One of the best ways to treat addiction is to prevent it from happening in the first place. This means that when addiction is prevented, the chances of it happening is zero.

When it comes to preventing addiction, one of the persons playing a pivotal role is the counselor.

The counselor is a trained professional that helps people with a wide range of problems like addiction, mental health issues, etc.

Here are some of the roles a counselor plays in preventing addiction

To educate on how addiction develops

When people get addicted, it is often because they have no idea how addiction works. With the help of a counselor, you will understand how addiction develops so that you can prevent it from happening. Education also informs you about the adverse effects of addiction.

Many people are unaware that addiction can affect different aspects of their health, which becomes more difficult for them to be healthy in the long run.

To teach healthy life habits

One of the profound means of preventing addiction is by integrating healthy life habits. Some of them include exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, sleeping for a good number of hours, taking sufficient water, etc.

With a healthy lifestyle, it would be almost impossible for the individual to get addicted.

To teach coping skills

The essence of learning coping skills is to arm yourself with strategies on how to keep cravings and triggers at bay.

When you are faced with temptations that can lure you into addiction. However, with profound coping skills, it will be easy to evade addiction no matter how inviting it might look.

If you know anyone struggling with addiction, you can assist them in finding help. Usually, the first line of action is the counselor who would help the addict to understand why they are addicted so that they can get help.

Aftercare treatment is an intervention program that helps to recover individuals fight off cravings and triggers that can make them addicted.

An aftercare treatment sets in when the individual is done with rehab treatment.

This means that they have been certified to be sober. And they can go about living their normal lives.

However, the mistake some people make is to use the same momentum to approach life, without realizing that it might get disastrous for them.

Hence, this is what the aftercare treatment seeks to prevent, and usually, it is spearheaded by an addiction counselor.

The addiction counselor plays a role in aftercare treatment which is similar to the main addiction treatment. Here are some of the functions of counseling for aftercare treatment.

Teach coping skills

Coping skills are strategies that recovering individuals use to suppress cravings and triggers. For instance, someone recovering from alcohol addiction will have to avoid places where they are likely to be addicted.

Their sense of reasoning and judgment has to be heightened so that they don’t find themselves going back to their addiction due to carelessness.

Hence, with good coping skills, they will be able to make the right decisions that will keep them sober.  

Teach them healthy lifestyles

One of the reasons why people get addicted is because they live unhealthy lifestyles. With the help of a counselor, it becomes easy to live healthily after addiction treatment.

The recovering individual will learn how to eat a nutritious diet, engage in physical activities, sleep properly and undergo habits that will boost their mental health.

Help to mend their relationships

When individuals are suffering from addiction, they are usually at loggerheads with their loved ones. However, with the help of the counselor, long-standing issues can be resolved.

This will help the recovering individual to leverage the support of their family and friends. Therefore, it would become easy for them to remain sober.