Comparison of Recovering and Non-Alcoholic Alcoholism Counselors: A survey

A survey of alcoholism counselors from a state and a national sample was conducted as a preliminary study to be used in the planning of a larger survey. The survey attempted to gather qualitative and quantitative data with which to test observations made about the recovering counselor in the alcoholism literature. Recovering counselors were contrasted with non-alcoholic counselors in terms of demographic characteristics and attitudes toward alcoholism counseling as a profession and the issue of relapse in recovering counselors. The results found that despite significant differences in demographic characteristics, recovering and nonalcoholic counselors tended to have very similar attitudes toward issues involving alcoholism treatment and relapse.