Drug Addiction
What is drug addiction? Are you concerned about your relationship with drugs? Has your drug addiction become excessive to the point where you want to stop but can’t? Do you continue to use drugs despite their negative impacts on your life outweighing the positive?
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Whether prescription, over-the-counter, recreational drugs or ‘hard’ drugs, addiction to a substance has devastating impacts. If you are looking for support on your journey to be free from substance abuse, our highly trained therapists are here to support you in living a life free of drugs.
Understanding Drug Addiction
Drug addiction can feel overwhelming and impossible to break free from. It often begins as a way to manage pain, explore curiosity, or escape emotional distress. At Leone Centre, our focus is on helping you understand the underlying forces driving your relationship with substances. Addiction is not a sign of weakness, but a signal that your mind and body are struggling. Together, we can explore these challenges and work towards a life free from addiction.
Who’s Likely to Be Affected?
Drug addiction can affect anyone, but certain factors can increase risk, such as family dynamics, trauma, early exposure to substance use, anxiety, or feelings of disconnection. At Leone Centre, our therapists provide a safe space to explore how these influences may have impacted your life. We help you understand these factors so you can move towards a future defined by your choices, not your past.
How Drugs Affect the Brain
Drugs often target the brain’s reward system, creating intense pleasure that can be difficult to resist. Over time, this rewiring can prioritise substance use, impacting memory, decision-making, and emotional resilience. At Leone Centre, we work through the layers of addiction by helping you understand its effects on your brain and behaviour. This understanding empowers you to reclaim clarity and connection in your life at your own pace.
Signs of Drug Addiction
Recognising a shift in your relationship with drugs can be challenging. You might experience:
- Preoccupation with substances.
- Using drugs more frequently or in larger amounts than intended.
- Strained relationships, work performance, or declining health due to prioritising drug use.
Acknowledging these signs is the first step towards recovery. Our team will support you in understanding these changes and guide you towards reclaiming what you’ve lost.
When to Seek Support
There’s no right or wrong time to seek support. If you’re noticing the impact of drug use in your life, reaching out is a sign of strength. Whether you’re questioning your relationship with substances or have been struggling for a long time, our team is here to support your journey towards recovery.
How Therapy Can Help
At Leone Centre, we offer a non-judgemental environment for therapy to help you untangle the complex web of addiction and address the emotional pain often associated with it. We offer evidence-based therapies such as:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): This therapy helps you identify and change negative thought patterns and behaviours that contribute to substance use. It provides practical tools for managing cravings, avoiding triggers, and developing healthy approaches.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT): DBT focuses on developing mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. This therapy is particularly helpful for individuals with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders.
Through therapy, you can:
- Reconnect with yourself: Rediscover your values, strengths, and aspirations that may have been overshadowed by addiction.
- Develop new ways to manage cravings: Learn practical approaches to manage urges and make healthier choices.
- Identify triggers and manage them: Understand what situations or emotions lead to substance use and develop plans to avoid or address them effectively.
- Address underlying mental health conditions: Therapy can help you manage conditions like anxiety, depression, or trauma that may contribute to substance use.
- Build healthy relationships and support systems: Develop strong connections with people who support your recovery.
Drug Addiction Therapy
Our addiction therapists are familiar with 12-step models and have substantial training and background working with drug addiction. We are not a rehab or detoxification centre and cannot provide or prescribe any medication. However, we can support you in line with these treatments should you want a trained professional to support your healing process. From a holistic viewpoint, we will attune to your individual experiences and needs.
We know that drug addiction recovery is very much achievable with the right support. We work within the 12-step models and without – let us know your preference today.
As with any drug addiction, we know you can recover – no matter how long you have struggled. We also know that there is not something wrong with you, but you have likely suffered significant stress and/or trauma at some point in your life. We promote recovery through healing these wounds so you can find fulfilment in the present.
At Leone Centre, we are dedicated to providing you with the highest quality service of professional drug addiction therapy expertise and compassionate care, so you can heal from your addiction knowing you are in safe and trusted hands.