The Disease Model

Addiction is not a character flaw. It is a complex brain condition with biological underpinnings, and understanding it as such is essential to removing shame from the room. Dr. Gabor Maté's work sits at the heart of this model for me, particularly his framing of addiction as a response to pain rather than a pursuit of pleasure. This model informs how I work with relapse, which I view not as moral failure but as clinical information that helps us better understand what the person still needs.

The Psychological Model

Addiction rarely exists in isolation. Beneath it, there is almost always unprocessed trauma, unmet need, or a story the person has been telling themselves for a very long time. Bessel van der Kolk's research on how the body holds trauma shapes how I approach this work, alongside Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for restructuring unhelpful thought patterns, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills for emotional regulation, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for developing psychological flexibility, Motivational Interviewing (MI) to honour each person's own readiness for change, and Narrative Therapy to help clients become the authors, rather than the subjects, of their own story. Dr. Irvin Yalom's existential approach also informs this space, particularly in group work, where themes of belonging, mortality, freedom, and meaning arise naturally and powerfully.

The Social Model

Addiction is shaped by environment, and recovery happens in relationship. Family Systems Therapy is my primary tool here, guided by the understanding that the family is not a bystander to addiction but a living part of its ecosystem. When the system shifts, the individual within it is given new room to change. Peer support, community, and psychoeducational group work also belong to this model, each of which I have delivered extensively in both residential and community settings.

The moral and spiritual Model

Spiritual transformation and personal accountability are not relics of a bygone era. For many people, they are the very foundation of lasting recovery. The 12-step tradition lives here, as does Viktor Frankl's understanding of meaning as a healing force. I draw on Frankl not as a practitioner of formal Logotherapy, but because his insight that we can bear almost anything when we understand why we are bearing it is among the most useful ideas in recovery work. Finding meaning in the story of one's suffering is often the first step toward rewriting it.

The Biopsychosocial Model

This is where the previous four converge. No single model holds the whole truth, and the most effective recovery work weaves them together. Mindfulness-based approaches live here too, bridging the body, mind, and relational world in a way that supports both insight and regulation. This integrative view is not a compromise between frameworks; it is an acknowledgment that human beings are too complex, and too worthy, to be reduced to any single one.