Copyright © Brian Carlson. All rights reserved.

​Addiction

I started my clinical work with people who were court-mandated to receive outpatient treatment for substance abuse. My experiences in six years of work in that environment exposed me to those with addictions to alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, opiates, and heroin.

There are many approaches in working with addiction. No single approach is right or wrong. Based on my training and education, I prefer to work with you on a deeper level. However, in order to proceed in that work together, you must have achieved sobriety, even in the earliest stages. From there, we can look at your substance use as a symptom rather than the problem itself.

Together, we can go beneath the substance use, and view it as a calling…

• Perhaps you may have felt as if you were an outsider, that you were responding to some sort of pressure in order to feel included?
  

• Perhaps your sense of self-worth had somehow become minimized and the drugs or alcohol provided you with a false courage?
  

• Perhaps your substance use provided you the way to self expression, creativity and a connection to the divine?
  

• Maybe you had been fulfilling a family myth of failure?
  

We will seek to connect you to that deeper place in your soul and, in the end, de-mystify your addiction. 

Text to 818.848.9158
Email Brian@BrianCarlsonMFT.com
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Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist