Substance Use Therapy in Chicago
Therapy for adults whose use of cannabis, cocaine, opioids, pills or other drugs has started to cost more than it gives. In person in Logan Square, Chicago, and online throughout Illinois and Minnesota.
Clinically reviewed by Chris Beerman, MSW, LCSW, CADC · October 2026
Most people who reach out to me about drugs don't fit the picture that word brings to mind. They're working, paying rent and showing up. What has changed is quieter. The weed that used to be a weekend thing is now how every evening ends. The cocaine that was only for big nights is now how a long week gets finished. The pills from a surgery two years ago never quite stopped.
You don't need to call it an addiction, and you don't need to have decided to quit, to talk about it. You need one honest conversation.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation
Or call or text (708) 665-5271, or check your coverage and book online with Headway.
What I Help With
I work with adults on:
- Cannabis, including daily use, high-potency vapes and concentrates, and hemp THC products like delta-8 gummies and THC drinks. If you're not sure where you stand, the free cannabis use test takes about two minutes.
- Cocaine and other stimulants, including prescription stimulants taken without a prescription or beyond it.
- Opioids, including pain pills, heroin and fentanyl, and kratom or 7-OH products. I work alongside a prescriber who handles the medication side.
- Sedatives and sleep medications, such as Xanax, Klonopin or Valium, in coordination with whoever prescribes them.
- Nicotine, including vapes and pouches, especially when it's tied up with something else.
Alcohol has its own page: alcohol addiction therapy.
When It's More Than One Thing
It's rarely one substance, and often not only substances. Drinking and cocaine travel together. Cannabis replaces alcohol, or quietly joins it. A lot of the people I see for gambling or high-risk trading are also using something to manage the stress of it.
Treating these separately, in different offices with different plans, tends to move the problem around rather than solve it. I treat them together, because they are my specialty: gambling and trading on one side, alcohol and drugs on the other. If one goes quiet and another picks up, we can see it coming and plan for it.
Signs It Might Be Time to Get Support
Are you using more often, or more at a time, than you meant to?
Losing track of how much or how often is one of the clearest signs it has become more than casual, especially when it keeps happening after you've decided it won't.
Have you tried to cut back or take a break and found it harder than expected?
That usually means your routine and your body have both adjusted around regular use. It's information, not a character verdict.
Do you need it to sleep, relax, focus or get through the day?
When a substance is doing a job, stopping means losing the job too. That's the pattern that makes stopping hardest.
Is it costing you something you care about, even if everything still looks fine from the outside?
Money, sleep, motivation, a relationship, how you feel about yourself. You don't have to reach a crisis for that to be worth addressing.
Those four questions are the short version. If cannabis is the main thing, the free cannabis use test is the full one: eight questions from the CUDIT-R, about two minutes. If alcohol is part of the picture, the alcohol use test works the same way. Both are scored in your browser and never sent anywhere, not even to me.
You Don't Need a Label to Start
Substance use disorder is diagnosed on a spectrum, from mild to severe, depending on how many of a list of criteria fit over the past year. Two people with the same diagnosis can be living very different lives. A score on a screening test, including the ones on this site, isn't a diagnosis. It's a signal that something deserves a closer look.
I won't spend the first session trying to get you to accept a word. I'll ask what the substance is costing you and what it's doing for you, because those two answers together decide what to do next.
What Therapy Actually Looks Like
We map the pattern. When you use, where, with whom, and what happens right before. What the first use of the day or night is for. Most people have never laid this out in one place, and it's usually where the behavior stops looking like a character flaw and starts looking like something with moving parts.
We work on what it's doing for you. Sleep, anxiety, energy, a way to end the workday, a way to feel nothing for a while. Take the substance away without replacing what it did, and the attempt usually doesn't last. With cannabis especially, one outcome I worry about isn't on any diagnostic list: it can quiet the boredom that would otherwise tell you something isn't working, and years can pass that way, drifting further from what you value.
We change access, not just intention. Who you buy from and whether their number is still in your phone, what's in the house, the route home, the cash. Willpower is a poor tool against an easy supply and a good tool against a hard one.
We set the goal together. Stopping completely, a break with a set end date, or cutting back can each be a legitimate place to start. I'll be direct when stopping, or medical support, is the safer target: opioids when fentanyl is in the supply, or sedatives mixed with alcohol.
We plan for the hard weeks. The holidays, a breakup, a work trip, the anniversary you'd rather skip. Relapse rarely arrives on an ordinary Tuesday.
The methods behind that are cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and acceptance and commitment therapy. For cocaine and other stimulants, the approach with the strongest research is contingency management, which gives small rewards, like gift cards, for drug-free tests. Because it needs on-site testing and an incentive budget, it's mostly offered by treatment programs. If it fits you, I'll help you find one alongside our work.
Is Weekly Therapy the Right Level of Care?
For many people, outpatient therapy is the right place to start. Two situations call for medical care first.
When stopping could be dangerous. Stopping benzodiazepines suddenly, or cutting down too fast, can cause withdrawal seizures, which can be life-threatening. Stopping suddenly after a stretch of heavy, regular drinking can also cause seizures and delirium tremens. Don't stop or cut down either one without talking to your prescriber or a doctor first. Opioid withdrawal is usually not dangerous in itself, but using again after your tolerance has dropped (after detox, jail, a hospital stay or rehab) is one of the most dangerous moments for overdose. Medically supervised withdrawal (what most people call detox) is a different level of care from what I provide.
When you need more structure than an hour a week. Some people need an intensive outpatient program or a residential stay first. My guide to choosing between therapy, IOP, rehab and detox explains the differences. It's written about alcohol, but the levels of care are the same. If that's where you are, I'll tell you, help you find the right place, and I'm glad to pick up afterwards.
Medication Is Worth Asking About
For opioids, federal guidance says medication should be considered for everyone with opioid use disorder. Three are FDA-approved: buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone. Therapy works well alongside medication, but you don't need to be in therapy to get it. Some addiction clinics report treating dependence on concentrated kratom and 7-OH products with the same medications, mainly buprenorphine, though the evidence so far is limited to case reports. In Illinois, the Illinois Helpline (833-234-6343) can connect you to medication for opioid use disorder through the state's MAR NOW program.
For cannabis and stimulants, there's no FDA-approved medication yet, so therapy is the main treatment. A prescriber may still help with what's driving the use, such as sleep, anxiety or ADHD.
For alcohol, three medications are approved. See alcohol addiction therapy.
I'm not a prescriber. If medication makes sense for you, I'll say so plainly and coordinate with your doctor or psychiatrist.
If You Use, Carry Naloxone
Fentanyl is now in far more than heroin. In CDC data from 2021 to mid-2024, 79% of overdose deaths involving cocaine also involved opioids. If you use cocaine, pills that didn't come from a pharmacy, or anything bought from a dealer, assume it could contain fentanyl.
Naloxone (one brand is Narcan) can reverse an opioid overdose. It has been sold over the counter since 2023, at pharmacies, grocery stores and online, with no prescription. It won't harm someone who hasn't taken opioids, so if in doubt, give it. Keep it where you use, tell someone where it is, and try not to use alone.
If someone won't wake up or is breathing slowly or not at all, give naloxone if you have it and call 911. Lay them on their side and stay until help arrives. A second dose may be needed, and naloxone can wear off before the opioid does, so get emergency help even if they wake up.
This is here because staying alive comes before every other goal on this page.
For Partners and Family
If you're here because of someone else's use, you can come to therapy yourself, whether or not they're ready. I use CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), an approach built to help families encourage a loved one toward treatment without confrontation. My page for parents and family explains how it works and what the research shows.
I work with adults. If your child is under 18, start with their pediatrician, and the parents page covers what else you can do.
Who I Work With
I'm Chris Beerman, MSW, LCSW, CADC, an addiction therapist in Chicago. Alongside my clinical social work license, I hold the CADC (Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor), Illinois's addiction-counseling certification, issued by the Illinois Certification Board.
I work with adults across the range: people who are uneasy about how much they're using, people who have tried to cut back several times, and people who have already decided to stop.
How It Works
Start with a free 15-minute consultation. Tell me what's been going on, ask whatever you want, and see whether I'm the right fit. You don't need to have it organized first or have decided anything.
In person or online. I see clients in person in Logan Square, Chicago, and online throughout Illinois and Minnesota.
It's confidential. Therapy is confidential, subject to the limited exceptions required by law. Being honest with me about what you use, how much and how often is part of the work. If privacy is what's making you hesitate, because of your job, your license or how much you've kept to yourself, ask me about it before you book.
Cost and Coverage
I'm in-network with Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, Oscar, and Oxford, through Headway. If you're using out-of-network benefits, I can provide superbills. You can check your coverage and book online with Headway.
If cost is the barrier, the SAMHSA and Illinois helplines below can refer you to state-funded and sliding-scale treatment, including levels of care I don't provide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to quit everything?
Not necessarily, and I won't decide that for you in the first session. Sometimes stopping one thing completely is the only plan that holds, or the only safe one. Sometimes a set break, or cutting back, is a reasonable first experiment. What I'll do is be straight with you about which your situation looks like, and revisit it if the plan isn't working.
Is cannabis really addictive?
It can be. The CDC estimates that about 3 in 10 people who use cannabis have cannabis use disorder, with higher risk for people who use often or started young. My guide to cannabis use disorder covers the signs, withdrawal and what helps.
Will you tell anyone?
No. What you tell me stays between us, with the limited exceptions the law requires, such as an immediate risk to someone's safety. I don't contact employers, and I don't report drug use to police.
Do I need rehab instead?
Maybe, and we can work that out in the consultation. If you need medically supervised withdrawal or more structure than weekly therapy, I'll tell you and help you find it.
Can you prescribe medication?
No. I'm a therapist, not a prescriber. I coordinate with your doctor or psychiatrist, and I'll tell you when medication is worth raising.
Need Support Right Now?
Free, confidential support is available 24/7.
SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Free, confidential treatment referral and information, in English and Spanish.
Illinois Helpline for Opioids and Other Substances — 1-833-2FINDHELP (833-234-6343), or text HELP to 833234. Free and confidential, 24 hours a day. helplineil.org
If someone may be overdosing, call 911. If you're in a mental health crisis or thinking about suicide, call or text 988.
Ready to Talk?
You don't need a rock bottom, and you don't need to have decided what you're going to do about it.
Start with a free 15-minute conversation.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation
Chris Beerman, MSW, LCSW, CADC · Chicago Addiction Therapy · Logan Square, Chicago · Serving Illinois and Minnesota