Finding the right addiction specialist is a decision families are asked to make on their worst day.
I am not a therapist and I do not treat addiction. I am a family navigator and advocate. My work is to sit with you while the ground is moving, ask the questions no one has asked yet, and match your family with the specialist who genuinely fits — then stay with you long enough to know it held.
What families face with addiction.
Most families I meet have already tried. They have spoken to a GP, searched directories, asked a friend who knew someone, perhaps engaged one or two therapists — and the situation is still moving in the wrong direction. The person they love may not accept help yet. The family may be divided over how to respond. There may be a co-occurring condition, old trauma underneath, or a high-functioning life that keeps the problem invisible to standard assessments.
What makes it so exhausting is not a shortage of services. It is the absence of anyone whose job is to look at the whole picture and help you choose. Families are handed options, not orientation. They are asked to become experts in a field they never wanted to enter, while frightened, tired, and often disagreeing with each other at the kitchen table.
Addiction also reorganises a family. Enabling, blame, silence and exhaustion are not moral failures — they are predictable patterns under sustained pressure. Any plan that only addresses the person using, and not the family carrying it, tends not to hold.
How I navigate families through it.
I ask first, I don't prescribe.
Before anything is arranged, I want to understand who this person actually is, what has already been tried, what failed and why, and what your family can realistically sustain. Most poor matches come from skipping this conversation.
I hold the whole picture.
Clinicians see their part. I hold the arc — the sequence, the gaps between services, the handovers where families are usually dropped. You have one point of contact instead of six.
I speak for the family in the room.
Advocacy is part of navigation. I help you prepare for appointments, understand what you are being told, and ask the questions that are hard to form when you are frightened.
I stay past the decision.
The most fragile moment is often the weeks after a discharge or a return home. I plan for that transition before it arrives, so there is scaffolding rather than a drop.
How I match you with the right specialist.
Matching is deliberate, not a referral list. I look at stage rather than label: someone in denial needs a different first move than someone who has already been through treatment twice. I consider temperament, culture, language, gender, faith, and whether a person will actually return for a second appointment. I consider the family's capacity, not only the individual's need.
I then approach specialists directly from a vetted network — addiction therapists, psychiatrists, residential programmes, intervention specialists, sober companions, family therapists — and I brief them properly before they ever meet you, so your family does not have to retell the hardest story from the beginning again.
Where families move between London, Mallorca and elsewhere, I look for pathways that work across borders: placements, outpatient support, and clinicians who understand international confidentiality.
Why the right match matters.
A poor match costs more than money. It costs the family's willingness to try again. When a first attempt fails, people conclude that help does not work — rather than that this particular help was not the right shape for them. Restoring hope after that is far harder than getting the first choice close to right.
Good specialists exist in numbers. What is scarce is the orientation to reach the right one at the right moment, with the family aligned enough to support it. That is the work I do.
This is a private service and it is not emergency care. If someone is in immediate danger or needs urgent medical attention, contact your local emergency services or go to A&E. What I offer is steady, considered navigation alongside clinical care — never instead of it.
You don't have to work out who to call on your own.
If addiction is affecting your family and you are trying to decide what to do next, start with a confidential inquiry. I work with families in London, Mallorca and internationally.