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Substance Use Counseling

Addiction treatment therapy, also called addiction counseling, provides patients with the insights, supports, and resources to move beyond their addiction. It often begins at the onset of drug abuse rehab and then continues for as long as the patients need, though in practice many will continue long-term receiving addiction treatment therapy. Because of the multifaceted nature of substance abuse, addiction counseling comes in various formats. Some are led by licensed substance abuse therapists, while other substance abuse counseling is peer-led instead. View more.

Relapse Prevention

This arm of substance abuse counseling usually comes in later stages of addiction recovery (after the initial withdrawal symptoms) and intends to maintain the patients’ long-term sobriety. Because substance abuse relapse will remain a consistent threat to most patients’ long-term recovery, they’re encouraged as part of their addiction treatment to learn, understand, and monitor their relapse triggers. These emotional, mental, and physical occurrences are what might “trigger” patients’ relapse into substance abuse. How they exactly manifest depends on the individual patient’s experience, though group therapy might help him or her identify them alongside supportive peers. Those peer support groups can involve cognitive therapy techniques, mindfulness-based techniques, or other strategies to fortify patients’ relapse prevention.

Strong relapse prevention techniques are significant to patients’ safety because of the threat which renewed substance poses to them. Once they’ve already passed through withdrawal symptoms to drugs or alcohol, patients will lose physical tolerance to those substances. In turn, relapsing into using them can cause their effects to be stronger. In cases of more dangerous substances like opioids, that effect can risk fatal overdose to the patient. View more.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This mental health counseling employs long-standing therapeutic techniques for depression, anxiety, and other disorders specifically to support patients’ recovery. Cognitive behavioral therapy for substance abuse disorders most often begins early in the addiction recovery process, especially for patients at inpatient addiction rehab centers. Essentially, its strategies engage patients’ concerns, stresses, and traumas that might have led them to drink or use substances in the first place. Without a firm, healthy understanding of their underlying issues, patients could leave rehab unprepared for maintained and long-term addiction recovery. Especially if patients suffer from co-occurring disorders (mental health disorder paired with substance abuse), mental health counseling is crucial to helping patients through both struggles.

The techniques vary according to the location of the cognitive behavioral therapy, and both one-on-one therapy with licensed professionals and group therapy are available. One specific mindset and therapeutic approach is the Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART) recovery program, which highlights several areas which those recovering from addiction need to target: their motivation to remain abstinent, coping with their urge to use substances, their thoughts and behaviors, and their balance of expectations for substance-free living. SMART recovery peer meetings (both in person and online) prepare attendees to manage and control these mental, emotional, and behavioral pillars. View more.

Trauma-related Counseling

Trauma and addiction have often run together, just as co-occurring disorders do, and so trauma-focused therapy exists as a specialized and significant subset of mental health counseling. Through both trauma-informed care and trauma-informed therapy, patients who have suffered serious, painful events in their life can receive therapeutic attention to those experiences as well as to their substance abuse. For a better chance at long-term addiction recovery, those traumatized patients need to carefully understand both their trauma and their addiction as separate phenomena which later mingled and informed each other. View more.

12-Step

These addiction recovery groups, which include Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and other groups, have grown quite well-known through both books and film in the United States. Their peer-led structure might seem familiar to many readers. The 12 Step recovery groups provide a supportive setting of peers trying to maintain long-term sobriety through group learning of the 12 step program. Though the specific steps don’t fully overlap with other spiritual recovery methods, they do teach attendees of 12 step groups to pursue substance-free living through submission to a higher power of their own choosing. View more.