Compassionate, Evidence-Based Psychotherapy for Lasting Change
At The Terrebonne Group, we understand that struggling with substance use can affect every part of a person’s life — relationships, work, physical health, and sense of self. Reaching out for help takes courage, and our team in New Orleans is here to meet you with warmth, expertise, and a genuine belief in your capacity to heal.
We provide psychotherapy support for adults who are questioning their relationship with alcohol or other substances, who want to cut back or stop, and who are working through the emotional and life circumstances connected to their substance use. We also treat the anxiety, depression, and trauma that so often accompany it. When someone needs a more intensive level of care than outpatient psychotherapy can provide, we help them find it.
What we do not offer is an addiction treatment program. We are not a rehabilitation facility, an intensive outpatient program, a detox provider, or a prescriber of addiction medications. What we offer instead is a thoughtful first conversation, real psychotherapy, and an honest assessment of what would help.
Contact us today to schedule a confidential consultation.
Who We Can Help
Our substance use support is a good fit if you are:
Wondering whether your drinking or substance use has become a problem
Wanting to moderate your use, or to stop altogether, with professional support
In early recovery and looking for psychotherapy alongside other supports
Working through the anxiety, depression, trauma, or life stressors underneath your substance use
Seeking guidance about what level of care you actually need
Supporting a family member and trying to understand your options
Our support may not be the right fit on its own if you are experiencing severe withdrawal, need medical detoxification, require medication for opioid or alcohol use disorder, or need the structure of a residential or intensive outpatient program. If that is where you are, we will tell you honestly and help you get there.
Understanding Substance Use Disorders
Substance use disorders develop when the repeated use of alcohol or other substances begins to change a person’s brain, behavior, and ability to function. According to the American Psychiatric Association, substance use disorders are diagnosed using criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and range from mild to severe depending on how many symptoms are present.
Substance use disorder symptoms vary by substance type, but common symptoms include cravings, loss of control over use, continued use despite harm, and withdrawal symptoms when use stops. Many people also experience a growing tolerance, meaning they need more of a substance to feel the same effect. Signs of substance use disorder include neglecting responsibilities, withdrawing from loved ones, and seeking medical care for symptoms related to drug use.
It is important to understand that addiction is a chronic disease, not a moral failing. The National Institute on Drug Abuse emphasizes that substance use disorders affect the same regions of the brain involved in reward, motivation, and self-control. Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that addiction reshapes these circuits over time. Like other chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure, addiction requires ongoing management and care rather than a one-time fix.
Substance use disorders rarely exist in isolation. Co-occurring mental health disorders — such as depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder — frequently accompany substance misuse. When these conditions occur together, treating both generally produces better outcomes. This is where our practice does some of its most valuable work: we treat the co-occurring mental health conditions that sustain substance use, whether or not your more intensive substance use care happens elsewhere.
Common Symptoms and Warning Signs
While substance use disorder symptoms vary by substance type, several patterns appear across most forms of drug addiction:
- Intense drug cravings that feel difficult to resist
- Physical discomfort such as nausea, anxiety, restlessness, or sleep disruption when use stops
- Using more of a substance, or using it longer, than intended
- Unsuccessful attempts to cut back on drug use
- Continued substance abuse despite damage to relationships, health, or work
- Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
Overdose is a common and deadly complication of substance use disorder, particularly with opioids and combinations of substances. If you recognize these signs in yourself or someone you love, please reach out. Early recovery support saves lives.
Our Approach: Psychotherapy for Substance Use
There is no single path to recovery. At The Terrebonne Group, we build an individualized treatment plan around your unique history, goals, and circumstances. Our work is individual therapy — talk therapy — and it focuses on understanding what drives your substance use and what would need to change for it to loosen its hold. Research shows that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of whether treatment helps, and that is where we invest.
Some people come to us certain they want to stop. Others are not sure yet, and want a place to think it through without being pushed. Both are welcome. We do not require you to arrive with a particular goal already decided, and we will not tell you what your goal has to be. Whether you are working toward abstinence or trying to moderate your use, we will help you look clearly at what is happening and what you want.
Exploring the Roots of Substance Use
Our clinicians work psychodynamically and relationally, which means we pay close attention to the emotional conflicts, past experiences, and relationship patterns connected to your substance use. For many people, substance misuse begins as a way to cope with something painful — trauma, grief, chronic anxiety, a life that stopped feeling livable. Understanding those roots is often what makes lasting change possible.
We work in a trauma-informed way throughout care, taking a holistic approach that considers your whole life rather than a single behavior. As you build insight into what your substance use has been doing for you, developing coping skills becomes a natural part of the work — healthier ways of meeting the needs your use was serving. This kind of evidence-based psychotherapy teaches coping skills that last well beyond our sessions together.
Support for Abstinence or Moderation
Whatever direction you are working toward, we help you identify triggering situations — the people, places, emotions, and stressors that increase the risk of returning to substance use. Once these triggers are clear, we work together on concrete plans for navigating high-risk moments, building them into your treatment. Preventing relapse is an ongoing practice rather than a single milestone, and preventing relapse works best when the plan is yours. We remain a steady source of support as you build a more resilient life and work toward lasting recovery.
We also encourage the supports that work alongside therapy. Twelve-step programs, peer support groups, and other recovery communities such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous help many people, and active involvement in them is associated with stronger long-term outcomes. Staying engaged in treatment longer is consistently linked to better results. We are glad to talk through whether these supports might fit for you.
When substance use has strained the people closest to you, family therapy can help. Family therapy addresses issues affecting the entire family unit — rebuilding trust, improving communication, and helping members resolve conflicts that substance use may have created or worsened. Family therapy also helps loved ones understand substance use disorders as the medical conditions they are.
Treating What Comes With It
For many of our patients, the most important work is on the anxiety, depression, trauma, or burnout tangled up with their drug use. Treating substance misuse effectively means addressing environmental factors, relationships, trauma, and co-occurring mental health conditions — all within a supportive, judgment-free space. Mental health issues and substance use are deeply connected, and treating addiction without treating what feeds it rarely holds. This is what our practice does well, and it is often what makes other recovery efforts succeed. For a person recovering from drug use, that underlying work is frequently the difference.
When Someone You Love Is Struggling
Many of the people who come to us are not the ones using. They are spouses and partners, parents and adult children, trying to figure out how to live alongside someone’s substance use without losing themselves in it.
If that is you, you are welcome here in your own right — not as a support person for someone else’s treatment, but as a patient with your own experience worth attending to.
Loving someone with a substance use disorder is exhausting in ways that are hard to explain to people who have not done it. You may be managing crises, covering for them, or holding a household together while pretending things are fine. You may be angry and then guilty about being angry. You may have stopped being able to tell the difference between helping and enabling, or you may know exactly where that line is and cross it anyway because the alternative feels unbearable. Many family members describe a kind of constant low-grade vigilance — reading tone of voice, checking for signs, never quite able to relax.
That takes a real toll. Anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and burnout are common among family members of people with substance use disorders, and they deserve treatment in their own right rather than being treated as secondary to someone else’s recovery.
In therapy, we work on questions like:
- How do I set limits I can actually hold, and what happens when I do?
- What am I responsible for here, and what am I not?
- How do I stay connected to this person without organizing my whole life around their use?
- How do I talk to my children about what is happening in our home?
- What does it look like to have my own life again?
We will not tell you to leave, and we will not tell you to stay. Those are your decisions, and people arrive at them in their own time. What we will do is help you think clearly, notice what this has cost you, and make choices that reflect what you actually want rather than what the crisis dictates.
Some family members come in individually. Others come as a couple, or bring the family together to work on communication and rebuilding trust. Sometimes the person using substances is in treatment elsewhere and the family work happens here in parallel. All of these are reasonable places to start.
You do not need your loved one to be ready for help before you get some yourself.
Contact us today to schedule a confidential consultation.
Finding the Right Level of Care
Sometimes the most useful thing a psychologist can do is tell you the truth about what you need — even when that means pointing you elsewhere.
Effective recovery often relies on a blend of psychological therapies and, when appropriate, medication. Combining therapy with medication can substantially increase treatment success, and for opioid use disorder, medication should be the first line of treatment. Medication helps manage cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Naltrexone blocks the euphoric effects of alcohol, reducing the reward that drives continued drinking. Buprenorphine is a safer partial agonist that eases drug cravings and the symptoms of withdrawal while lowering overdose risk.
We do not prescribe these medications, and we do not provide medication-assisted treatment. But we know it works, and we know who does it well. Structured addiction treatment — intensive outpatient programs, residential care, medically supervised detox — and behavioral therapy protocols such as cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, contingency management, and motivational enhancement therapy are delivered by programs built for that purpose. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — maintains a national helpline and treatment locator for these services, and healthcare providers in our referral network offer them across the region.
If that is what you need, we will help you find it. Many people return to us for psychotherapy afterward, once the acute phase is behind them. That is a good outcome, not a lost one.
Care Designed Around One Person — You
Choosing where to begin is a deeply personal decision. Here is what our New Orleans practice offers:
Honesty about scope. We tell you plainly what we do and do not provide, and we would rather refer you well than keep you inappropriately.
Evidence-informed psychotherapy. Our work is grounded in research and decades of clinical practice.
A whole-person approach. We address the underlying causes of substance misuse, not just the symptoms, supporting your mental health and overall well-being.
Genuine warmth. You are a person, not a diagnosis. We meet you with respect, compassion, and hope.
Flexible options. We offer individual therapy and family therapy, with in-person and teletherapy sessions across Greater New Orleans and throughout Louisiana.
Care for co-occurring needs. We treat substance use alongside the mental health conditions so often connected to it.
Who You Would Work With
Substance use is a specialized area. Two of our clinicians work with patients whose primary concern is substance use:
Dr. Leigh Anne Terrebonne — Founder, Licensed Psychologist. Dr. Terrebonne has over 25 years of experience providing individual psychotherapy for adults and holds the practice’s most specialized training in substance use. She helps patients address the trauma, anxiety, depression, and life stressors that so often underlie substance use.
Dorian Rolston, LCSW — Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Dorian brings expertise in substance use along with a compassionate, whole-person perspective, helping patients navigate their use alongside the relationships, environment, and life circumstances that shape it.
Our other clinicians — Dr. Monica Stevens, Dr. Lisa Legeaux, and Carolyn Mikulencak — provide psychotherapy and psychiatric care for the range of concerns that often accompany substance use, including anxiety, depression, and trauma. If your primary concern is substance use, we will connect you with Dr. Terrebonne or Dorian, or help you find the right care elsewhere.
Dr. Leigh Anne Terrebonne
Dr. Terrebonne has over 25 years of experience providing individual psychotherapy for adults, helping patients address the trauma, anxiety, depression, and life stressors that so often underlie substance use.
Dr. Monica Stevens
Dr. Stevens provides evidence-based individual therapy for adults, supporting patients as they build coping skills, work through co-occurring concerns, and sustain lasting change in recovery.
Dr. Lisa Legeaux
Dr. Legeaux is our psychiatric provider, coordinating medication management in-house so patients can address cravings and withdrawal symptoms in step with their ongoing therapy.
Carolyn Mikulencak
Carolyn is a graduate clinician intern supervised by Dr. Terrebonne, offering attentive, individualized support to patients in the early stages of their recovery.
Dr. Leigh Anne Terrebonne
Dr. Terrebonne has over 25 years of experience providing individual psychotherapy for adults, helping patients address the trauma, anxiety, depression, and life stressors that so often underlie substance use.
Dr. Monica Stevens
Dr. Stevens provides evidence-based individual therapy for adults, supporting patients as they build coping skills, work through co-occurring concerns, and sustain lasting change in recovery.
Dr. Lisa Legeaux
Dr. Legeaux is our psychiatric provider, coordinating medication management in-house so patients can address cravings and withdrawal symptoms in step with their ongoing therapy.
Carolyn Mikulencak
Carolyn is a graduate clinician intern supervised by Dr. Terrebonne, offering attentive, individualized support to patients in the early stages of their recovery.
Recovery starts with a single conversation
Substance use disorders are real medical conditions, and like other mental illness and chronic disease, they respond to the right treatment. Relapse rates for substance use disorders are similar to those seen in other chronic diseases like asthma and hypertension — a reminder that a setback is a signal to adjust care, not evidence of failure.
Recovery is not a straight line, and staying engaged in care is consistently linked to better outcomes. Whether you need help treating substance misuse for the first time, are trying to cut back, or are returning after a relapse, effective therapy can help you build the future you want. We will be here for the part of the journey we are right for — and we will help you find the rest.
If you or someone you love is living with drug addiction, alcohol misuse, or another substance use disorder, please reach out. A single honest conversation is a real place to start.
Contact The Terrebonne Group today to schedule your confidential consultation.
The Terrebonne Group provides psychotherapy and psychological services throughout Greater New Orleans and across Louisiana. We do not provide detoxification, intensive outpatient programming, or medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders.
In case of an emergency, please call 911 or the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Recovery starts with a single conversation
Substance use disorders are real medical conditions, and like other mental illness and chronic disease, they respond to the right treatment. Relapse rates for substance use disorders are similar to those seen in other chronic diseases like asthma and hypertension — a reminder that a setback is a signal to adjust care, not evidence of failure.
Recovery is not a straight line, and staying engaged in care is consistently linked to better outcomes. Whether you need help treating substance misuse for the first time, are trying to cut back, or are returning after a relapse, effective therapy can help you build the future you want. We will be here for the part of the journey we are right for — and we will help you find the rest.
If you or someone you love is living with drug addiction, alcohol misuse, or another substance use disorder, please reach out. A single honest conversation is a real place to start.
Contact The Terrebonne Group today to schedule your confidential consultation.
The Terrebonne Group provides psychotherapy and psychological services throughout Greater New Orleans and across Louisiana. We do not provide detoxification, intensive outpatient programming, or medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders.
In case of an emergency, please call 911 or the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.