I have helped people struggling with addictions of every sort , including alcohol, all kinds of other drugs-both legal (such as Oxycodone, Percocet, benzodiazepines, barbiturates) and illegal (cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, opiates) ,gambling, internet pornography, reckless shopping and spending, and overeating.

I have learned over the past 25 years in my work with all these addictions that almost everyone, with the right kind of help and understanding, can find the resources they need - both within themselves and in their relationships with others - and get their lives back under control and reconnected.

I have worked with numerous people who have been charged with or convicted of DUI offenses and are entering counseling to help deal with both the legal and emotional aftermath.

Having a thorough and competent assessment and establishing specific treatment goals related to a DUI offense are often a critical part of resolving the legal issues you may face. It is always in your best interest to seek counseling if you are in this situation.

I have also helped many people who have addicted spouses, children, partners or siblings, as well as those who grew up in households where a parent was struggling with an addiction. This experience can seriously harm a person's ability to have fulfilling relationships as an adult.

An addiction is destructive not only to those who have it, but also to those who care about the addicted person. If you are one of these people, you know how extremely painful and confusing it can be to figure out how to deal with your loved one when their behavior disrupts your life. Do you continue to give them money when you know they are using it to support their addictive behavior? Do you ask them to move out when they repeatedly do things that violate you, your values or your belongings? Do you get rid of your computer or put a block on pornographic websites? Does it feel too embarrassing to talk about what's going on with your friends or other family members? I can help you address these very difficult questions and come to some resolutions so that you no longer feel at the mercy of your loved one's destructive actions.

Addiction to internet pornography has become a scourge to many couples and families.

Internet pornography is a $2.5 billion-a-year industry. There are well over 4 million pornography websites. The easy availability of this material along with its tremendous power to affect the brain and body has made it into an extremely destructive force in many contemporary couples and families. It can create deep feelings of distrust, betrayal, and alienation in a relationship, sapping the life out of a couple’s emotional and physical intimacy. Many couples are confused by this “presence” in their household and are not sure where or how to draw a line. Is looking at pornography always bad? Because males are the primary consumers of pornography, I often hear the question: Isn’t this just typical male behavior in our culture? What’s the big deal? When is it too much? Or the hurt partner may wonder: Is it wrong of me to feel jealous or insecure? I can help you (and your partner) work through the painful and complicated feelings that internet pornography evokes and repair the damage that it has caused to your sense of trust, confidence, and security.

How can you have confidence you will succeed when you feel you've tried and failed to stop your compulsive behavior so many times?

"Relapsing" and feeling frustrated and hopeless about ever successfully changing are common features of addictions. Don't despair! Persistence, increased awareness of what the addiction's all about and developing compassion for your predicament and yourself are all key to gradually turning a corner toward a stable recovery.

Addictions can seriously damage and even destroy your physical health, your job or career, the relationships you have with those you love, your sense of who you are, and your hopes for the future.

Shame and guilt are two powerful forces that fuel addictive and compulsive behavior. They cause a person to become more secretive, detached, and emotionally disengaged from the very people and activities that help them sustain a meaningful sense of life.. Feelings of loneliness and isolation, anxiety and depressed mood thus arise, which the person then tries to ignore and push away through seeking the momentary relief and satisfaction that the addiction provides. This is then followed by further shame, guilt and hiding and a vicious addictive cycle is created.

An addiction can serve to mask other serious emotional and psychological conditions.

Many people with an addiction or compulsion are struggling in vain to cope with other underlying conditions such as depression, anxiety, or Bipolar Disorder. With the right care, these can all be treated effectively. Unfortunately, an addiction can worsen them. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is often missed in young people, leading to years of academic failure, social missteps and damaged self-esteem. Addictions seem like a way out of feeling so poorly. Learning about and treating impulsivity, distractibility and inability to focus can make this therapy different than all the rest. A clear, full and deep diagnostic picture is critical to a true, lasting recovery.

It is important to understand what is attractive and alluring to you about your addictive behavior.

Some treatment approaches emphasize a set of techniques for inhibiting or stopping the thoughts, feelings, behaviors and situations that serve to fuel the addiction. While I've found that many of these techniques have their usefulness, I have also learned that it's crucial to understand what an addiction means to a person, that is, how does it work for you? In what ways does your addiction seem to help you out - either with your thoughts, your feelings, or your dealings with others? These needs are real. For example, for some people the experience of craving, the excited anticipation of satisfying the craving, and carrying out the addictive behavior itself can all serve to give the person an enhanced sense of being alive and energized, of having a purpose, or a feeling of accomplishment, power, or contentment. For someone else, the behavior can serve to numb out or deaden underlying depressive or anxious feelings. To attempt to suppress or extinguish the "bad behavior" without understanding the positive meanings it may have for you is an almost certain recipe for relapse. Together we can sort this all out.

I'll offer you a number of tools to help you forge a path to recovery and one of the main tools is mindful awareness.

Lack of awareness -- which includes not noticing and not thinking about your experience, along with being uninformed about the nature of an addiction -- is the biggest obstacle to a successful recovery. In general, what we remain unaware of causes us much more difficulty than what we consciously face. You will learn ways to develop "mindfulness", which involves training and expanding your attention and overall awareness of your moment-to-moment experience. This leads to a fuller, richer sense of being alive and connected to your world.

You will become more informed and learn to pay much closer attention to a number of important aspects of your addictive experience. By noticing the moment-to-moment changes and effects in these different areas, you gradually create room for yourself to reflect and choose new ways of responding:

Your Body

It may not be apparent but all addictions, even those not involving use of alcohol or a drug, cause physiological changes. Pornography obviously has extremely powerful effects on our brain's arousal and pleasure centers. Coveting and then buying a desired material object causes a noticeable shift in our body state. And of course eating sweets or chocolate can be stimulating.

You will learn to notice how craving, seeking, and engaging in the addictive behavior all feel in your body. What are the first physical signs of your urges? How does your body feel afterwards? It is important to learn how to relax your body when it is in a state of arousal or craving through tried and true methods I can teach you.

With drug and alcohol addictions, it is important to know what the specific effects a drug has on your body. Research on brain, heart and metabolism tells us exactly what your body needs to be healthy and to heal past abuses.

Your Feelings

Your Thinking

Your Relationships

Your important relationships suffer from your addiction or compulsion. Your addictive activity can begin to take on more importance than your relationships with family, friends or colleagues. As this addictive "relationship" becomes more secretive and cloaked in shame, you communicate less and less with others about what's going on with you, and withdraw into a lonely and isolated world unto yourself. This can make your relationship with your addiction seem even more important and necessary to you and seemingly difficult to leave behind.

In therapy, we can work together to create a real relationship in which you begin to understand why and how you are acting in a way that "isn't you". Through cultivating a sense of mutual trust and safety, you can open up to your perceptions, thoughts and feelings with as much awareness as possible. My style of working is to be as open with you as I can be, sharing honest questions, perceptions and reactions, and whatever knowledge and wisdom I've gleaned, in a manner that seeks to make the time and energy you commit to therapy as rich and full a human encounter as possible.

Family members and significant others may sometimes be included as part of your therapy if you feel ready for this. By addressing your history of hurt, frustration, guilt and shame, the walls that have been erected can be carefully dismantled and a new foundation for your relationship can be created.

Many of the people I've worked with are also involved in a Twelve-Step program (like AA, GA, or NA,). Twelve-Step can be a powerful adjunct to therapy. One of its most rewarding features is the sense of community it provides, a place where you can step out of your loneliness and shame and encounter others who've been where you've been, who genuinely care about your recovery and well-being.

Your Environment

There are specific situations, times of day, places you frequent, and routines you engage in that may be strongly associated with "triggering" your addictive or compulsive behavior. A critical part of recovery is identifying these environmental hazards and developing alternative routes around them or desensitizing you to them so that they hold less power over you. Through our work together, you will develop greater self-knowledge and confidence so that these "triggers" will hold less sway over you.

As my client, I can help you learn:

• how an addiction or compulsion affects you physically, emotionally, cognitively and in your relationships
• how to increase your awareness of each of these areas of your life and identify ways you want to change them
• how to better understand what motivates these addictive behaviors that seem to control what you do against your will
• a clearer diagnostic picture of the psychological issues that got you into the addiction in the first place, with careful treatment that is full and accurate
• how to develop confidence in your own abilities and resiliency
• how to transform the repetitive cycles of your addiction into patterns of healthier living
• how to relieve the crippling shame that often surrounds your addictive behaviors
• how to open up to others in ways that can heal your damaged relationships with them
• how to let others in on your suffering so they can help you
• how to be less judgmental and more compassionate toward yourself