Questions to Ask a Substance Abuse Counselor

When you or someone you know enters a substance abuse treatment program, there are a lot of questions you will want to ask the counselors. It might be a fearful experience, but if you get a few important questions out of the way in the beginning, the experience will be less scary and help everyone understand what is happening and why.

Treatment

• The first and most important thing you should ask about is what kind of treatment will be available. You should find out why certain treatments are available and if any other treatments are used that aren't available and why. Find out why the various treatments are used and based on what experience.

  Related to treatment you should also find out the credentials of the counselor and any doctors working with them.

Recovery

• You should ask what the goal of the treatment is. The standard answer is recovery, but it's important to know what that is and what it means. Different counselors may have a different idea of what recovery is or at least what it looks like. Recovery will also look different on different people and may occur in stages.

Personal Help

• If you're the person who needs help and really wants help, you should ask what you can do to make treatment work better and help speed recovery along. If you are not the person in need of treatment, you should ask about what you can do to help support the person in treatment. Often times we want to help, but we act selfishly or don't understand what we can do to make a difference.