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How to Choose the Right Alcohol Support
What are the options?
Many people ask 'Who do I call? My GP? NHS? Charities? Mental Health Services? Groups like AA? How do I find the best option/options for me?'
Find what works for you
It's a personal journey and what helps one person may not suit another, and that's OK. That does not mean one service is 'better' or 'worse' than another; the best option for someone is one that works for them.
Research consistently shows that the strength of the match between an individual and their treatment is one of the strongest predictors of success.
A programme that allows you to feel connected, fits your circumstances and addresses your concerns and goals is far more likely to lead to lasting change than one chosen under pressure or without enough information.
So take your time, keep an open mind and look at a variety of options to see what seems like the best fit.
The web of support
The local Drug & Alcohol service in your area, provided by the Local Authority (e.g. the Council) but which may have some crossover with the NHS.
Everyone in the UK has a right to access free-at-the-point-of-care support through these services.
Your local IAPT service offers free NHS talking therapies for common issues such as anxiety and depression. Alcohol use and depression/anxiety often co-exist — but many specialists advise treating the alcohol issue first.
There are a number of national and local charities that provide support.
Usually local hubs or collections of organisations that support people directly in their community.
Also called Lived Experience Recovery Organisations — run by people who have been through addiction and use their recovery experience to help others.
Made up of people who have lived experience, including SMART Recovery and 12-step groups like AA.
Many private options, including private counsellors, coaching services, detox services and inpatient rehabs.
A variety of self-help and motivational apps that can support people dealing with particular issues, mental health or behavioural change.
What to look for in any provider
Registered and regulated in the provider's own name
- England — Care Quality Commission
- Scotland — Healthcare Improvement Scotland
- Wales — Healthcare Inspectorate Wales
- Northern Ireland — RQIA
Structured aftercare following detox
NICE clinical guideline CG115 recommends that detox should always be followed by ongoing psychosocial intervention. A credible provider will include aftercare as a core part of the programme, not as an optional add-on.
Independently verified outcomes
A personalised clinical approach
Your wider options in the UK
Your GP
Your GP is your advocate for navigating the healthcare service. They are a great resource for continuity of care and liaising between any specialist teams caring for you. If you have general concerns about your mental health then they can be a good resource too.
As Drug & Alcohol Support is usually provided by the Local Authority (council) rather than the NHS, your GP often just signposts you to contact the services directly (they don't usually need to refer you and you can contact them directly).
Your GP cannot usually prescribe specialist medications to help with alcohol dependence. If speaking to your usual GP feels uncomfortable, you can request a different doctor at the same practice or book a telephone appointment.
NHS / Local Authority community alcohol services
Every area in England has NHS-commissioned drug and alcohol services and most accept self-referrals. These typically offer assessment, key work sessions, group therapy and, in some cases, medically supervised detox.
You can find your nearest service using the NHS alcohol support service finder (nhs.uk/service-search) or by searching via FRANK at talktofrank.com.
These services are free and confidential. The trade-off is that waiting times and treatment intensity vary by area, and the level of ongoing support may be less structured than a private programme.
Private residential rehabilitation
Residential rehab provides an immersive, structured environment away from daily life. Stays typically range from 28 days upwards and costs vary significantly from around £6,000 for a four-week programme to considerably more for specialist or luxury facilities.
Before committing, check CQC registration, ask about aftercare provision and review their most recent CQC inspection report at cqc.org.uk/care-services.
Residential treatment can be the right choice for people who need a period of complete separation from their environment, or whose home circumstances are not safe for a home-based approach. It is generally not necessary for everyone and the evidence on long-term outcomes is mixed unless robust aftercare is included.
Peer support groups
Peer support provides something clinical treatment often cannot: the experience of being genuinely understood by someone who has been where you are.
12-Step / 'Fellowship' Meetings (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous)
SMART Recovery UK
Both are free, require no referral and you can attend to listen before deciding.
Counselling, therapy and recovery coaching
One-to-one support
Valuable at any stage. The BACP therapist directory at bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists lets you search for accredited counsellors by specialism, including alcohol and addiction.
Trauma-informed
Such as EMDR or trauma-focused CBT can be particularly relevant for people whose drinking is connected to past experiences.
Recovery coaching
This is a distinct discipline from clinical therapy. Coaches work alongside you to build practical, social, and personal resources that sustain long-term change.
J2 ARMS
Our partner, J2 ARMS, offers personalised recovery coaching pathways designed to support individuals before, during, and after clinical treatment. More at j2arms.com.
Helplines and information services
Drinkline
0300 123 1110. Free national alcohol helpline. Weekdays 9am–8pm, weekends 11am–4pm.
Drinkaware
Independent information, self-assessment tools, and a service finder at drinkaware.co.uk.
Alcohol Change UK
Guides, research, and tools including the Try Dry app. More at alcoholchange.org.uk.
With You
Free drug and alcohol support across England and Scotland at wearewithyou.org.uk.
For people in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland
Scotland
Contact your local Alcohol and Drug Partnership, or call Drinkline Scotland on 0800 731 4314.
Wales
DAN 24/7 is a free, bilingual helpline available 24 hours on 0808 808 2234.
Northern Ireland
Lifeline helpline on 0808 808 8000, or search via the Public Health Agency.
Support for family and friends
Al-Anon (al-anonuk.org.uk) offers meetings and a helpline for families and friends. Nacoa (nacoa.org.uk) provides a free helpline for children and young people affected by a parent's drinking.
Making a decision
If you are comparing providers, use the criteria in this guide to ask informed questions. A good provider will welcome that scrutiny.
A few things worth remembering
Reach out
There is no obligation, no pressure, we just want to support you whether that is with our programme, or helping you find another service that works for you.
Why Clean Slate Clinic exists
NHS services offer valuable support, but demand can mean long waits and limited treatment. Residential rehab means weeks away from your life at considerable cost. Detox-only services address withdrawal, though the research is clear that detox without psychosocial aftercare does not work in the longer term.
Clean Slate sits between the two. Clinically rigorous, medically supervised and structured for the long term, delivered in your own home.
This is what Clean Slate looks like in practice
Doctor-led and CQC-registered
A 12-month programme, not a quick detox
Home-based by design
Independently verified outcomes
A social enterprise, not a volume business
Suitability matters to us
Who Clean Slate works well for
Many of our clients are professionals who have been functioning outwardly while struggling privately; people who need a programme that takes both the clinical and the practical realities of their situation seriously.
If that describes your situation, you can take our confidential suitability assessment or book a call with the team to find out more.
Latest articles
Clean Slate Clinic named a finalist in the UK Social Enterprise Awards 2026
A different way to do business
Social enterprises are businesses that trade for a social or environmental purpose, and reinvest at least half their profits to further that mission.
Our vision for what comes next
Earlier this year, we published a white paper with addiction charity Adfam and the University of Sussex. It found that over 17 million Britons may be drinking at dangerous levels without knowing it, and that long NHS waiting lists, fear of stigma and the cost of private treatment stop many people from asking for help.
Our vision is to help move alcohol care away from crisis-led, in-person models and towards earlier, digitally enabled support in the community. Medically supervised home detox reduces treatment costs compared with in-patient care, which means more people can get the right help, sooner.
We’ve now supported more than 5,000 people across Australia and the UK, and earlier this year we were named Impact Enterprise of the Year at the 2026 Australian Impact Investment Awards. Being shortlisted here in the UK is a proud moment for our growing UK team.
Commenting on being a UK Social Enterprise Awards finalist, Dr Aaron Brown, GP and Managing Director of Clean Slate Clinic UK, said:
Dr Aaron Brown,GP and Managing Director, Clean Slate Clinic UK
Find out moreabout the UK Social Enterprise Awards at socialenterprise.org.uk.
Alice's Story
Alice doesn’t fit the picture most people have in their heads when they think about alcohol dependence. She was a top-20 junior Australian tennis player in her teens, training daily on a tennis scholarship in the United States. She finished her university degree while competing. She came home to Tasmania and built a career in tourism, working as a travel writer for Tourism Tasmania, launching her own tourism brand, Tailored Tasmania, and even building a home that featured on Grand Designs Australia. She hosted events that drew hundreds of people. On paper, she was thriving.
The drinking sat alongside all of that.
She wasn’t waking every morning needing a drink. She wasn’t unemployed. She wasn’t visibly unravelling in public, at least not at first.
“I could hold everything together. Until I couldn’t.”
“Who have I let down this time?”
For a long time the daytime version of Alice’s life held. She was working, exercising, socialising, showing up. But she was also drinking before catch-ups, cancelling plans, and waking with a familiar dread, trying to piece together what she’d said or done the night before.
“I’d wake up thinking, who have I let down? What did I say? How has the ‘agent of chaos’ caused damage this time?"
Where it began
Alice knew from a young age that she was gay. Growing up in a Catholic community in 1990s Tasmania, she learned early that it felt safer to keep that to herself, and the strain of hiding, year after year, was isolating. Drinking became a way to cope.
“It was easier to adopt the A-student and tennis player identity than to be honest about who I was, at a time when being gay was still illegal in Tassie.”
It softened the nervousness and added a bit of excitement to social occasions. At first it was ordinary teenage binge drinking; a way to fit in and kiss the boys. Over time, it became something she reached for whenever she felt overwhelmed or unmoored.
Coming back from the United States in her early twenties made that worse, not better. She’d lost the daily structure of elite sport, and the identity that came with it.
“I went from training three hours a day to not knowing who I was. I thought I’d come home and my Aussie life would be where I left it. Naturally, it doesn’t work like that.”
The revolving door
Alice entered rehab for the first time in 2008. Over the following years, she would return again and again, twenty-six admissions in total.
Each one followed the same pattern. She’d detox safely. She’d stabilise. She’d feel clear-headed and determined. Then she’d be discharged, and within days, weeks or months, she’d relapse.
For a long time she saw that as a personal failing. She doesn’t anymore. After detox, cravings intensify, sleep is disrupted, emotions run close to the surface, and life picks straight back up at full pace. Without structured follow-up, Alice now understands that relapse is common. Not because people are weak, but because the scaffolding drops away the moment they walk out the door. And in Tasmania, ongoing specialist care was hard to come by. The support was concentrated in acute settings, and aftercare was thin.
The admissions began to feel like a loop.
“I’d see the same faces. Patients coming back. Not because they didn’t want to get better, but because there was nowhere else to land, and we’d hit repeat on the same programme of support. I feel most grateful for the soft landing, but something was missing for me, personally. I haven’t been back to rehab since 2019 … another way called.”
High-functioning, and hiding
Throughout all of it, Alice kept working. She kept up relationships. She kept exercising. She appeared, to most people, entirely capable, and that contrast created its own kind of isolation despite the unwavering support of family and close friends throughout her plight.
At home, she hid bottles in the washing basket or outdoor shrubs.. She rearranged plans around access to alcohol. She got very good at playing down how much she’d had.
“Managing a drinking life is a full time job. It’s exhausting.”
She’s someone who tends towards all-or-nothing, she says, and that ran through everything.
“If I trained, it wasn’t for a 5k but for a marathon. If I drank, I applied the same rigour and drank hard.”
In recovery models that measured sobriety in days, a single slip felt catastrophic, enough to trigger a spiral of self-reproach. It took years to understand that a relapse didn’t erase everything that came before it.
“You can learn from it, use it as a data point. Or you can punish yourself. Punishment never worked for me.”
A different approach
The shift came when Alice found recovery framed not as moral correction, but as long-term medical care.
Through Clean Slate Clinic, she came across a model that carried on well past detox. Telehealth consultations gave her continuity. Regular check-ins created accountability without shame. Most importantly, the support continued through the period that had always undone her before: the weeks and months after the initial withdrawal, when she was at her most vulnerable.
Rather than hoping she’d simply be stronger this time, she had structure. She was helped to plan for the moments she knew were coming: Christmas, birthdays, work events, grief, loneliness.
“I remember smiling with relief during my first doctor consult with Clean Slate. Finally I was heard, met right where I was in a non-judgemental and deeply encouraging way. Suddenly the journey ahead, no matter how apprehensive I was about it, felt shared with experts. These were professionals who could anticipate the bumps, offering guidance as we navigated the challenges and triumphs across a full year. The acceptance and kindness I felt through this comprehensive care ... really mattered.”
Life now
Alice is sober, and open about who she is and her recovery. She trains for marathons. She runs trails. Climbs mountains. She wakes up without dread.
Hard days still come. The difference is that she meets them head-on.
“If the day turns south, I deal with it. I sit in the hard feelings and don’t soak them with alcohol. Nothing is unmanageable this way.”
What had been missing through all those years of crisis and discharge, Alice came to understand, was connection. Not just clinical containment, but people who stayed alongside her, and a reason to stay present in her own life. The support that finally held was the kind that didn’t end when the detox did.
Today, that connection looks like wellness retreats she runs in Tasmania through Wild Wellness Method, movement and conversation, and mornings that begin clear-headed rather than guilt-filled. The small things, a friend reaching out, a plan she can keep, are the ones that tell her how far she’s come.
The shame that kept her silent for so long has softened, and she talks about all of it now because she knows how many capable, high-functioning people are quietly wondering whether they’re the only ones who can’t “just moderate.” She shares her story in the hope that it gives others permission to talk.
“It’s a lonely bloody road when you try to battle it on your own.”
She believes remorse and secrecy are weary sisters of drinking itself. Once people know you’re struggling, she says, they don’t want to see you drink, so you get better at hiding it.
“It just becomes more secretive and shameful. In turn, the people I loved the most had to suffer through my dishonest ways when it came to the bottle. Values I stood by were drowned by taking another sip.”
If she could say one thing to someone stuck in that cycle, it would be this: don’t go it alone.
“The opposite of addiction is connection. If you’ve tried shifting your relationship with alcohol alone before … How has that gone for you? Don’t take 30 years to climb out like me … fast track the journey and grab a trusted hand … a guide by your side.”
Reclaiming Life: Home Detox & Healing with Dr Aaron Brown
Reclaiming Life: Home Detox & Healing with Dr Aaron Brown
In a recent episode of the Your Choices Matter podcast, host David Lilley sat down with Dr Aaron Brown, Managing Director of Clean Slate Clinic UK, for an honest conversation about alcohol dependence and what it actually takes to break free. Aaron brings a rare combination of clinical rigour and lived experience: a York Medical School graduate and former GP partner, he faced his own cycle of dependence after shielding through the 2020 pandemic.
Listen to the podcast & learn more
- Clean Slate Clinic UK: explore the 12-month home detox programme or book a free exploratory call
- Care Quality Commission (CQC): verify clinical registration details
- SMART Recovery UK: self-empowered recovery tools
- Adfam: support for families affected by substance use
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