FIND YOUR WAY TO QUALITY ALCOHOL TREATMENT

NIAAA’s website, Rethinking Drinking, can help people who drink and concerned others assess their level of drinking and the risks it poses. The site also offers practical tips for reducing risk and for getting help.

Each of the directories for you to search in Step 1 covers the entire United States. They contain providers with training and credentials to treat addiction. Within each directory, the user can identify providers with the recommended credentials by using our step-by-step guidance. While more directories are available, we aimed to simplify the search process by suggesting that you start with the directories with the greatest coverage.

As a government agency, NIAAA cannot endorse or promote any particular provider, service, or organization. In addition, credentials such as licenses and accreditations can lapse over time, meaning directories need to be constantly refreshed. This makes it difficult for us to create and maintain a curated list of treatment providers that will always be current and accurate.

These terms apply somewhat differently depending on whether you are talking about a doctor, therapist, or treatment program.

This table describes the major types of providers that offer addiction treatment services. For each, you can see the minimum credentials that the provider should have. These basic requirements should be considered the bare minimum. For example, nearly all treatment providers will have a license, but that does not necessarily mean they have the expertise you need.

Ideally, you will want to find a provider that goes above and beyond those minimum credentials. These “above and beyond” credentials, shown in the right-hand column, indicate that the provider has obtained a professional specialty through additional formal training and has passed a rigorous independent review of their expertise. If you’re choosing among several providers, try to choose one with these “above and beyond” credentials.

You may already know the name of an addiction treatment provider, perhaps from one of these sources:

• A recommendation from a doctor or another health professional.

• A list of “in network” providers from your insurance plan.

• A recommendation from a friend or family member.
• An advertisement you saw on television or online.

The NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator^® focuses on treatment providers that are available to the general public. The best resource to find treatment in the Veterans Health Administration is the VA’s online treatment locator.

If you want to work with a doctor with an addiction specialty but cannot find one using the directory we offer, here are some additional suggestions:

• Check with the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), which is the professional organization for physicians who have an interest in treating addiction. Some physicians may be interested in (and good at) treating people with alcohol and drug problems, but they may not have completed the board certification process. You can find out if there is one near you by contacting the chapter president for the ASAM chapter in your state. Find that person’s contact information at the ASAM State Chapters page.
• If there is not an ASAM-affiliated doctor near you, you might try working with your own or your loved one’s primary care doctor. We recommend this especially if the person has a medical condition that needs monitoring in addition to an alcohol use disorder. NIAAA has developed a Clinician’s Guide called Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much that is designed to help doctors and other health professionals feel more comfortable assessing and treating alcohol use disorder. You might share this link to the Clinician’s Guide with your doctor, or download it and bring it with you to an appointment.
• If there are no nearby options, you might consider a single day of travel to a distant board-certified addiction medicine or psychiatry specialist for a consultation. A goal would be to have him or her conduct a comprehensive assessment and create a treatment plan that could be carried out closer to home in collaboration with your local primary care physician and a nearby therapist. Call ahead to explain your situation and arrange a visit.
• In many states, insurance companies have begun to cover “telehealth” services that link physicians or therapists to patients by phone or video conference that might be used for counseling and follow-up. Check with your insurance company about coverage.

A variety of recovery support services are available. As with treatment services, continuing care services will vary from one person to the next depending on their specific needs.

• The best-known type of continuing care is involvement in a mutual support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or SMART Recovery, in which persons in recovery meet with peers to share their experience and support.
• Professional counselors might provide telephone-based continuing care (sometimes called recovery management “checkups”), in which they call the patient periodically to check in and to provide or arrange for any additional needed support.
• Recovery coaching involves one-on-one support from a peer recovery support specialist.
• If needed, recovery housing (sometimes called “sober living” or a “halfway house”) is available for people who need the time and support to transition from a structured treatment setting back into their community.
• For people requiring ongoing monitoring as part of a formal job-based or criminal justice program, continuing care might also include periodic alcohol and drug testing, with support available to prevent or interrupt a relapse.

Relapse is a return to drinking after a period of abstinence. Relapse is common among people in treatment for alcohol use disorder. People with an alcohol problem are most likely to relapse during periods of stress or when exposed to people or places associated with past drinking.