The behavior is doing something for you. It is also costing too much.

Alcohol and substance use

Drinking or drug use may begin as social relief, stimulation, sleep, confidence, pain reduction, or a way to shut down a nervous system that will not stop. Over time the solution develops its own momentum. Therapy addresses the current pattern, the conditions that keep restarting it, and the practical work of recovery.

Pornography and sexual compulsivity

Pornography can offer intensity without relational exposure, predictability without negotiation, and immediate relief from boredom, loneliness, shame, or overwhelm. The work is not organized around moral panic. It is organized around loss of choice, secrecy, escalation, consequences, and what the behavior has come to replace.

Sex & Love Addiction

Compulsive sexual behavior can involve pursuit, fantasy, apps, affairs, paid sexual experiences, repeated risk, or a cycle of acting out followed by shame and attempted control. Therapy addresses the behavior directly while also working with attachment, validation, novelty, emotional avoidance, and the parts of the system that experience sex as the only reliable route to aliveness or relief.

Gaming addiction

Gaming can be an enormously positive part of a person's life. It can offer creativity, mastery, friendship, teamwork, community, stress relief, and a place where neurodivergent people connect without having to perform the same social choreography demanded elsewhere. Those relationships and accomplishments are real. Dismissing them as an escape misses why gaming matters.

Gaming can also become addictive. The distinction is not whether someone plays a lot or cares deeply about a game. It is whether choice is narrowing: sleep, health, work, school, relationships, or basic responsibilities are repeatedly displaced; attempts to reduce play do not hold; and the game becomes the only reliable route to competence, connection, or relief. Therapy should protect what is genuinely valuable about gaming while addressing the pattern that is taking over the rest of life.

Screens, overwork, and other process addictions

Scrolling, shopping, gambling, work, food, and other behaviors can become compulsive for the same basic reason: they change the internal state quickly and reliably. The content differs. The cycle often does not.

Codependency and the relationships around addiction

Addiction rarely stays contained inside one person. Relationships begin reorganizing around it. Partners and family members may monitor, rescue, conceal, compensate, threaten, manage consequences, or quietly abandon their own needs while trying to keep the system functioning.

These patterns are often described as codependency. The label can be useful, but the relationship underneath matters more: who is carrying whose responsibility, what everyone has learned not to say, and how attempts to help may be keeping both people locked in the same arrangement. Recovery changes the relational system, not only the behavior.

ADHD and autistic adults are often asked to regulate in environments that do not fit their nervous systems. Underactivation can become physically aversive. Sensory and social overload can become relentless. Masking consumes energy. Sleep becomes unstable. Rejection and accumulated shame add another layer.

Substances or high-intensity behaviors may become ways to regulate stimulation, anxiety, exhaustion, social discomfort, focus, or emotional intensity. Sometimes the addictive pattern is doing a job that no other support has been able to do reliably.

Treating the behavior without understanding the nervous system underneath it leaves the central mechanism untouched. Treating the neurodivergence while avoiding the addiction does the same thing from the other direction.

The goal is not to make a neurodivergent person regulate more convincingly like everyone else. It is to build recovery around the nervous system they actually have.

Direct work with the current pattern

We track what is happening now: frequency, triggers, consequences, access, secrecy, high-risk situations, failed control strategies, and what happens immediately before and after use. Insight matters, but addiction also requires concrete attention to behavior.

SMART Recovery-informed treatment

SMART Recovery emphasizes motivation, managing urges, changing thoughts and behavior, and building a balanced life. I am a Certified SMART Recovery Facilitator, and SMART provides the primary structure for my approach to recovery.

I am also well versed in 12-step recovery and draw from its concepts and tools when they fit the client, including honest inventory, accountability, fellowship, service, and the recognition that isolation strengthens addiction. I do not treat SMART and 12-step work as rival camps. My approach is grounded in SMART while remaining able to work respectfully with clients whose recovery includes AA, NA, SAA, SLAA, or another 12-step community.

IFS and the protective system underneath

IFS understands addictive behavior as protective, often carried by firefighter parts that act quickly when distress breaks through. That frame creates room for curiosity without removing responsibility. We work with the parts reaching for relief, the managers trying to control them, and what the entire conflict is organized around.

Neurodivergent-informed recovery

Recovery plans fail when they depend on consistent motivation, abstract future consequences, or social environments that overload the person using them. We account for stimulation, sensory needs, executive function, sleep, transitions, rejection sensitivity, and the cost of masking. The plan has to fit the nervous system.

Relapse prevention and life outside the behavior

Relapse prevention includes triggers, access, routines, relationships, replacement behaviors, support, and a realistic response to lapses. It also asks harder questions: what will provide meaning, belonging, pleasure, competence, and rest when the addiction is no longer doing that work? What has to change in the relationships that adapted around it?

Telehealth outpatient therapy can support active substance use, process addiction, relapse prevention, and ongoing recovery when the level of risk can be managed safely in weekly care.

It is not a substitute for medical detoxification, residential treatment, emergency stabilization, or an intensive outpatient level of care when those are indicated. Withdrawal from alcohol, benzodiazepines, and some other substances can be medically dangerous. When medical management, detoxification, more frequent treatment, or coordinated specialty care is needed, I will recommend it directly.

The consultation call includes an initial fit assessment. A fuller assessment may show that another level of care needs to come first or be added alongside therapy.

Do I need to be sober before starting therapy?

No. I work with active substance use when outpatient telehealth is clinically appropriate. The first task is understanding the pattern and assessing risk, not requiring someone to present a finished recovery plan before therapy begins.

Do you require abstinence?

Not automatically. The appropriate goal depends on the substance or behavior, medical risk, severity, consequences, and what you want to change. For some patterns, abstinence is the clearest path. In other situations, reduction or harm-reduction work may be a clinically useful starting point. We make that decision honestly rather than ideologically.

Do you work with pornography and sex addiction?

Yes. I work with pornography addiction, sexual compulsivity, and patterns commonly described as sex addiction. The treatment addresses loss of choice, secrecy, escalation, consequences, attachment, shame, and the regulatory function of the behavior. It is not organized around moral judgment about sexuality.

Do you work with gaming addiction?

Yes. Gaming can be creative, social, regulating, and deeply meaningful. It can also become addictive when choice narrows and the rest of life is repeatedly displaced. Treatment takes both realities seriously. The goal is not reflexively to remove gaming; it is to restore choice, address the costs, and preserve the parts of gaming that still belong in a good life.

Is SMART Recovery the same as a 12-step program?

No. SMART Recovery is a secular, evidence-informed approach built around motivation, urge management, changing thoughts and behavior, and developing a more balanced life. It is the primary recovery framework underneath my approach.

I am also familiar with 12-step recovery and incorporate useful concepts when they fit the person. I work respectfully with clients whose recovery includes AA, NA, SAA, SLAA, medication-supported recovery, or other communities. The goal is not loyalty to one model. It is recovery that holds.

Do you work with partners or codependency?

I work with the relational patterns surrounding addiction: rescuing, monitoring, concealment, overfunctioning, broken agreements, difficulty setting limits, and the loss of one's own needs inside another person's crisis. Individual therapy can address your part of that system. Couples treatment or a specialist referral may be appropriate when both partners need structured repair, particularly after betrayal or ongoing deception.

How does IFS apply to addiction?

IFS helps identify the parts that reach for immediate relief, the parts trying to control or shame them, and the pain or threat underneath the conflict. Understanding the protective logic does not excuse the behavior. It makes change more precise because we are no longer asking a part to surrender its only solution without offering anything credible in its place.

What if I need detoxification or more intensive treatment?

I will recommend the appropriate level of care. That may include medical evaluation, detoxification, intensive outpatient treatment, residential care, medication management, recovery groups, or coordinated providers. Weekly therapy can remain part of the larger plan when clinically appropriate.

Can you help if ADHD or autism is part of the addiction pattern?

Yes. This is one of the central areas of my practice. We look at stimulation, sensory load, masking, sleep, executive function, social exhaustion, rejection, and the environments surrounding the behavior. Recovery works better when it is designed for the nervous system living it.

Addiction often overlaps with neurodivergence, shame, anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship patterns. Learn more about ADHD therapy, autism therapy, IFS therapy, or therapy for broader clinical concerns.