Addiction

Very few people arrive calling it addiction. They describe a number that keeps moving. It was weekends. Then most evenings. Then to get through the day, and then to feel normal — which is a different thing from feeling good.

They describe the arithmetic that goes with it — the counting, the hiding, the story ready in case anyone asks. A drawer. A route home that passes a particular shop. Money that has stopped adding up.

They describe the promises. To a spouse, to a parent, to themselves, at three in the morning, sincerely. And then the specific flatness of the next day, which is worse than the thing itself.

Behavioural versions get described the same way and are often taken less seriously, including by the person describing them: hours that disappear into a screen, a betting app, a game. Borrowed money that nobody knows about yet.

And almost everyone describes the same fear — that asking makes it real, and that the moment it is named it can never be unnamed.

Recognising yourself in a paragraph on a website is not the same as knowing what is going on. This page describes; it does not assess you, and there is nothing here for you to score yourself against.

You do not have to have hit anything. You do not have to be ready to stop, and you do not need anyone's permission.

What a clinician pays attention to is control and cost. Use that has kept going past the point where you decided it would not. Time, money, work, health or relationships being spent on it anyway. Attempts to stop or cut down that did not hold. And how much of the day is now organised around it, including the part spent recovering from it.

One thing said plainly, and it is a medical point rather than a psychological one. Coming off some substances suddenly can be genuinely dangerous, and that is a doctor's question, not a psychologist's. Ask it before you change anything.

Only a qualified clinician can tell you what is going on — a website cannot. What a page like this can tell you is that people do bring this, and that nobody at PHC will be shocked by it or lecture you about it.

What PHC is, and is not — stated first because it matters most. PHC is a psychology practice. We do not provide medically supervised detoxification, inpatient rehabilitation or any medication, and where that is what is needed we will say so and point you elsewhere. What we can offer is assessment and psychological therapy, alongside medical treatment or on its own where that is clinically appropriate.

1. An initial sessionWe ask what has been going on, for how long, and what it is costing you. Nothing is administered before this conversation, and nothing you say in it is a confession.
2. Emotional assessment and symptom screeningA structured screening of emotional functioning and what you are presenting with, using internationally validated instruments. Its purpose is to decide which further tests, if any, are clinically warranted — you will not be given tests you do not need — and to look at what else is present. Depression, anxiety and trauma very commonly sit alongside this, and treating one while ignoring the other is how people end up back where they started.
3. A psychologist matched to what the assessment foundPsychologists at PHC are not assigned on availability. Assignment is based on speciality, your presenting needs and clinical fit.
4. Therapy, reviewed as it goesWhere PHC is the right service, the modality most often indicated is CBT, which the practice uses for anxiety, depression and negative thought patterns. Where the household has been carrying this for years, family psychotherapy may be part of the work. Sessions are 50 minutes, in clinic at our PECHS clinic or in DHA, or online.

We would rather be straight with you than fill this space with a name.

No clinician on our team names addiction, substance use or behavioural addiction in the areas of practice they have given us. So there is no card on this page: putting one here would mean promoting somebody into a speciality they have not claimed, and on this subject you deserve to know exactly what you are walking into.

What that means in practice: contact us, describe what is going on, and we will tell you honestly whether PHC is the right service. If we are, you will be matched at the initial session on what the screening finds and on clinical fit. If we are not, we will say so and refer you elsewhere.

Confidentiality, session length, fees and choosing your psychologist are answered in full in questions people ask before booking.

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Quitting smoking
• Emotional assessment
• CBT at PHC