Counselling for substance use: yours, or someone you love's.
Maybe you're questioning your own relationship with alcohol. Maybe you're coming home from treatment. Maybe you're the one holding the household together while someone you love struggles. This is a place where none of it needs explaining.
You don't need a rock bottom to deserve support.
Substance use rarely announces itself. It creeps: a habit that quietly stopped being a choice, a worry about someone you love that's become the background of every day. Wherever you are on that line, it's a fine place to start.
How many of these feel familiar?
If you found yourself nodding, that's not a character flaw. It's a nervous system that's been asked to carry too much for too long. This is exactly the work we do together.
Book a free 15-minute consultationThis isn't about weakness or failure. Often, it's a sign that your system has been under stress for too long without enough support.
Substance use is rarely the whole story.
Nobody sets out to build a problem. Use starts because it works: it takes the edge off the stress, quiets the racing mind, makes the unbearable evening bearable. It's a coping strategy, and usually it's coping with something real. Stress. Trauma. A nervous system that's been in survival mode so long it will take relief from anywhere.
That's why willpower alone so often fails, and why shame makes everything worse. If the use is doing a job, you can't just remove it; you have to understand the job and build something better for it. That's root-cause work: identifying the triggers and the patterns underneath, then replacing the strategy rather than just fighting the symptom.
And it's why the families matter so much. Living alongside someone's use reshapes a household: the vigilance, the covering, the hope that rises and crashes. The people holding it together need support that's about them, not just about the person using. Here, they get it.
If the use is doing a job, you can't just remove it. You have to understand the job, and build something better for it.
Worth knowing: substance use grows out of the same soil as the rest of this practice's work. If stress and depletion are underneath it, the burnout counselling page will sound familiar. If old experiences are driving it, read about the trauma-informed side of Sarah's approach. It's all one system, and we work with all of it.
Certified, experienced, and on your side.
Very few therapists carry real, certified training in substance use. Sarah does. As an Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counsellor (ICADC), she has spent over twenty years supporting people through alcohol and drug use, and supporting the partners, parents, and families who love them.
She works alongside outpatient and inpatient treatment programs, so counselling doesn't stop when a program starts, and doesn't disappear when one ends.
- For you: private, non-judgmental counselling for your own alcohol or drug use, at whatever stage you're at.
- For families: support for the people holding the household together while someone they love struggles.
- Alongside treatment: coordinated counselling before, during, and after outpatient or inpatient programs.
- After treatment: support through the long stretch where programs end and ordinary life begins again.
Root-cause work, not lectures.
You will not be judged here, and you will not be lectured. The work is structured, evidence-based, and honest about how change actually happens.
Start where you are
A free, private conversation about what's been happening. No labels required, no commitments made, and nothing you have to call yourself.
Understand the why
Together we trace what the use is doing for you: the triggers, the stress, the older wounds underneath. Understanding why the behaviour started is what makes changing it possible.
Build the replacement
Healthier coping for the moments that used to lead one place: CBT and mindfulness tools, somatic regulation for cravings and stress, and self-compassion in place of the shame spiral.
Sustain the change
Repairing relationships, rebuilding trust, and putting supports around the recovery, including coordinating with treatment programs where they're part of the picture.
What steadier can look like.
Recovery isn't one destination, and your version won't look like anyone else's. These are the kinds of goals we set together.
- Understanding your triggers instead of being ambushed by them
- Coping skills that hold on the hard nights, not just the easy ones
- Self-compassion where the shame spiral used to run
- Relationships repairing, with communication and boundaries that hold
- For families: a life that isn't organized around someone else's use
- Change that lasts, because it's built on the why, not just the what
In St. Catharines, or wherever you are in Ontario.
Privacy matters in this work, and so does showing up. Both are built in.
In person · Niagara
Sessions take place at the practice at 49 Lake St in St. Catharines. If you're in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Welland, Grimsby, Fort Erie, or anywhere nearby in Niagara, you can do this work face to face.
Virtual · anywhere in Ontario
Secure video sessions ($100 per session) available to Ontario residents, wherever you are in the province. For many people this work is easier to begin from home, and it keeps counselling steady through treatment, work schedules, and everything in between.
Virtual sessions are available to Ontario residents only.
Straightforward fees, and a free first conversation.
- In-person session
- $150 / session
- Virtual session
- $100 / session
- Free 15-minute consultation
- $0
Sliding scale available. Cost shouldn't be the reason you keep carrying this alone. Sliding-scale spots are available for qualifying clients.
Book your free consultationA 24-hour cancellation policy applies to booked sessions.
Sarah changed my life and gave me hope and the support and skill set to follow through on and build a future with purpose, value and loving connections.
Krista · Client
Asked before booking, answered plainly.
Do I have to call it an addiction to come in?
No. Most people who reach out aren't sure what to call it; they just know their relationship with alcohol or a substance has started costing more than it gives. Questioning is enough. There's no label to accept, no admission required at the door, and nothing to prove before the work can start.
What does an ICADC certification actually mean?
ICADC stands for Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counsellor: a credential with specific training, supervised clinical hours, and examination in substance use counselling, held to international standards. Very few general therapists carry it. In practice it means this isn't a sideline here; Sarah has spent over twenty years working with alcohol and drug use and the families around it.
I'm the family member, not the one using. Is this for me?
Yes, genuinely. Loving someone in active use, or in recovery, is its own kind of exhausting: the vigilance, the covering, the hope-and-brace cycle. Family members often hold the household together for years without anyone asking how they're doing. You can come on your own, whether or not the person you love ever seeks help.
Do you replace a treatment program?
No, and that's deliberate. Sarah works alongside outpatient and inpatient treatment: counselling before a program to get ready, during it as personal support, and after it for the long stretch where relapse risk is highest and life has to be rebuilt. If a program is what you need, she'll say so and help you find one.
Will anyone find out I came?
What you share stays between you and Sarah, within the limits every counsellor follows: a risk of serious harm to yourself or someone else, a child in need of protection, or a court order. Those limits are explained clearly before you begin. Your privacy is protected under Ontario law, PHIPA and PIPEDA.
Can substance use counselling be done virtually?
Yes. Virtual sessions run over secure video and are available to Ontario residents, wherever you are in the province. A virtual session is $100. For many people this work is easier to start from home, and privacy is often the reason.
More on the patterns underneath.
Trauma Therapy in St. Catharines
Substance use often grows from unresolved trauma. What trauma therapy is, and how healing actually works.
Read the article Somatic · Nervous systemSomatic Therapy: How Your Body Holds Stress
Cravings and stress live in the body. Body-based regulation is a core part of how this work holds.
Read the article About SarahHer Approach & Credentials
Twenty-plus years, ICADC and trauma certification, and how the modalities fit together in a real session.
Meet SarahStart with a conversation, not a commitment.
No pressure, no obligation: a quiet 15 minutes to see if this feels like the right fit. Reach out, and let's make it happen.
Therapy is not crisis care. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 9-1-1 or go to your nearest emergency department. For 24/7 mental-health crisis support anywhere in Canada, call or text 9-8-8.