There are a lot of people that believe it is easy to get through addiction courses and peer specialist training. However peer support mental health training, recovery coach certification and substance abuse training is about more than being able to get through the book work that comes along with recovery coaching education. Being involved with recovery coaching means you have to have a certain fiber within your soul. You need to be able to handle hearing some of the darkest stories of addicts. Addiction is a very nasty business. Any person that you know who has struggled with addiction probably has several secrets they will never tell you, because it is so shameful for most addicts to bring their stories to light. Going through a long fight with alcoholism, cigarette smoking, marijuana abuse, cocaine addiction, heroin addiction and more leads to a lot of theft, the destruction of trust and more. These are all issues that are hard to talk about, and they are even harder to hear about when you are a recovery coaching professional.
Hearing so many dark stories about the reality behind addiction can take a very serious toll on your emotional well being. If you have not taken the time to consider how much emotional damage has been done to addicts, you are probably not going to be ready to work with them. However, if you have worked with people in a therapeutic setting in the past, you may be able to successfully complete recovery coaching and enjoy a life or career where you spend as much time as you can helping addicts get back to a sober life style.
The best counselors for addiction are usually those that have lived through it themselves. Most addicts they go through recovery coaching end up becoming the type of alcoholic and narcotics anonymous sponsors that are able to understand what new members to these programs are going through. Whether you want to work in an anonymous setting or through a professional clinic that provides rehabilitation services, recovery coaching will probably be required before you can start providing this type of support. Once you know that you are ready to help those that have been through addiction troubles in their life, try to find the best program to teach you about how to offer recovery services so that you can provide either professional rehabilitation or community outreach to addicts in need.