The Counselling services in Espinho were founded as a Day Centre with its own premises for the treatment and recovery of people addicted to alcohol, drugs and oter dependence types. it was licensed by the Health Care Ministery (IDT) and it is an EATA ( European Association for the treatment of Addiction – UK ) member. Our Headquarters is in Rua 22, nº 429, 4500-273 Espinho.

The S.A.E. are directed to addicted people and their family, providing those one's treatment and recovery as well as their social reintegration.

We started our activity in 1998 with a recovery rate of 83% concerning the patients who finished their therapeutic programme.

Our premises are in the centre of Espinho. We've chosen this quiet and beautiful city due to its privileged situation o the coast, apart from its good structures and easy accessibility.

We have founded the S.A.E. to offer an intensive treatment. We confine it to a maximum of 14 patients so that we can assure a continuous therapeutic follow-up. We work with a multifaceted professional team and treat the restricted group of patients in a realistic and interactive way as a strategy to get high quality and effectiveness standards. We offer an alternative to a closed community therapy with a big number of patients and consequently high levels of anxiety and stress, lack of social contact and reality distortion ( overconfidence or phobia). our project allows the patients to have a daily contact with the reality, inhibiting potential escapes. Our patients learn right from the beginning how to deal with the surrounding environment through the regular attendance of meetings with Anonymous Drug Addicts or Anonymous Alcoholics. This way they meet the proposed targets faster and return to their social familiar life is not traumatic.

In order to reach the results we have just referred to, several activities for elementary notions of discipline, hygiene, solidarity and honesty are promoted in a cosy atmosphere.

The patients are under systematic medical care surveillance and are supported by counsellors and monitors who have themselves been in the process of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction for several years up now by means of the same method.

We are sure that those who leave the centre and practise their new knowledge will get the necessary tools and an original life project which will allow them to walk on a happy healthy productive way towards their full integration into society.