Psychotherapy
Motivational interviewing helps you explore your own reasons for change, and cognitive behavioural therapy with relapse prevention builds practical skills for managing cravings, triggers and high-risk situations.
Condition
Alcohol Use Disorder
When drinking starts to take more than it gives, help can make a real difference.
Alcohol use disorder is a health condition in which drinking becomes hard to control, even when it is causing problems with health, family, work or mood. It develops gradually, and many people don’t notice how much it has changed until someone close to them raises it.
It is not a weakness of character. Alcohol changes the brain’s reward and stress systems over time, which is why cutting down can feel so difficult and why withdrawal can be physically unpleasant or even dangerous.
With the right support — safe withdrawal care where needed, talking therapy, medication and relapse prevention — many people reduce or stop drinking and rebuild the parts of life alcohol had taken over.
Understand the person. Understand the problem. Find the right path forward.
How it may show up
What Alcohol Use Disorder can look like
Everyone’s experience is different. You may recognise some of these, and not others.
Thoughts
- Thinking about drinking often
- Promising to cut down, then not managing to
- Minimising how much you drink
- Planning the day around alcohol
Emotions
- Guilt or shame after drinking
- Irritability when unable to drink
- Low mood or anxiety, especially the next day
- Drinking to cope with stress or feelings
Body
- Needing more to feel the same effect
- Shakiness, sweating or nausea in the morning
- Poor sleep
- Stomach, liver or blood-pressure problems
Behaviour
- Drinking more or longer than intended
- Missing work or family commitments
- Hiding or downplaying drinking
- Giving up activities once enjoyed
Understanding the condition
Why drinking can become hard to control
Alcohol brings quick relief from stress, low mood or discomfort. Over time the brain learns to link certain situations with drinking, so cravings appear automatically. The relief is short-lived, the consequences build up — and those consequences can become new triggers, keeping the cycle going. Treatment works by breaking the cycle at several points.
- Trigger
- Craving
- Drinking
- Short-term relief
- Consequences
- Repetition
…and the cycle repeats.
Assessment at Psymate
The right treatment begins with the right understanding.
- Presenting symptoms
- Severity
- Duration and course
- Functional impact
- Associated psychiatric symptoms
- Physical and neurological factors
- Sleep
- Substance use
- Previous treatment
- Family history where relevant
- Risk and safety
- Structured screening of alcohol use, such as AUDIT
- Quantity, pattern and history of drinking
- Past withdrawal symptoms, including seizures or confusion
- Physical health review, including liver function and other medical checks
Start with a conversation
A clinician will take a careful history with you — and, where it helps, with people who know you well — to understand what is happening.
Psychiatry — the clinical core
Psychiatry means more than medication.
Your psychiatrist brings together diagnosis, clinical formulation, treatment selection, coordination of care, measurement and review.
PsychotherapyPharmacotherapyNeuromodulationLifestyle & Sleep InterventionsFamily CareRehabilitation
One person. One clinical plan. Multiple therapeutic modalities.
Treatment
How Alcohol Use Disorder is treated
Treatment is planned around you. These are the core approaches your care may draw on.
Explore Psymate Therapy
Pharmacotherapy
Medication can make withdrawal safer and, afterwards, can reduce cravings or support staying alcohol-free. Your psychiatrist chooses based on your health, liver function and goals, monitors you closely and reviews the plan regularly.
Emerging evidence
Neuromodulation
Brain stimulation such as TMS is being studied as a way to reduce alcohol craving, but it is still a research area and not a standard treatment. Your psychiatrist can discuss whether it is relevant to you.
Additional care
Care shaped around this condition
Withdrawal Management
Medically supervised detoxification, at home or in a residential setting depending on risk, so that stopping drinking is safe and as comfortable as possible.
Craving Management
A combination of skills, support and, where suitable, medication to help manage cravings in the weeks and months after stopping.
Integrated care pathway
One connected path, from first conversation to lasting change.
- ASSESSA full picture of what you are experiencing
- UNDERSTANDA clear formulation, shared with you
- PERSONALISEA plan built around your goals
- TREATWithdrawal management + Psychotherapy + Relapse prevention
- MEASUREProgress tracked, not assumed
- REFINECare adjusted as you change
What recovery can look like
Recovery is more than fewer symptoms.
Safer, more controlled drinking or sustained abstinence
Better sleep and physical health
Rebuilt trust in relationships
Steadier work and daily routine
A relapse-prevention plan you can rely on
Change is possible at any stage, and a slip along the way is a part of recovery to learn from — not a reason to give up.
When to seek help
Consider an assessment when:
- You have tried to cut down and found it hard
- You need a drink in the morning to feel steady
- Drinking is affecting your health, work or family
- Symptoms are persistent or keep coming back
- They are causing you significant distress
- They are affecting relationships, work or education
- They are interfering with daily functioning
- They are becoming difficult to control
Urgent help
- Seizures, severe confusion or hallucinations while cutting down or stopping drinking
- Vomiting blood, yellowing of the skin or eyes, or severe abdominal pain
- Immediate risk of suicide
- Serious risk of self-harm
- Severe behavioural disturbance
- Being unable to keep yourself or others safe
- An acute medical or psychiatric emergency
The Psymate promise
What you can expect from us
- You will be heard.
- Your symptoms will be understood in context.
- Your treatment will be planned, not simply prescribed.
- Your progress will be measured.
- Your care will evolve with you.
You are a person before you are a diagnosis.
Begin Care
You don’t need to know what treatment you need before seeking help.
That is what assessment is for.
PSYMATE
Passion for healing meets the power of technology.
Science-led. Human-centred. Connected across the journey.