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Addiction Counseling Certification

By Ashley Boyce, an allied health world staff writer
Published: February, 27 2010

What certification or licensure is required to practice as a chemical dependency counselor?

While working through an internship, students must apply for a state-specific Counselor Registration License that essentially acts as a temporary license until they graduate from a chemical dependency certification program and begin their substance abuse counselor careers. This allows students to work in the clinical environment under supervision and is only granted when students have completed certain required classes. After earning a substance abuse counseling degree at he Associate’s level, including satisfying the required hours of clinical practice, a graduate is eligible to test for a state license granted through the Department of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, and the Chemical Dependency Counselor Certification Board which are part of each respective states’ Department of Health. This is the final step to earning the CDP, CDC, or LCDC credential and being able to enter into unsupervised practice.

What’s involved in continuing education and maintaining state licensure?

Fulfilling the requirements for the ten hours of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) every two years necessary for maintaining state licensure isn’t much of a chore, and in fact usually happens by virtue of making an effort to stay current in the field. CEUs can be satisfied online through the same community colleges or online schools that offer the CDP degree. Very often day-long seminars are available that satisfy these CEU requirements.

What credentials do substance abuse counselors earn?

There are three different credentials associated with the chemical dependency profession:

• Chemical Dependency Professional (CDP)
• Chemical Dependency Counselor (CDC)
• Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC)

These are all earned at the substance abuse counselor certificate level. These credentials are all the same in terms of the level of education and field experience necessary to earn them. They differ only by the institution the degree was earned through, and by which state granted licensure. The most contemporary and commonly used of these is CDP.

What is the demographic of people in substance abuse counselor certificate programs?

According to chemical dependency professional intern, Sydney Love, the majority of those who pursue a formal CDP degree and make a career out of chemical dependency counseling, are actually recovering drug addicts and alcoholics themselves. Many others who have expressed interest in how to become a substance abuse counselor are people who have in some way been directly impacted by chemical addiction, as is the case with Sydney when she lost her brother to a heroin overdose. This means it is a very open industry, welcoming either young recent high school graduates or much older people who have decided to make a lifestyle and career change later in life.

What’s the correlation between mental illness, homelessness, and chemical dependency?

Chemical dependency certification will involve an introduction to one of the longest running debates within this profession. Chemical dependency communities have debated for years as to whether mental illness precipitates drug use or whether drug use is the cause of mental illness. This is because the symptoms are so similar. People experiencing drug-induced psychosis can exhibit symptoms identical to those of people with schizophrenia. This would include delusional episodes and paranoia. It is the goal of CDPs who are working with chemically dependant patients who exhibit signs of mental illness to first provide stability by working with them through abstinence or decreased use. After the substance use has been abated, psychologists and chemical dependency counselors are better able to determine if mental illness exists independent of drug and alcohol use.

The unfortunate reality is that although addiction doesn’t discriminate based on social class, it is dramatically more of an issue in the homeless community and among the mentally ill. Mental illness, especially undiagnosed and untreated, can lead to self-medicating by consuming drugs and alcohol. Those who have issues with anxiety and paranoia, often associated with schizophrenia, many times turn to depressants or downers like alcohol or heroin to counteract their anxiety. People with severe depression will tend to gravitate towards stimulants or uppers like cocaine, methamphetamines, or crack, which produce a euphoric effect that offsets feelings of hopelessness and depression. When self-medicating to address emotional distress or mental illness leads to the short-term seemingly positive effect of feeling better, this can be a significant contributing factor in continued abuse and eventual addiction. People who use drugs or alcohol strictly recreationally don’t usually have the same propensity for perpetual use and addiction as do people who are using as a means of overcoming emotional or mental distress. People with mental illnesses often end up homeless because of an inability to function at a high enough level to maintain employment and a stable living situation.

The mentally ill may also become homeless and turn to self medicating due to the closure of state funded mental facilities in which they received prescribed antipsychotic, anti-anxiety, or antidepressant drugs. Mental illness also has an affect on a person’s ability to exercise good judgment in making sound decisions, so these individuals don’t often have the foresight to see the potential for addiction and the strife it causes.

As any addiction counseling course in psychology will tell you, it is also possible in extreme cases for the drug use itself to lead to a level of psychosis that makes a person no longer capable of working and supporting themselves. Less common, but still common enough, are the people who lived productive lives at one time, but have fallen so deep into drug or alcohol addiction that they become indigent and eventually homeless due to losing their job and being unable to keep up with the cost of maintaining their habit.

It is well known that roughly 25% of the homeless population in the US is made up of United States military veterans of war. This shocking statistic becomes all the more disturbing when considering that the vast majority of these homeless veterans describe having turned to drugs and alcohol as a means of coping with the anxiety and depression associated with war-induced post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even before becoming homeless.

It can be difficult to determine if mental illness is the source of addiction and homelessness or if drug addiction leads to homelessness and exacerbates mental illness, but what is certain is that the social problems of chemical dependency, homelessness, and untreated mental illness are very much intertwined. Because of this, it is common for CDPs to work with homeless communities and people with severe mental illness.