People have always used chemical agents to alter their mood, their energy level, and their perception of the world around them. Health care practitioners generally define “Substance abuse” as the repeated use of any mood-altering substance, which occurs too frequently, excessively, over a long period of time or in potentially dangerous combination with other drugs. Both legal and illegal drugs can be involved, including alcohol, prescription and over-the-counter medications, illicit drugs and solvents.

What do we mean by addiction?
Addiction can mean that a dependency has developed to such an extent that it has serious detrimental effects on the user and often their family as well. They may be using a drug every day and be intoxicated most of the time and have great difficulty stopping drug use. Drugs take over their life.

How can counselling help?
Counselling can help you in several ways. We can often feel alone and isolated when we have an issues with Alcohol or drugs that might have led to an addiction. Having someone to talk our problems through with can make all the difference. The counsellor can help you explore issues that might have lead to an addiction and enable you identify patterns, make connections and enable behaviour change. Some of the underlying issues behind addictions can be traumatic and might need long term work to ensure you do not relapse.