Finding Employment In Recovery From Addiction: A Step-By-Step Guide

Finding Employment In Recovery From Addiction: A Step-By-Step Guide

Working in the addiction treatment industry can be an extremely fulfilling career. With the flexibility to work in a number of settings, jobs in addiction recovery offer the opportunity and the variation to make a life-long career. The addiction treatment industry is vast, offering different types of treatment — depending on the severity of the addiction — in an array of settings, including schools, prisons, community health centers, and private rehabs. While the settings vary, you will commonly find a counselor who specializes in supporting individuals with substance abuse, substance use disorders, alcohol recovery, and behavioral health.

As an addiction therapist, you’ll work in a clinical setting helping individuals understand their addiction and developing tailored treatment strategies. This role often involves close work with other healthcare professionals to provide a holistic approach to treatment. You will work directly with individuals addicted to drugs or alcohol, offering personal or group therapy and consulting with the family members of clients.

Individual and Family Services

They work in residential facilities, outpatient programs, therapist’s offices and online telehealth platforms. The following review can help you understand each position’s requirements. For many people that are newly recovered, finding the “right” job is a difficult process.

What Do Careers in the Addiction Recovery Industry Entail?

You will witness profound transformations in people’s lives as they overcome substance use and enhance their quality of life. Further education and specialization can also open the door to advancement and increased income. Preparing for the possibility of self-disclosure, or whether you’re willing to provide that information to an employer, is something you can discuss with a counselor. A substance use counselor can help walk you through all the possible scenarios of what could happen, and help you feel more confident in what information you do choose to share. Federal civil rights laws protect American workers from being discriminated against on the basis of having a disability, under the American Disabilities Act (ADA).

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You’ll be skilled in identifying, assessing, and addressing addiction. Even still, searching for a job after getting out of a treatment center can be stressful. You may find yourself reckoning with former times in which your addiction had affected your relationships with bosses, coworkers, and your employment status. Maybe your substance abuse previously cost you a job and this has caused deeper insecurity about your capabilities. Stress is a common trigger among people in recovery from addiction and those who struggle with anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

Take Advantage Of Job-Searching Resources And Assistance

Telling prospective employers about your past history with drug use and addiction is a highly personal decision and the choice of disclosure is yours to make. After obtaining your qualifying degree, you must then take steps to become a substance abuse counselor, outlined below. The Editorial Team at InterviewGuy.com is composed of certified interview coaches, seasoned HR professionals, and industry insiders. With decades of collective expertise and access to an unparalleled database of interview questions, we are dedicated to empowering job seekers. Our content meets real-time industry demands, ensuring readers receive timely, accurate, and actionable advice. We value our readers’ insights and encourage feedback, corrections, and questions to maintain the highest level of accuracy and relevance.

Although learning how to embrace a sober lifestyle and building a new and healthy life that revolves around recovery becomes an addict’s number one goal, establishing one’s independence is critical to long term success. This independence helps build a strong sense of confidence as an addict learns to adapt to the challenges of day-to-day living and is often done in vocational development programs. This role is ideal for recovering addicts seeking a therapeutic and rewarding job, as working with animals is known to have healing effects and promote responsibility and compassion. This role is ideal for recovering addicts who want to focus on physical health and wellness and help others achieve their fitness goals. This role is ideal for recovering addicts who have a desire to help others on their journey to recovery and are looking to use their personal experiences constructively.

• Meals are included and feature lots of tasty options.Rehab is hard work, but we do take time to play.
• This role is ideal for recovering addicts who have found stability and wish to support others on their journey to sobriety.
• Building self-esteem and establishing independence are important to be sure, but so too is the ability to be able to handle the stresses of employment.
• Doctors in rehab facilities require support for hands-on care, which is where behavioral health technicians step in.
• Our addiction treatment facilities are operated by caring medical professionals and support staff, who all play an essential role in helping people begin the path to recovery and beyond.
• When you finally land employment, you will live with the keen awareness that keeping your job is only one of your top priorities.

Addicts can be people of extremes, changing from hot to cold and from active to exhausted, from one day to the next, even when sober and in recovery. Such extremes can lead to impulsive behavior, including career shifts. You may be tempted to apply for any job listing you come across, but you should have a list of criteria for what makes a job ideal. For instance, working in an environment such as a restaurant may not be the best choice for someone following recovery. Exposure to alcohol, stress, and sometimes unstructured scheduling can make for a trigger-filled environment that may put you at risk for relapse. Instead, finding a job with clear and reasonable expectations, structured responsibilities that minimize high-stress or tight deadlines, and plenty of growth opportunities to motivate you.

A form of Competitive Integrated Employment (CIE), IPS pairs prospective job applicants with a specially trained job specialist who helps the individual identify, secure, and maintain employment. This model recognizes that employment is therapeutic—that it represents a key form of recovery capital. In addition to working with individuals, the IPS specialist develops relationships with employers both to pave the way for placements and to facilitate joint problem-solving with the employee and employer when needed.

When you’re ready to leave 12 Keys, we’ll work with you to create an aftercare plan that will help you return to your daily life and continue recovery on your own.To get started, please contact 12 Keys Rehab today. These are just a Sober House Rules: What You Should Know Before Moving In few ideas for jobs that appeal to recovered addicts, and for which people in recovery may be well-suited. Cares of Washington’s mission is to support people with disabilities, barriers to employment, and low incomes to realize their purpose, potential, and strength. Discover the role and responsibilities of an addiction counselor, the steps to becoming one, and the salary outlook for this growing field. At times, you may feel urged to return to old vices to manage feelings of depression and anxiety. Turn to your support network—whether that be a counselor, friends, others in recovery—to ask for help if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

What you ought to know is that thousands of recovering addicts are working in different careers and leading successful lives. If you experience difficulties in finding work in recovery, there are national organizations that help find employment for recovering addicts. For example, The U.S. Department of Labor offers a One Stop Career Center where those who are in recovery can contact them for available career centers in their area. Whether it is bussing tables at a local restaurant, stocking shelves at Walmart, working in a factory or working in a fast food restaurant, working a job that is simple puts the focus on how you are living your life. Working these types of jobs while in recovery also has the benefit of allowing you the time to clearly think about your next steps until you accumulate more clean time.

Addiction and Recovery Careers

• NEW Supported Employment and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) – Growing scientific evidence supports the use of IPS as an intervention for people with or in recovery from substance use disorder.
• You’ll meet other like-minded individuals who will help you in your journey of finding a new job and strengthening your recovery.
• Instead, finding a job with clear and reasonable expectations, structured responsibilities that minimize high-stress or tight deadlines, and plenty of growth opportunities to motivate you.
• Recovered addicts understand what other addicts are going through, and are the best people to help.
• Pet Groomers provide grooming services that help maintain a pet’s appearance and health, working with a variety of animals, primarily focusing on dogs and cats.
• With experience, you can specialize in areas such as athletic training, rehabilitation, or nutrition.

Lastly, you want to develop a specialization or provide niche services. Seek out additional training and related supervision that will facilitate your development of specialized skills to hone your niche. Market yourself accordingly through multiple professional profiles, social media, and search engine optimization (SEO) so that your name becomes synonymous with or inextricably linked to that specialization. People in recovery from substance use disorder can be among your most reliable and dedicated employees. The fact that they have been able to make the transition from substance use disorder to recovery speaks to their commitment, to their development of skills to help them sustain recovery, and to the supports they have in place.

How to Become a Substance Abuse Counselor

You can also gain experience through internships or entry-level positions. Remember, the pathway to a career in addiction and recovery can vary greatly depending on your individual goals, interests, and circumstances. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider. Social workers help clients in a variety of ways during the treatment process and beyond. These social workers help uncover underlying issues behind substance abuse and address them, which helps clients have a better chance at long-term recovery.

However, these laws do not protect those who are currently abusing drugs and alcohol. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual wage for substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors was $48,520 in May 2021. However, salaries can range from as low as $30,870 to more than $77,980. Most substance abuse counselors must hold at least a bachelor’s degree. However, some roles require a graduate-level education, and/or substance abuse counselor certifications.

All eligible employers can apply to receive up to $2,000 of tax credit per eligible employee hired in the current tax year, and/or the year immediately prior to that, if hours are aggregated over two years. Someone will greet you when you’re here and help you get to know the facility and the staff. You’ll spend a few days detoxing from the substances you’ve been abusing. We know that you might be anxious or worried about this step, but trust us — we don’t want you to be uncomfortable during the process. Dr. Balta, our physician who specializes in addiction and recovery, will make sure you stay healthy, safe and as comfortable as possible during detox. They may have worked odd jobs, dead-end jobs or perhaps never held down a job https://yourhealthmagazine.net/article/addiction/sober-houses-rules-that-you-should-follow/ at all.