Many couples in Brighton and Hove reach a point where they can no longer pretend that one person’s drinking or drug use is just their problem. It seeps into everything — the silences at the dinner table, the way plans get cancelled, the exhaustion of the partner who has quietly been holding things together for longer than they can remember.

If you recognise any of that, you are not alone. And you have not failed.

Addiction rarely affects just one person. It reshapes the entire relationship — the trust, the routines, the day-to-day availability, the sense of safety. Getting the right support for both of you can be the difference between a relationship that slowly falls apart and one that finds a way forward.

Brighton and Hove: A City With a Hidden Weight

Brighton and Hove is a city many people love. The Royal Pavilion rising at the heart of it, the curve of the seafront, the South Downs rolling behind — there is a particular quality to life here that draws people and keeps them.

Yet underneath that, the city carries a serious public health problem. Brighton and Hove has the seventh-highest death rate from drug misuse in England — 12.7 per 100,000 people, more than double the national rate of 5.2.¹ Deaths linked directly to alcohol sit at 21.8 per 100,000, well above the national figure.²

These are not abstract statistics. They represent families, couples, and individuals — people who walked past the Lanes or sat on the shingle at low tide — who did not get the help they needed in time.

Around 10.6% of the city’s population identifies as LGBTQ+, compared to a national average of 3%.³ About 20% of residents were born outside the UK.⁴ These figures matter because people in marginalised groups often face greater pressures — discrimination, financial stress, social isolation — that raise the risk of harmful substance use and make it harder to ask for help.

Brighton’s busy night-time scene can create an atmosphere where substance use feels ordinary. Over half of residents in some surveys say that drug dealing or use is a serious problem in their neighbourhood.⁵ For couples in recovery, or trying to support a partner through it, that backdrop adds real pressure.

What Addiction Does to a Relationship

When one partner is using — whether alcohol, opiates, cocaine, or anything else — the relationship starts to organise itself around the substance. It becomes the silent third party in every conversation, every decision, every argument.

The partner who is not using often ends up in a role they never signed up for. They watch for warning signs. They cover for the other person. They absorb the fallout. Constant alertness becomes their default. They may feel love, exhaustion, resentment, and grief all at once — sometimes within the same hour.

The person using is rarely simply choosing this. Shame sits at the centre of most addiction. The cycle tends to run like this: using leads to guilt, guilt increases emotional pain, emotional pain increases the urge to use again. The relationship can become a place where that shame gets reflected back — even unintentionally — making genuine connection harder just when it is needed most.

Neither partner is the villain of this story. Both are caught in something larger than either of them chose.

Why Individual Therapy Alone Often Is Not Enough

Individual therapy has a clear and valuable place in addiction recovery. But for couples, working with only one person — separate from the relationship they return to each evening — leaves a great deal unaddressed.

Relationship problems increase the risk of returning to substance use, and continued use deepens relationship difficulties.⁶ These two things feed each other. Treating them separately, without looking at how they interact, often means working against the grain.

Behavioural Couples Therapy (BCT) was developed specifically for this. Rather than treating the individual alone, it works with the couple together as the focus of change. The research behind it is strong. Reviews of multiple clinical studies show that couples who receive BCT report higher rates of staying off substances, greater relationship satisfaction, and significantly fewer harmful incidents — including domestic conflict — compared to those in individual therapy alone.⁷

The results from these studies tell a clear story:

The gains grow stronger over time. That matters.

The Recovery Agreement: A Daily Practice for Rebuilding Trust

One of the central tools in BCT is called a Recovery Agreement — a simple daily practice between partners that builds both accountability and connection.

In practice, this typically means the person in recovery makes a clear, daily statement of their intention not to use. Their partner responds not by checking up on them, but by offering genuine support for that commitment. Where medication is part of the treatment plan, a partner may be present when it is taken — not as a form of control, but as a shared act of care.

Two ideas worth distinguishing here are interdependency and codependency. Codependency is where one person loses themselves entirely in managing the other. Interdependency means two people actively choosing to support each other — with clear roles, honest communication, and mutual respect.

This is care with structure. For many couples, that structure is what makes real connection feel possible again.

How The Hove Counselling Practice Works

The Hove Counselling Practice works with individuals and couples affected by addiction using an approach shaped around the people in the room, rather than a fixed formula.

Claire Sainsbury, the practice’s lead therapist, holds MBACP accreditation, an MSc, and Advanced Level 3 certification in EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique). The practice draws on several well-researched approaches, applied with professional judgement and genuine care.

EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique)

EFT Tapping involves gently tapping on specific points on the body — the same points used in acupuncture — while focusing on a distressing thought or memory. This helps reduce the emotional intensity attached to past experiences. For people whose substance use is connected to past trauma — which is very common — EFT Tapping can help them process what has felt too heavy to face alone. It gives the body and mind a way to move through difficult experiences rather than staying stuck in them.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

DBT teaches practical skills for managing strong emotions. For couples where one or both partners struggle with intense feelings — something addiction both causes and worsens — DBT gives concrete tools: how to notice a trigger before it turns into a reaction, how to stay present during a hard conversation, how to sit with distress without letting it drive behaviour.

Transactional Analysis (TA)

TA helps couples understand the unspoken roles they have gradually taken on. In many relationships affected by addiction, a pattern forms: one partner becomes the rescuer — warning, managing, protecting — while the other pulls against it. Understanding how these roles developed, and how they keep the cycle going, creates real room to change them.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

Where EFT Tapping works with individual trauma responses, Emotionally Focused Therapy focuses on the relationship itself. It helps couples see the patterns that have formed between them — one chasing, the other pulling away; one getting angry, the other shutting down — and works toward building a more secure emotional connection beneath those patterns.

The Shame Cycle: What Keeps People Stuck

Addiction and shame are closely linked. Most people using in harmful ways are not unaware that something is wrong. They know. The shame of that awareness is often part of what makes stopping feel impossible.

This can be especially true in a city like Brighton and Hove, where a culture of openness and acceptance can paradoxically make it harder to admit to a struggle. People may feel they should be fine, that help is available, that they have no excuse. That internal pressure adds to what they are already carrying.

When shame is not addressed in therapy, recovery can become a performance rather than a real process. The work at The Hove Counselling Practice creates conditions where both partners can speak honestly — about what has happened, what they feel, and what they are afraid of — without fear of judgement.

The relationship does not need to be perfect for this to help. It needs to be honest enough to work with.

Supporting Couples Where One or Both Partners Are Neurodiverse

Brighton and Hove has a notably high proportion of residents who are neurodiverse — including people with ADHD, autism, and related conditions. In couples where this applies, addiction can sometimes develop as a way of coping: alcohol to ease social anxiety, stimulants to help with focus, cannabis to manage sensory overload.

Recovery in these situations calls for a different approach. Communication styles that work well for other couples may not translate here. Sessions may involve clearer structure, more direct language, and attention to what makes the environment of therapy itself more comfortable.

The Hove Counselling Practice works with neurodiverse couples by adjusting the approach to fit the people — rather than expecting clients to fit a standard model.

What Recovery Looks Like for the Relationship Over Time

Recovery from addiction is rarely a single turning point. It tends to happen in stages, and the relationship moves through those stages too.

In the early stage, both partners may be grieving — not just the substance, but the relationship they had hoped for, or the time that feels lost. That grief is real and worth sitting with rather than rushing past.

As things stabilise, therapy can turn toward something more hopeful: what does this relationship want to become? What new experiences, conversations, and shared moments can replace those that were built around substance use?

The Effect on Children and Home Life

When addiction affects a couple, it rarely stays contained to just the two of them. Children in the home are affected — often quietly, often significantly. When parents engage in couples-focused addiction therapy, there is a direct reduction in the risk of harm to children, and a real improvement in how children cope emotionally and day to day.⁸

There is also a well-established link between substance misuse and conflict at home. BCT addresses this directly — helping couples communicate in ways that stop arguments from escalating quickly into something harmful. Couples who receive BCT show significantly lower rates of domestic violence than those in individual therapy alone.⁹

For many families in Brighton and Hove, this is the most important finding of all.

Sessions and Costs

The Hove Counselling Practice works with couples and individuals across Brighton and Hove, and the wider Sussex area. Sessions are available in person and online.

Individual counselling: £90 per session Couples counselling: £110 per session

The practice is led by Claire Sainsbury, MBACP Accredited, MSc — a therapist with extensive experience working with relationship difficulties, trauma, and addiction.

The Wider Support Network in Brighton

The Hove Counselling Practice works alongside the broader network of services in the city. The Brighton & Hove Drugs and Alcohol Strategy 2024–2030 commits to expanding support and improving outcomes for people with complex needs.¹⁰ Local services such as the Oasis Project and Young Oasis offer family-centred support, particularly where children are involved. Change Grow Live (CGL) supports people moving from prison into community treatment, with a success rate of 63% — well above the national average of 48%.¹¹

Specialist couples therapy sits within this wider picture — addressing something that many statutory services cannot: the relationship itself, and the long-term work of rebuilding trust.

If Any of This Feels Familiar

You may have been holding this for a long time. Carrying the worry quietly, or having the same conversation over and over without anything changing. That kind of prolonged tension is exhausting, and it makes sense to feel uncertain about what help would even look like.

Therapy cannot promise specific outcomes. What it can do is offer a space to slow things down — to speak honestly, to feel heard without judgement, and to begin working out what the next step might be.

If you would like to speak with The Hove Counselling Practice about couples or individual counselling for addiction in Brighton and Hove, you are welcome to get in touch.

Visit: thehovecounsellingpractice.co.uk/contact Call: 07947 073298

You do not have to carry this alone.

References

¹ Brighton & Hove Combatting Drugs Partnership. Drug-related mortality statistics, Brighton and Hove. Local data, 2023–2024.

² Brighton & Hove Public Health. Alcohol-specific mortality rates. East Sussex health intelligence data.

³ Office for National Statistics. Sexual orientation, UK: 2021 Census. ONS, 2023.

⁴ Brighton & Hove City Council. Population and migration statistics. Local authority data, 2023.

⁵ Brighton & Hove Community Safety Survey. Perceptions of drug use in local neighbourhoods. Local government attitudinal survey.

⁶ Fals-Stewart, W., O’Farrell, T.J., & Birchler, G.R. (2004). Behavioral couples therapy for substance abuse: Rationale, methods, and findings. Science & Practice Perspectives, 2(2), 30–41.

⁷ Powers, M.B., Vedel, E., & Emmelkamp, P.M.G. (2008). Behavioral couples therapy (BCT) for alcohol and drug use disorders: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 28(6), 952–962.

⁸ O’Farrell, T.J., & Clements, K. (2012). Review of outcome research on marital and family therapy in treatment for alcoholism. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 38(1), 122–144.

⁹ Fals-Stewart, W., Kashdan, T.B., O’Farrell, T.J., & Birchler, G.R. (2002). Behavioral couples therapy for drug-abusing patients: Effects on partner violence. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 22(2), 87–96.

¹⁰ Brighton & Hove City Council. Brighton & Hove Drugs and Alcohol Strategy 2024–2030. Brighton: BHCC, 2024.

¹¹ Change Grow Live. Treatment outcomes and community reintegration data. CGL Annual Report, 2024.