 One of the questions that I get all the time is how the heck do you get a job working at a drug and alcohol treatment center or in a mental health treatment facility and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and typically what I do is pull different topics from the YouTube community or pop culture to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. But in this video, I'm going to be talking about treatment centers, how I got a job in one if you're interested in pursuing a career in one. This video is for you. But anyways, if you're into all this kind of stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yeah, this is a little bit of story time, shouldn't be too highly edited. I got my man Zach doing his thing while I am here with the wonderful Aaron from For the Love of Tech. He's letting me use his mic and computer and all these other things because I'm like, I want to do a little story time. So yeah, this is how I got my job working in treatment and I know a lot of you are interested in it as well. So basically for me, I was working at a company. We did like a lot of content for different websites and one of the things that I did as somebody in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction was I wrote a lot of their content like blog posts and things like that. And anyways, I was also an account manager. So I ended up managing an account for a pretty big drug and alcohol treatment center. And I found out that they had a treatment center where I'm from. So they loved what I was doing. They saw my work ethic. So trust me, this work ethic isn't just in YouTube. I'm just a hard worker. And they saw that they knew I was in recovery and they said, hey, Chris, we have an opening at the facility here in Las Vegas. Would you like me to put in a word for you? Like, would you like to do something like in our field? I'm like, heck, yeah, I would. You know, because part of what my recovery is about is giving back and helping others. And to be honest, I wasn't entirely happy at the company I was with. I was there for about a year and a half or two years. But anyways, one of the issues is, is that I do not have a college degree. Now I've been to college a few times and dropped out. I'm in the middle of getting my certified alcohol and drug counselor license. But during this time, I did not have a degree. So the position, thankfully, the position was what they call an alumni coordinator. If you Google pretty much any drug and alcohol rehab center, not any drug and alcohol rehab center, but most of them have an alumni program. So the position was for an alumni coordinator. And basically the only qualifications you need was two years clean. Now this is important too for any of you watching this who are in recovery, most treatment centers in order to work there, they're going to want you to have two years sober. Now here's the thing. In some states, that's actually the law. Not in all states, but in some states. So one of the reasons is, even though we get into recovery, we quit drugs and alcohol, we try to better ourselves and everything like that, relapse is possible. And if you could imagine somebody who is in recovery working at a drug and alcohol rehab center and then relapsing, that's not a good look for the rehab center and it could be potentially dangerous. What if an employee relapsed and then, you know, when we, when we are using, like we just give, you know, zero efforts so that person can bring in drugs, alcohol, you know, whatever it is. So anyways, I had two years clean. They interviewed me a couple of times and it was actually part of their marketing department and depending on the treatment center, alumni program usually falls under marketing. But anyways, I ended up getting that job as the alumni coordinator. And because of my hard work and hustle, I ended up getting promoted to the lead alumni coordinator. And basically what that means is we have treatment centers all over the country. And I was pretty much, you know, the, the person right underneath the manager. So the other people can come to me because basically here in Las Vegas, the alumni program was pretty much non-existent. And I grew it to one of the biggest ones in the country. All right. Because again, that work ethic, okay. So yes, I ended up getting that job. So this is a job that I did not need a degree or a license for. So part of this job was following up and providing support for people after they left treatment. Okay. Like one of the things is, is when people are inside of treatment, whether it's, you know, just a straight up mental health facility or a drug and alcohol rehab, I worked at a dual diagnosis treatment facility, which means that we treated addiction and mental illness. Like while you're in there, you know, you're safe, you're comfortable, you're in your bubble, but then once you leave and go, you know, go back to the real world, it gets difficult. And anybody who's ever been to rehab or a treatment facility, you know what I mean. So part of my job was to follow up with people and provide them with support. I had a work cell phone on me 24 seven and people had access to me. So if they were struggling, if they were craving, if they were just going through a rough time, they could call me or reach out, but I was also on social media so they can message me and all that. Now part of this was getting to know the clients while they're in treatment. So how do I do this? Well, here's a word that Zach's going to put up on the screen for you. Psycho educational. Let me repeat that word for you. Psycho educational. OK, there is psycho education, and then there is psychotherapy. In order to do psychotherapy, you must be licensed. OK, but psycho education can be done by anybody. OK, so for example, the free course that I have on the science of addiction. That is a psycho educational course. And psycho education is those groups are paid for by insurance companies. All right, so you do not have to be licensed to run psycho educational groups. For example, we had behavioral health technicians. We called them BHTs. And basically, like they're kind of like hall monitors, if you will, keeping people in check, like, yo, go to group, you go to group, that it out of now when people are no man, I just want to smoke. And BHTs, they could run groups and they would do things like big book studies and all that kind of stuff. Right. Now, me being a mental health nerd and reading a lot of books and stuff like that, I branched out and did more groups like the science of addiction. I did groups on depression and anxiety and all that kind of stuff, especially because we're working at a mental health treatment center. So again, you do not have to be licensed to do a psycho educational group. All right. And that's one of the biggest misconceptions. So a lot of people message me or DM me or I had a lot of clients who said, Chris, how do I start working in treatment? I'm like, OK, what path do you want to take? You want to do what I do or do you want to become a counselor and do actual therapy because that also depends state by state. So in the state of Nevada, it's one of the few states where in order to get licensed, you have to get an associate's and then I believe a bachelor's degree in order to get a license in other states like the neighboring state to me, California, you do not need a bachelor's degree to pursue like, you know, to become like an LMFT, right? You do not need a bachelor's degree. You could just go through the certifications and do it its own thing. But since I live in the state of Nevada, you got to get a bachelor's and all that stuff. So part of what I am doing is going back to school. Right now, I'm taking a break to focus on YouTube and all that stuff. But I'm probably going back maybe, maybe towards the end of this year. So when I have people who ask me how to get a job at a treatment center, first off, look at the positions like it's like any other freaking job. Look at the positions. Look at the job listings and like any other job, it will say the job requirements. OK, so it will say, you know, if a degree is preferred or if it's mandatory or whatever. All right. Now, let me rewind real quick. So in some groups that I did, there had to be a there had to be supervision. OK, so in some groups that I did, depending on how they were billing the insurance for it, there had to be supervision from a licensed clinician. OK, and that is how insurance paid us for it. You know what I mean? But for psychoeducational groups, you don't need that in order to have accreditation. So through through addiction rehabs, like one of the biggest accreditations is J. Co. All right. And there are some other accreditation. And basically when you get accredited, then insurance pays and all that kind of stuff. So at my treatment center, clients had to go through X amount of groups ran by licensed clinicians in order for insurance to pay for their, you know, like inpatient treatment or outpatient treatment, right? But there is still a section of groups in which they did not need one. So for example, we had a lot of people who would volunteer from like the 12 step community and they would come in and they would even do groups. OK, these are non licensed professionals or non licensed people in the community. They're not professionals because they're not getting paid to do it. But part of my job, too, was I had to go on my computer and I had to put in group notes, which ended up going to insurance and getting billed to the insurance companies in which insurance companies got paid us for it. All right. So I just want you guys to kind of understand how all this works. Especially with, you know, I'm not going to sugar coat it, especially with all the stuff going on where people don't understand how mental health treatment actually works. But you do not need a license to work at a mental health treatment center. You do not need a license to do groups. You do need a license to do some groups. You do need a license to do some forms of therapy. All right. So one thing I would recommend that you look up is peer support groups and things like that, because that is something that is becoming bigger and bigger all over the United States is peer support. For example, here in the state of Nevada, state legislation tried to pass a law saying that in order to be a peer support specialist, you needed to have a license. And we have an advocacy group here in Las Vegas. Well, right now I'm sitting here in Florida, but in Las Vegas, we have an advocacy group that went to state like the state and they basically fought and said that is ridiculous. Some of the best support that people get is from other people in recovery. So they ended up not passing that law so they could do peer support. So this is going to vary state by state and be different. But for example, Tristan, my wonderfully beautiful girlfriend, she worked at a psych ward in California. All right. And she actually did psycho educational groups as well without a license. Now she does have a degree in psychology, but whether or not she did or didn't, she was still perfectly able to do those groups. So part of this was me trying to explain these things to you. But obviously I'm here to let you know if you want to pursue a career in it. If not, what I would recommend, if you want to become a counselor, a therapist, a psychologist, whatever it is, look in your state and see what the requirements are. In most cases, you can go to your state licensing board and see what their requirements are. So you know what the laws are in your state. Now, one of the misconceptions is that people people believe that what's what's legal in their state is legal in other states. And that's not the case in the United States. It goes state by state in many cases. Now, some states have similar laws. Some states don't. This is why you have to look at your specific state licensing board. All right. But when people come to me and ask, like I said, I recommend looking at the job board, seeing what the state requirements are. Not the state requirements, the job requirements are. Look at that. All right. But if you want to pursue a career in it, what I would recommend is again, looking at the state licensing board, see what their requirements are. If you're in a state like Nevada, like I've had to talk to, you know, colleges here and ask them, you know, the same thing that you would like ask any other like college counselor and say, OK, here's the path I want to take. What do I got to do? All right. But if you're in recovery from addiction, too, one of the best ways to get into the field to get started is like, like I mentioned, behavioral health technicians, those typically you do not need a degree for. All right. And you get to help. Some of our clients love the BHT's, the behavioral health text more than anybody else there, because the BHT's are just like kind of there to stand and talk to you. And a lot of them are in recovery as well. So I would look up some kind of behavioral health technicians. Tristan said, like they were called something different at the place you work, but look at that some kind of technician. All right. And then the other entry level position for addiction recovery specifically is looking to sober living homes. OK. Like, for example, I did not get sober through a rehab. I never went through a rehab because I didn't have insurance. I didn't have money. So I got sober through a sober living home and sober living homes typically have a house manager. So if you want a career or like you want to get started and gain some experience, I would recommend looking at sober living homes in your area. Here's the thing, though, a lot of them, a lot of them from my personal experience, don't really pay you. OK. Typically, what they do is give you a free room there. All right. So like for some sober living house managers that I've worked with, they've had to have a separate job and things like that in order to, you know, pay their bills. Like, you know, even though they're having like rent taken care of and their utilities taken care of or whatever, you know, they still had a cell phone bill. They still had to buy groceries. They still had a car payment. They still had to buy gas. They had insurance, dah, dah, dah, dah. So you might have to get a part-time job to take care of those other expenses. But I have it's on a very rare occasion that I've seen sober living homes who actually not only make you a house manager and give you room and board, but they also pay you on top of it. But even in those cases, they were paying like, I think the most I've seen is maybe a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a month. All right, but let me know down in the comments below, if you are thinking about pursuing a career or getting a job in mental health treatment or addiction treatment, let me know down in the comments below because, as you know, I'm switching up some content on my channel and everything like that. So if you have questions about this and you would like me to share more of my experience, I'm thinking about doing some videos on the different groups I ran and dealing with clients and things like that in a completely HIPAA compliant way, which is something I've taken many courses on in order to maintain my job in a treatment center. But anyways, if you want to know more about that, or if you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below so I can make more videos on this stuff. All right, anyways, big thanks to Zach for being the best editor in the world while I'm out of town. But if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing and if you would like to become a patron and get exclusive videos and, you know, free copies of my books and be part of the monthly Q&A, click or tap right there. All right. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.