FAQs

If you have become aware that your drinking or substance use is causing you problems or starting to take over your life and you have sincerely tried or wanted to cut down or control your use, but failed to do so, then you probably need professional help. Equally, if you know that your relationship with food, gambling, shopping, other people or sex is causing you problems and making you unhappy, and you have been unable to change things on your own, then you probably need professional help.

Addiction has been defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as ‘a chronic, relapsing, illness’. It affects some 10-12% of any population and can be thought of as a pathological relationship with a substance (e.g. alcohol) or behaviour (e.g. gambling). Over time, there will be an increasing preoccupation with, and compulsion to engage in, the addictive relationship. Accompanying this obsession and compulsion will be a spiralling loss of control over the substance or behaviour of choice. Accompanying this loss of control will be ever greater damage, loss and suffering.

Yes. While no biological marker for addiction has yet been identified, there is strong evidence that addiction is caused by a neurobiological disorder. Brain imaging suggests that addicts possess a spiralling disregulation of the mesocortical limbic pathways (seat of the brain’s reward and pleasure centres). As with any illness, addiction follows a predictable course, regardless of who you are or where you are from. Untreated, addiction will inevitably end badly. The good news is that, as with any illness, the quicker you seek professional help, the better the prognosis.

People choose, for example, to drink or take drugs, but no-one chooses to be an addict — what you can do, though, is choose to recover.

Yes. The main sub-types of substance addiction are the chronically out of control alcoholic/drug addict, the functional (or ‘top-up’) alcoholic/addict, and the binge-pattern alcoholic/addict.

No. While the usual stereotype of the addict or alcoholic is probably someone who is drinking or using drugs all day, every day, and who is physically addicted to their substance of choice, it is actually a minority of addicts/alcoholics, some 30%, who conform to this stereotype. The majority of people with an addictive disorder are in fact binge-pattern addicts.

Being a binge-pattern addict can be very confusing. There will be no physical addiction and days or even weeks might go by with either no use of alcohol or chemicals, or apparently appropriate use of them. And then, almost out of the blue, what was meant to be a quiet pint or a solitary line of cocaine may become an unplanned and out of control binge, with often destructive consequences to the addicted person and their loved ones.

Binge-pattern addicts tend not to use or drink every day, don’t require medically supervised detoxes, tend to have jobs and are often high-functioning, tend to have partners or families, and tend not to have significant psychiatric co-morbidities. They also tend not to see themselves as addicts, believing that they have sufficient control over things. Loss of control will become undeniable when the substance use (or gambling/shopping/binge-purging) ‘bleeds’ into normal daily activities and relationships. This is when help is likely to be sought.

At Start2Stop, the majority of our clients are binge-pattern addicts and we have a wealth of experience in helping such clients to recover.

If you have worked hard to get into good early recovery in London, then while you would benefit from the extra support offered by Start2Stop, you may well have strong enough recovery foundations to continue as you are.

However, for those clients who have returned to London after doing a stint of residential rehab elsewhere in the UK or abroad, the Start2Stop Aftercare Programme is an ideal option for ensuring a ‘safe landing’. This is because it is one thing to get into a recovery process while overseas or elsewhere in the UK, but quite another to hold that process and avoid relapse upon the return to London. For most people, to return to London is to leave behind all the support systems that have been so carefully built up, just when they are needed most. Not surprisingly, studies have shown that some 65% of people relapse within 90 days of returning home from residential rehab.

The Start2Stop Aftercare Programme has as its goals: relapse prevention, successful adjustment to life back home, the creation of recovery friendships and the development of strong connections to the fellowships. For some clients, the best option might be to live at the Mews House for their first month back and then attend the Aftercare Programme once they have moved back home.

We require clients to be three days clean from drink and drugs upon admission and to test negative for all mood-altering substances (with some exceptions for people suffering from behavioural addictions). If you are physically dependent on your substance of choice, we would recommend that you consider undergoing at least 28 days of residential rehab before joining Start2Stop. However, if it is not possible for you to do residential rehab, we may be able to help arrange a safe and appropriate detox for you. Once this is completed, you would then be admitted to Start2Stop.

Yes. We regularly use urine and breathalyser testing to screen clients for alcohol and drug use.

If it becomes apparent that Start2Stop is not the right programme for you, we would openly and honestly discuss the situation with you and then recommend what we felt were the very best alternative treatment options for you.

Attendance at Start2Stop is entirely confidential if you are aged over 18 and self-funding. If you are under 18, Start2Stop is obliged to appraise the relevant significant others of your attendance.

No. We follow the World Health Organisation in understanding addiction to be a chronic, relapsing, illness. Punishing someone for having a slip is akin to agreeing to treat someone for hip cancer and then discharging them from treatment if the cancer comes back.

A slip, or using episode, is simply a sign that things need to change in a client’s recovery practice. We will therefore do our best to work with a slip and convert it into a learning opportunity, helping a client to make the necessary changes to their recovery programme.

Yes. We acknowledge that there are many pathways to happy recovery. We also know that the 12-Step pathway has, since 1935, proved to be a tried and tested route to recovery for millions of people. We therefore want Start2Stop clients to be exposed to the 12-Step fellowships and ask that a minimum of one such meeting per week is attended. Many Start2Stop clients will go on to develop deep roots in the Fellowships and others won’t. Either way, we want you to be in a position to make an informed choice about whether 12-Step recovery is right for you.

If you are being treated for alcoholism or drug addiction, then you are not allowed to use any forms of mood-altering substances while on a Start2Stop or Mews House programme. If you are being treated for a behavioural addiction, then we would recommend abstinence from mood and mind altering substances. However, we would allow moderate alcohol use if there was no evidence that you had ever had a co-existing alcohol problem (alongside the behavioural addiction that we are treating you for). We would, though, carefully monitor any such alcohol use.

No. A good definition of a cult is that it takes your money and its members have sex with you. 12-Step fellowships do neither. Rather than being a cult, a 12-Step fellowship is a mutually supportive group of like-minded people who have the shared experience of addiction and a desire to recover from it.

Yes. We undertake to do our best to prevent money being a barrier to entry into our treatment programmes and to this end will try hard to be flexible over payment.