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Alcohol addiction
Alcohol addiction treatment in Spain
A licensed 28-day residential programme in the Málaga countryside, run by an English-speaking team, for people who have tried to stop drinking on their own and found that willpower alone does not hold.
A private room as standard, a price published in full, and no referral fees paid to anyone for sending you here.
Checked for accuracy on 28 July 2026. Next review due July 2027. This page is general information about our programme and is not a substitute for advice about your own situation.
Alcohol addiction is treated at Sierra Recovery as a 28-day residential programme in the Málaga countryside, published in full at £9,900. Where you are physically dependent, a medically supervised withdrawal is completed in an appropriate medical setting before you arrive, because we are a registered health centre and not a hospital. What follows is three structured group sessions a day, one-to-one therapy, a seventeen-module curriculum and an aftercare plan agreed before you leave. Below is what that actually involves, who it suits, and when it is time to stop reading and make the call.
Programme
28 days residential
Published price
£9,900
Group work
3 sessions a day
Room
Private, as standard
Language
English throughout
Registration
N.I.C.A. 67331
What alcohol use disorder actually is
Alcohol use disorder is a compulsive need to keep drinking despite what it is costing you. That is the clinical definition, and it is deliberately not a moral one. Nobody arrives here having chosen this. What people describe far more often is a slow narrowing: the drinking stops being something you do and starts being something you arrange your day around.
The reason willpower alone tends to fail is that dependence is physical as well as psychological. When someone with an established dependence stops, the body reacts, and that reaction can be dangerous. Agitation, sweating, a racing heart, disrupted sleep and severe cravings are common. In more serious cases withdrawal from alcohol can cause seizures. That is why the first question we ask is not how much you drink but whether stopping would be safe.
If you are physically dependent on alcohol, stopping abruptly can be dangerous and, in severe cases, life threatening. Speak to your GP first. In an emergency call 999 in the UK or 112 anywhere in Europe, or NHS 111 for urgent advice that is not an emergency.
The signs people recognise too late
Most people who come to us knew something was wrong long before they acted. These are the patterns that tend to appear first, and they are worth being honest with yourself about.
| What you might notice | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Drinking earlier in the day than you used to, or to steady yourself | Tolerance and early dependence. This is the single strongest signal in clinical screening. |
| Planning around whether alcohol will be available | The drinking has moved from social to structural. |
| Being irritated when someone raises it | Usually recognition rather than denial. People rarely get defensive about something they think is fine. |
| Repeatedly deciding to cut down and not managing it | The gap between intention and behaviour is the definition of the disorder, not a failure of character. |
| Shaking, sweating or nausea in the morning | Physical withdrawal. Do not attempt to stop unsupervised. Get medical advice. |
| Drinking to manage anxiety, low mood or memories | Alcohol is doing a job. Treating only the drinking, and not the job it does, is why people relapse. |
If several of those land, our four-question self-check takes under a minute, stores nothing, and will tell you whether a fuller conversation is worth having.
Where the treatment actually happens
People ask for photographs before they ask about therapy, and they are right to. You are deciding whether you could live somewhere for a month. This is the place, not a stock library.
See the full gallery · how people get here.
Detox comes first, and it happens before you arrive
This is where we differ from clinics that blur the line, and it matters more than any marketing claim on this page. Sierra Recovery is entered in the Registro Andaluz de Centros, Servicios y Establecimientos Sanitarios (the Andalusian register of health centres, services and establishments) under N.I.C.A. 67331, authorised by the Junta de Andalucía for the care unit atención sanitaria a drogodependientes (healthcare for drug dependency, authorised care unit U.71). That is a registered health centre with a supervised treatment residence. It is not a hospital and not a detox unit.
In practice: your assessment happens before you book a flight. If it shows you are physically dependent, a medically supervised withdrawal is arranged in an appropriate medical setting and completed before admission, billed separately from the programme fee. Qualified nursing is part of the team during your stay. If the assessment says a more intensive medical setting is the safer choice for you, we say so and we do not admit you. You can check our registration yourself on the Junta's public register.
Not sure whether you need a detox first?
The assessment answers that before you commit to anything, and it happens before you travel. A clinician will tell you honestly if we are the wrong setting for you.
What a day here looks like
Nobody arrives knowing how twenty eight days are actually spent. This is the real timetable, Monday to Friday.
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 08:00 | Breakfast, cooked by a Michelin-trained chef |
| 09:15 | Planning: the day is set out together |
| 10:30 | Process group, the harder one |
| 12:00 | Therapeutic group |
| 13:15 | Lunch |
| 14:30 | Psychoeducation, working through the curriculum |
| 16:00 | Group activity, often outdoors or with the horses |
| 18:30 | Dinner |
| 20:00 | Day closing, together |
Saturdays turn to holistic and body-based work. Sundays are a supervised excursion, because reconnecting with the world outside a clinic is part of the treatment rather than a break from it.
What the treatment actually involves
The programme runs Monday to Friday on a fixed structure, with Saturdays given to holistic and body-based work and Sundays to a supervised excursion. Rather than list therapy names, here is what each part of the week is for.
Three group sessions a day, five days a week
The day opens with a process group at 10:30, a second therapeutic group runs at midday, and a psychoeducation session follows lunch. A group activity fills the late afternoon and the day closes together in the evening. That is roughly fifteen structured group contacts a week, which is the part most people underestimate before they arrive and value most afterwards.
Groups are small, in English, and run by the clinical team. Hearing someone else describe your own thinking back to you does something that individual work cannot, and it is the fastest route out of the isolation that drinking builds.
A seventeen-module curriculum, not a rest cure
The psychoeducation strand moves through a fixed curriculum built by our clinical director. It covers skills training, communication styles, boundaries and decision-making, trigger recognition, self-esteem and self-concept, dual diagnosis, self-care and habits, emotions, crisis identification and management, suicide prevention, goals, grief, values, trauma and relapse, perfectionism, loneliness and isolation, and cross-addiction.
The cognitive work uses the ABC model, the same structure that underpins cognitive behavioural approaches: the event, the belief you attach to it, and the consequence that follows. It is taught, practised, applied between sessions and reviewed, rather than talked about once.
Individual therapy alongside the group programme
One-to-one sessions run three times a week and are where the material that will not surface in a group gets worked. For most people that is the thing underneath the drinking rather than the drinking itself.
You are treated by the same small team throughout, in the same house. Nobody is handed between departments, and there is no rotation of therapists mid-stay.
Yoga, meditation and body-based work
Saturdays turn to holistic and body-based practice: yoga, meditation and mindfulness, breathwork, art, and time outdoors on the land. This is not decoration and it is not a spa timetable. Early recovery is a physiological event as much as a psychological one, and sleep, appetite and the ability to sit still are usually the first things to return.
The self-care and habits module runs alongside it, treating rest as a right rather than a reward and food as connection rather than control.
Equine therapy on working farmland
The horses live here, on the forty hectares around the house, and equine work is part of the working week. Horses respond to what you are actually feeling rather than what you say you are feeling, which is why the work reaches people who have learned to talk their way around a therapy session.
What happens when you go home
Aftercare is planned before you leave rather than mentioned on the last day. For clients returning to the UK, care continues online or in person at the PROMIS clinics in London, with a weekly session for a full year, more than 48 in the twelve months after discharge, and a written handover to your GP so nothing has to be explained from scratch. For clients elsewhere in Europe we arrange continuity online and help find local services.
Alongside that, mutual-aid groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous are free, run everywhere, and are worth using whatever else you choose.
Who will actually treat your alcohol addiction
A small team, in one house, in English. You are not handed between departments and there is no rotation of therapists halfway through your stay.
Nerea Encinas Sánchez
Director · General Health Psychologist
MSc General Health Psychology. Leads clinical standards, the assessment you have before you travel, and admissions.
Berenice Paramés Jones
General Health Psychologist
Individual and group psychological work inside the house, crisis follow-up and coordination of the group programme.
Marta Leal
Social worker
Family mediation, links to services back home, and preparing for independent life after discharge.
Robin Lefever
Founder of Sierra Recovery; MD, PROMIS Clinics UK
The clinical model behind the programme, in use in the United Kingdom since 1986.
Meet the whole clinical team and their qualifications.
What is treated, and what that looks like day to day
| What you arrive with | How it is worked |
|---|---|
| Withdrawal | Completed under medical supervision before admission where it is clinically needed. Qualified nursing on site throughout the stay. |
| Cravings | The trigger-recognition module maps your own cues and builds a personal safety plan, practised in group rather than described in theory. |
| Low mood, shame, anxiety | The emotions, self-esteem and perfectionism modules, alongside individual therapy. Where a mental health condition sits underneath, see dual diagnosis. |
| Trauma | The trauma and relapse module addresses how unprocessed trauma drives use, run alongside the addiction work rather than after it. See trauma and addiction. |
| Physical decline | Full board cooked by a Michelin-trained chef, a structured sleep pattern, and daily activity outdoors. Medical and laboratory costs are quoted separately where they apply. |
| Isolation | Small groups in one house, the loneliness and isolation module, and a weekly aftercare group that continues after discharge. |
How to get ready
- Compare on licence, not on photographsAsk any centre abroad for its registration number and the register it sits on, then look it up yourself. Ours is N.I.C.A. 67331 on the Junta de Andalucía register.
- Get the medical picture togetherCurrent medications, any previous withdrawal, and any diagnosed conditions. This is what the pre-travel assessment needs, and it is what decides whether a detox is required first.
- Ask what the price actually includesOurs is published: private room, meals, the core therapy programme, and a year of weekly UK aftercare, with medical, psychiatric, laboratory and hospital costs quoted separately. You get an itemised written quotation before admission.
- Decide what you want to be differentNot "stop drinking", which is the outcome, but what you want back. People who arrive with that answer do measurably better in the groups.
How Sierra compares with a private alcohol addiction treatment centre in the UK
| What you get | Sierra Recovery | Typical UK private clinic |
|---|---|---|
| 28-day residential programme | £9,900, published | £14,000–£20,000 |
| Your own private room | Included as standard | Often an upgrade |
| Referral fees paid to third parties | None | Common |
| Written itemised quotation before admission | Yes | Varies |
| Distance from the people and places tied to drinking | Rural Andalucía | Usually close to home |
| Medically supervised detox | Arranged and quoted separately | Quoted separately |
UK range as published on our cost calculator. Indicative, not a quotation. Every clinic sets its own fees.
When drinking sits on top of something else
Alcohol very often sits on top of depression, anxiety or trauma, and treating the drinking while sending the rest elsewhere rarely holds. At Sierra the emotional and trauma work runs alongside the addiction curriculum rather than after it. If your drinking is bound up with a mental health condition, our dual diagnosis and trauma and addiction pages explain how the two are worked with together. Where psychiatric care or medication is part of your treatment, it is arranged through the appropriate medical route, and we will be honest with you before admission if a more intensive setting is the safer choice.
When is it time?
There is no threshold you have to cross to deserve help, and waiting for one is how years pass. If drinking is costing you sleep, work, or the people you care about, that is enough. The earlier the conversation happens, the more options are still open, and the less likely it is that a hospital detox will be needed first.
Talk to a clinician today
You will speak to our admissions team, all of them clinicians. Confidential, no obligation, and we will tell you honestly whether this programme fits or whether something closer to home would serve you better.
Questions people actually ask
Is it safe to just stop drinking on my own before I come?
Not if you are physically dependent. Stopping alcohol suddenly can cause dangerous withdrawal, including seizures and, at its most severe, delirium. A safe withdrawal should be medically managed. Call 999 or 112 in a life-threatening emergency, or NHS 111 for urgent advice. We assess this before you travel and arrange detox in an appropriate medical setting first.
Do you do the alcohol detox at Sierra?
No. Sierra is a registered health centre, not a hospital or detox unit. Where a medically supervised detox is needed it is completed in an appropriate medical setting before your residential stay begins, and billed separately. Qualified nurses are part of the team during your stay.
How long is the programme and what does it cost?
It is a 28-day residential programme, published in full at £9,900. Hospital detox, if you need it, is arranged and billed separately. Our pricing page sets out exactly what is included.
I have stopped drinking before and always gone back. Will this be different?
Relapse after stopping is common and it is not a sign that you have failed. It usually means the reason for the drinking was never addressed. The programme works on the internal state the alcohol was regulating and builds other ways to manage it, alongside a practical relapse-prevention plan, so that stopping has something to stand on.
What if my drinking is tied up with depression or anxiety?
That is very common, and treating the drinking while referring the rest out rarely holds. At Sierra the emotional and trauma work runs alongside the addiction curriculum in one programme. Where psychiatric care or medication is part of your treatment, it is arranged through the appropriate medical route.
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Talk to a clinician today
You will speak to our admissions team, English-speaking clinicians who know the programme and the people in it. Callback within 24 hours.
Registered health centre. Authorised by the Junta de Andalucía, N.I.C.A. 67331.
