Addiction and alcohol treatment for Nairobi, online
For clients in Nairobi and across Kenya, Dr Philippe Jacquet offers confidential one-to-one addiction treatment online by secure video, in English and French. He trained at the Hazelden Foundation and at Hope-One, has practised for twenty-five years, and works from Harley Street in London.
Specialist addiction provision of this depth is not easy to reach locally, and for professionals, diplomatic staff and members of the international community, the difficulty is rarely only availability. It is visibility.
Why drinking behaves differently here
This is worth setting out plainly, because people arriving at it privately tend to assume the problem is theirs alone.
Expatriate and professional Nairobi has a drinking culture that is unusually permissive and unusually invisible at the same time. Alcohol is cheap, socialising is domestic and club-based, and there is almost always something on: the Friday circuit in Westlands, the long lunches in Karen, the leaving drinks for someone rotating out, which happen most months because someone is always rotating out.
Three things follow.
The first is that heavy drinking is not deviant here. It is the social norm of the group, which means the ordinary signals that would prompt reflection at home — a friend’s raised eyebrow, a partner’s comment — simply never arrive. Everyone is doing it.
The second is that the people who would have noticed a change in you over two years are on another continent, hearing the edited version on a call.
The third is that consumption is largely private. Drinking happens at home, at the compound, with staff present who will not comment. Nobody is counting. Very often the only person aware of the true quantity is the person drinking, and, eventually, one other person in the household who has begun quietly monitoring and has nobody to check their perception against.
The pattern in humanitarian and field work
For those rotating into Somalia, South Sudan, eastern DRC or Sudan, the drinking follows a shape that is recognisable across the sector.
Field postings are dry, or effectively so. R&R in Nairobi is not. The result is a compressed, intense pattern of consumption tied to decompression, which the person reads as earned rather than as a problem, and which is difficult to evaluate because it is not continuous.
Underneath, alcohol is doing specific work: closing down what was seen, producing sleep that will not come otherwise, and creating the only reliable off-switch in a life organised around being available. That is not weakness. It is a functioning solution, and it is precisely why willpower does not shift it. The solution has to be understood before it can be given up, or something else takes its place.
What else comes up
Alcohol is the most common presentation from Nairobi, but the work covers the range: cocaine, cannabis, khat, prescription medication, gambling, and sex and pornography addiction. Khat is worth naming because it is legal, culturally embedded and socially normalised in the region, and consequently almost never assessed — a chewing habit that has quietly become structural, with a real effect on sleep, mood and work.
Where addiction sits alongside depression, anxiety or trauma, the two are treated as one connected picture rather than referred out separately. Where there is trauma underneath — which in this population there very often is — EMDR can form part of the work once there is enough stability for it, though not before.
Why people here do not use the help they have
Most international organisations in Nairobi provide staff counselling or an employee assistance programme, and many people will not go near them.
The reason is rarely the quality of the service. It is that the service sits inside the same institution as the career. Even where confidentiality is properly maintained, the counsellor attends the same briefings and knows the same people. For someone whose next posting, security clearance or field eligibility depends on being seen as robust, that proximity is enough to keep them silent for years, while the drinking continues.
An independent practitioner in London removes the calculation. No organisational relationship, no local record, no shared file, nothing that can reach a mission or an employer.
How the work is done
Addiction is not a moral failure. It is a relationship between a person and a substance that once did something useful and has become the problem in its own right. The work is to understand what it was managing, address that directly, and build a life that does not require it.
That is rarely quick, and it is not primarily about willpower. Recovery is a process rather than an event, and the durable change comes from what sits underneath — usually trauma, anxiety, or a difficulty in regulating emotional states that predates the drinking by decades.
Dr Jacquet is also in long-term recovery himself. That is mentioned not as biography but because it changes what is possible in the room: he is not working from theory about what the pull feels like, and clients generally recognise the difference within a session or two.
Where twelve-step involvement is useful it is supported, and Nairobi has meetings in English; where it is not the right fit, the work proceeds without it.
Related services for Nairobi
See all services for Nairobi and Kenya, or read more about the practice’s addiction specialism.
A first conversation is confidential and without commitment: get in touch.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
How the work is delivered from here
All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.
For clinicians and treatment services
Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.
Common questions
Is addiction treatment available online in Nairobi?
Yes. Sessions are delivered online by secure encrypted video, with the same clinical depth as in-person work, from anywhere in Nairobi or Kenya. Scheduling fits East Africa Time, which sits two hours ahead of London, and the work continues uninterrupted through deployment, travel and relocation.
Will my employer or my organisation find out?
No. The practice is independent and based in London, entirely outside any Nairobi organisation, mission or staff welfare structure. Nothing is disclosed to an employer, an HR department, a staff counsellor, an insurer or a family member without your consent, save for the narrow legal and safeguarding limits every registered practitioner is bound by, which are explained at the outset. For people whose next posting depends on being seen as reliable, that separation is usually the reason they make contact at all.
Do I have to stop drinking before I get in touch?
No. Most people who make contact are still drinking, and many are not yet sure they want to stop. That is a legitimate starting point rather than a disqualification. The first conversation is about understanding what the drinking is doing and what would need to change, not about extracting a commitment.
What is Dr Jacquet's experience with addiction?
He trained as an addiction specialist at the Hazelden Foundation in the United States and at Hope-One, has 25 years of clinical practice with alcohol, drug, gambling, sex and behavioural addiction, spent nine years working inside private residential treatment and more than five supervising the clinical team of a private residential addiction clinic and of a private psychiatric hospital. He is also in long-term recovery himself.
Do you work in English?
Yes, in English and French. Nairobi has a substantial francophone community through the UN agencies, the diplomatic missions and the regional NGOs, and sessions are available in either language.