as occasional relief becomes the default.
Tolerance & Escalation
What used to be enough isn't anymore. One drink becomes three, the occasional hit becomes daily, doom scrolling fills even more hours. The change is slow enough that the new normal might not feel alarming at first, until one day it does.
Loss of Control
People often notice the gap between intention and reality widening over time. Limits become harder to keep, use increases, sleep or motivation shifts, or the behavior starts affecting relationships, work, or self-respect in ways that are hard to ignore.
How I Work with Addiction
I use a harm reduction approach, meaning therapy does not require immediate abstinence. We start wherever you are, whether that's wanting to stop completely, cut back, understand your patterns, or make more intentional choices around substance use or compulsive behaviors.
Substances and compulsive behaviors are difficult to step back from because they work in the short term. A major part of therapy is understanding what the substance or behavior has been helping you manage and finding something else that can hold that role more sustainably.
For some people, this leads to a healthier relationship with substances or behaviors. For others, it leads to abstinence. What matters is that the choices become yours again.
I approach addiction and compulsive behaviors without shame or judgment. Together, we look at the emotional, relational, and nervous system patterns connected to use, including emotional regulation, anxiety, trauma, burnout, relationships, controlling or narcissistic relationship dynamics, codependency, and ADHD. My work integrates psychodynamic therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing (MI), internal family systems (IFS), and accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP).
What Therapy Can Help With
Emotional Patterns
Understand triggers, compulsive urges, emotional numbing, and the underlying patterns connected to substance use or compulsive behaviors.
Alcohol & Substances
Alcohol, gray area drinking, marijuana, THC, kratom, cigarettes, nicotine and vaping, nicotine pouches like Zyn, cocaine, ketamine, and other drugs.
Emotional Regulation
Build healthier ways to manage anxiety, overwhelm, stress, and relationship dynamics without relying entirely on substances or compulsive behaviors.
Behavioral Addictions
Compulsive shopping, gaming, internet use, social media, doom scrolling, sports betting, and patterns that can become hard to interrupt.
Sustainable Change
Develop a relationship with substances or behaviors built on internal capacity to sustain change over time, not through willpower, so usage or engagement is a choice.
Relationship Patterns
Substance use or compulsive behaviors tangled up with a difficult relationship, whether that's controlling or narcissistic dynamics, codependency, or coping with both at once.
If you need support right now, the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline provides free, confidential, 24/7 treatment referrals and information for individuals and families facing substance use disorders. Call or text 1-800-662-4357 or visit findtreatment.gov.