David A.N. Siegel, MD
Addiction Medicine & Psychotherapy
Confidential & Discreet
How I Came to This Work
I trained originally as a pain physician. Over time it became clear that a significant number of my patients were also living with serious mental illness, addiction, or both — something my training had not prepared me for, and something most of my colleagues preferred not to engage with. The common response, when these issues surfaced, was to discharge the patient.
That never made sense to me. A cardiologist doesn't turn a patient away because they also have diabetes. The complexity doesn't dissolve the obligation — it deepens it. So instead of stepping back from these patients, I stayed with them. Eventually I went back for further training in addiction medicine, and the work has continued to evolve from there.
What Shaped My Thinking
The further I went into this field, the more I found conventional approaches inadequate. Standard addiction medicine — with its protocols, its programs, its fixed timelines — tends to address the surface of the problem. It focuses on the substance, the behavior, the observable symptom. What it rarely asks is what's underneath it, what's driving it.
That question led me to a serious study of theories of the mind and people's inner life — the history, the meaning, the emotional logic of how someone has come to be where they are. In my experience, this is where the real answers tend to live. Not in a formula or a framework, but in the particular story of a particular person.
Twenty years of practice has deepened rather than diminished that conviction. The people I work with are not weak or damaged. They are, in most cases, managing something real — pain, anxiety, a history that was never fully understood — and doing so in a way that has become a problem. Understanding that something is where the work begins.
What Patients Tell Me
Most people who call me have already tried something else — a program, a detox, a general psychiatrist or therapist who didn't quite understand the addiction piece, or an addiction doctor who didn't want to engage with anything beyond simple harm reduction. They arrive having found those experiences thin, or incomplete, or simply wrong for who they are.
What they tend to find here is different: a practice built around them as individuals, with a doctor who is genuinely interested in understanding them and who will stay with them through a process that takes as long as it takes. There are no programs to complete, no steps to follow, no predetermined endpoint.
I work primarily with people who are capable of serious self-reflection and who want a clinical relationship that meets them at that level. That's not a requirement — it's simply what tends to develop when the conditions are right.
The Practice
I have been practicing in New York City for over twenty years. My practice is small by design — entirely private, with no office staff and no third parties involved in care. I am board-certified in Addiction Medicine with additional training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Sessions are conducted in person at my office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan or by video. I am available by phone for emergencies around the clock.
Get in Touch
The first conversation is free and completely confidential. There is no obligation of any kind.
Call directly: (646) 418-7077
David Siegel, MD
Addiction Medicine Specialist
Get in Touch
Ready to take the next step? Have a free phone consultation with Dr. Siegel to find out more.