Addiction & recovery
Motivation, urges, relapse, and the families that surround them.
In this guide
Motivational interviewing and DBT skills for substance use, behavioral addictions, and the family systems that develop around them. Worksheets for cravings, HALT checks, and relapse prevention.
Modalities
The therapies most relevant to this topic.
Motivational Interviewing
Evoke the client's own reasons for change instead of arguing for it.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Acceptance and change, held together — a skills-based therapy for emotion dysregulation.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Stop fighting your inner experience; start moving toward what matters.
Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Depression is treated by working on the interpersonal context that surrounds it.
Disorders
First-line picks and clinical guidance for the presentations under this topic.
Substance Use Disorders
Problematic use across alcohol, opioids, stimulants, cannabis, or other substances.
Combined approaches outperform single modalities. Engagement and ambivalence work (MI) precedes change-focused treatment. Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is essential for opioid and alcohol use disorders.
Behavioral Addictions
Compulsive engagement in non-substance behaviors (gambling, gaming, pornography, shopping) despite harm.
Gambling disorder is the only DSM-5 behavioral addiction, but treatment principles generalize. Combine motivational engagement, stimulus control, cognitive work on distortions (gambler's fallacy, escape coping), and relapse prevention.
Worksheets
Free, printable, Quick-Send to clients.
Worked cases
Anonymized vignettes with formulation across 2–3 modalities.
How-to
Step-by-step walkthroughs.