HELP FOR YOURSELF

Cutting back counts as a goal.

You don't have to call yourself an alcoholic to get help here, and you don't have to decide on the first day where you'll end up.

Chemical dependency counseling for Ohio residents, by telehealth. Private pay, $180 per 50-minute session — which means no diagnosis and no record going to an insurer.

WHERE WE START

Both of these are real goals.

Plenty of people begin in one column and end up in the other. That isn't a failure of nerve — it's information.

MODERATION

You want to drink or use less, and find out whether you can do that reliably. We'll set what "less" actually means in numbers, track it honestly, and see what the data says. If it holds, good. If it doesn't, you'll know something real rather than something you guessed.

STOPPING

You're done, or nearly. We work on getting through the first weeks intact, on the situations most likely to undo you, and on what fills the space afterward — because a life with a hole in it is hard to keep.

HOW THE WORK GOES

What the substance does for you comes first.

It's doing something, or you'd have quit already. Until we know what job it holds — quieting a body that won't settle, ending a day, making a room tolerable — every plan to stop is a plan to leave that job undone.

We name the job. Not the diagnosis, the function. What the first drink reliably delivers, and how fast.

01

We work on the moment before. The tension that precedes use is physical before it's psychological. You'll learn ways to change your own physiology first — it's easier to act your way into better thinking than to think your way into better acting.

02

We build the alternative. Handling a craving without obeying it. Ending a day deliberately. Being in a room without a drink in your hand.

03

We rebuild what went quiet. Sleep, people, work. This is the part most people skip and most relapses come from.

04

I call this discovery rather than recovery. Recovery implies going back to who you were before — rarely what people actually want, and rarely what happens. What happens is that you meet someone you hadn't met yet.

Read more about the discovery model →

COMMON QUESTIONS

Things people ask on the first call.

  • No. The label helps some people enormously and stops others from ever asking. You're welcome here without one.

  • Then you have data most people don't. What broke it, and when, is where we start rather than something to apologize for.

  • Either. If 12-step works for you, keep it. If it never fit, that's not a character problem and there are other routes.

  • Not without your written permission. If you'd like them involved, there's a way to do that deliberately, and I do that work too.

  • No — private pay only, and that's deliberate. Billing insurance requires giving you a substance use diagnosis and sending it to a third party, where it stays in your record. It also lets the insurer decide how many sessions you get and what counts as progress. Private pay means no diagnosis, nothing reported, and no cap on the work. Sessions are $180 for 50 minutes.