If I find a psychotherapist or counselor, can that help with my addiction?

“Being sober is like walking a tight rope across a vast canyon. You look down and see the future: dark, long, filled with moments of excruciating excitement, but ultimately, ending in broken bones, if not death.

The thing is, the longer you stay sober, the tight rope widens. It becomes a bridge, and though you might hit a faulty step from time to time, you begin to trust it. But the more you receive, the higher the bridge. Looking down causes vertigo.” ~ Kristen McGuiness

“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn’t understand why the happiness never came, couldn’t see the flaw in my thinking, couldn’t see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. And all my efforts were doomed, because already drinking hadn’t made me feel good in years.”
― Heather King, Parched

If we think of all addiction starting and ending with pain, we can connect that talking to a counselor or psychotherapist about our anguish will steady us from the tightrope and onto the bridge to recovery.