Substance Abuse Counselor Salary Rates

Created by SubstanceAbuseCounselor.org Contributing Writer

Like many other human services sector jobs, substance abuse counseling isn’t a field you pick if you are planning to build an Elon Musk-style empire and zip around the world on private airplanes. You are drawn to addiction treatment as a career because you value the end result: lives saved, families restored, communities brought together again.

The true value of skilled substance abuse counseling is beyond purely financial measure.

But the reality is that substance use disorder counseling is also a job. It has to put bread on the table, keep a roof over your families head, and build toward a life just as meaningful and healthy as what you strive to offer your clients.

So don’t hesitate to look deeper into salary levels for addiction counseling professionals before you leap. We bring the data and the good news about making a living in substance abuse counseling right here.

A Few Words About Estimating Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor Pay Around the Country

As you’ll see, there are several different professional roles for substance abuse counselors. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects salary and employment information for all categories of jobs in the United States… but they don’t always do it along the same lines as the profession itself is organized.

This is more than usual the case in addiction counseling salary data. BLS tracks these roles in a group with several other related positions. For examples, substance abuse counselors are lumped together with other behavioral and mental health counselors. There’s also no breakdown between clinical and general SUD (substance use disorder) counselors.

Some of the divisions within the substance abuse community are tracked in other categories entirely, such as health education specialists for peer counselors.

This all means that there are not always clear lines to draw within the various factors that go into determining substance abuse counselor salaries. Instead, we’ve made estimates based on likely ranges within certain categories or by industries of employment for each title. There’s no substitute for checking job listings for specific SUD counseling jobs in your own area, however!

Different Levels of Professional Counseling Bring Different Base Substance Abuse Counselor Salary Rates

As with any industry, there is a gradient of salaries that are offered on the basis of your overall professional qualifications. Just like a chief financial officer makes more in accounting than a bookkeeper, in the addiction counseling industry you will earn more as a licensed independent clinical counselor than as a substance use disorder technician.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) offers an easy way to break down these various professional levels on the basis of practice standards and qualifications. While each state has unique licensing laws and different certification arrangements, most come fairly close to the standard set of six levels SAMHSA outlines.

The average salary rates for each of those categories, based on BLS data gathered nation-wide in 2023, is:

Peer Recovery Specialist - $39,630 (No educational requirements)
Substance Use Disorder Technician - $39,610 (High School diploma/GED)
Associate Substance Use Disorder Counselor - $44,600 (Associate’s degree/Certificate)
Substance Use Disorder Counselor - $53,710 (Bachelor’s degree)
Clinical Substance Use Disorder Counselor - $70,130 (Master’s degree)
Independent Substance Use Disorder Counselor/Supervisor - $89,920 (Master’s degree)

These categories also roughly line up with education levels and experience. As you would expect, a combination of more years of experience and a higher level of college degree will usually bump you toward a higher pay rate.

It’s worth noting that supervisor status in various states can come at levels below the independent clinical SUD counselor, and can result in a bump over and above the base pay for any of those positions.

Unlike many other professions, though, this is baked in to the licensing structure for substance abuse counselors. So while an accountant can get their masters and earn a CPA, then be promoted up the ladder toward that CFO job eventually, a counselor may earn their bachelor’s to become an associate SUD counseling, build their experience to become a full SUD counselor, then go get a master’s and become a clinical SUD counselor.

Substance Abuse Counseling Salaries Get Mixed in With Other Behavioral Health Professionals

One of the reasons that substance abuse counselor pay is tough to separate from other behavioral health and human services professionals is that sometimes addiction counseling jobs aren’t easily separated from those parallel professions.

Many psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors, and behavioral health professionals have a similar skillset to SUD counselors. Since many substance abuse issuing are co-occuring with other mental health and social issues (such as homelessness or incarceration), those roles also engage in substance abuse counseling.

Depending on how state licensing laws work, those positions may fall into job categories for substance abuse counselors or into their own separate BLS categories. It’s not always cut and dried. That’s part of why BLS itself combines substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors together.

How Much Do Substance Abuse Counselors Make Depending on Their Specialization?

There are a wide range of different types of substance abuse that occur in the United States today. While substance abuse counselors are trained to deliver their best therapy no matter what, each of these different kinds of drug have different physiological and psychological impacts. So the best evidence-backed treatments aren’t always the same.

You can see how the industry splits itself into various specialized treatment options along these lines. There are counselors who specialize in cigarette smoking cessation, inpatient facilities designed specifically for people with alcohol dependencies, and street outreach programs that focus entirely on opioid and heroin addiction treatments.

It’s fairly clear from looking at job listings for these various positions that there are real differences in pay levels for counselors with the right expertise to fill the jobs. Unfortunately, there is no standard government or industry tracking for these numbers. You’ll need to drill down in the listings and see what local demand and the supply of counseling expertise mean for various substance abuse specializations in your area.

Employers and Industries Can Influence Substance Abuse Counselor Pay

Who hires a counselor and the industry that employer fits into also has an effect on the salary and benefits levels. Even though the job may ultimately be very similar from day-to-day, a counselor working in a hospital setting can make over $10,000 more per year than one employed at a residential treatment facility, for example.

This can also shift based on the sector of the employers, whether for-profit, non-profit, or government agency. So again, a SUD counselor performing more or less identical work at a hospital run by a large multi-state health maintenance organization (HMO) might see a substantially different salary than one working at a government-run hospital.

For each of the available substance abuse counseling categories, and some of the top industries of employment, these are what those differences look like:

	SUD Technician	SUD Counselor
Hospitals	$44,110	$59,090
Other healthcare practices	$43,510	$55,410
Outpatient substance abuse centers	$36,810	$51,130
Individual and family services	$43,670	$51,010
Residential substance abuse facilities	$36,810	$46,880

Naturally, as averages, you will find some adjustments on the base rates for SUD counselors for assistants (below these numbers) and for clinical and independent clinical counselors (above these numbers). In general, though, you should see the same sorts of separation between industries.

Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor Salary Rates Change From Area to Area

Cost of living and demand for treatment also varies from state to state, region to region, and even city to town. Base pay rates for substance abuse counselors get hit by the same overall market forces as other types of jobs. In areas with a great need for treatment but few qualified professionals, pay is likely to be higher. Similarly, in areas where the rents are high, you’re likely to see higher salaries.

We looked at the average salaries in a range of American cities to give you some idea how substance abuse counselors are paid in different parts of the country:

New York : $71,180
Los Angeles : $64,930
Chicago : $64,560
Dallas : $58,340
Miami : $57,130
Saint Louis : $59,040
Atlanta : $54,830
Seattle : $65,390

Across the country, substance abuse counselor salaries at the mid-level through the top 10% are show here:

Area Name	Employment	Annual mean wage	Annual median wage	Annual 75th percentile wage	Annual 90th percentile wage
Alabama	3110	47900	44890	53510	70010
Alaska	1120	77430	70860	83660	103590
Arizona	8110	60640	58640	74640	82740
Arkansas	2520	66180	56730	84320	113520
California	54660	66970	58080	81180	108070
Colorado	13290	62380	58110	76280	92360
Connecticut	6960	61100	58710	75200	91390
Delaware	1500	51220	45810	62370	71210
District of Columbia	1060	67750	64270	77320	96040
Florida	19310	56980	52260	63100	80370
Georgia	7890	53760	48290	60520	80020
Hawaii	1330	61530	46740	62240	99290
Idaho	1630	58990	58360	68260	79120
Illinois	14710	63450	57500	76090	98920
Indiana	10230	49750	45510	58740	73670
Iowa	2680	61770	59000	75560	82620
Kansas	1950	54170	50990	61090	75790
Kentucky	6610	53690	47060	64130	84630
Louisiana	5190	42280	36430	48140	61690
Maine	960	57610	53900	63370	83570
Maryland	7690	61860	54460	65920	86320
Massachusetts	17290	58720	54920	65020	80840
Michigan	9110	57560	56160	66500	82540
Minnesota	6550	54420	51130	60400	69680
Mississippi	1990	47500	42010	50840	63980
Missouri	5790	55910	48130	64800	77470
Montana	1880	53690	52490	61820	75800
Nebraska	1720	58720	58320	68110	82490
Nevada	2020	59820	57580	71250	86810
New Hampshire	2310	57110	54470	66160	80540
New Jersey	13320	67250	60250	76250	102710
New Mexico	2110	66190	62120	78990	98270
New York	24420	67240	59740	74510	99700
North Carolina	9980	56510	51790	63910	79440
North Dakota	920	66200	61240	73760	82680
Ohio	16310	57300	50580	63150	81500
Oklahoma	5010	61760	57190	75500	95790
Oregon	6420	66260	62070	78820	99380
Pennsylvania	24040	56090	50450	64160	82350
Puerto Rico	100	28480	24140	37610	42690
Rhode Island	1430	50110	46030	60350	75730
South Carolina	3980	49310	47480	60170	75670
South Dakota	1620	50960	48520	55260	67060
Tennessee	5220	49280	45490	57640	75330
Texas	18840	55780	52190	66940	79440
Utah	3850	70310	62870	85580	106390
Vermont	920	58880	56980	63190	77800
Virginia	15720	58610	54590	66140	80150
Washington	12080	63490	58540	75150	92970
West Virginia	1640	47520	44140	56350	74450
Wisconsin	8060	66230	58740	74960	97450
Wyoming	820	66430	62990	83450	104000

A breakdown is also available for SUD technicians:

New York : $55,850
Los Angeles : $56,780
Chicago : $46,760
Dallas : $40,870
Miami : $42,120
Saint Louis : $44,540
Atlanta : $46,800
Seattle : $51,720

As with the industry numbers, these are just averages, so you’ll find the same local numbers above or below these for different levels of substance abuse counseling practice.

How Much Do Substance Abuse Counselors Make Based on Their Experience?

In some ways, years of experience are attached to the various roles in substance abuse counseling. You simply can’t become an independent clinical substance abuse counselor without several years of practical, on-the-job experience at a lower level. That’s already baked into the base salary you see for the job.

But that doesn’t mean that serving for another ten years as an independent clinical counselor doesn’t make your skills that much more valuable to employers. So you will also expect to see your salary rise as you gain additional experience in the profession.

This doesn’t apply to every role, however. Associate counselors, for example, are almost always going to be moving up the ladder to full SUD counselors. But for the titles where you may decide to settle in and make a career, you might eventually expect to come up toward the top ten percent of all positions in salary eventually:

Peer Recovery Specialist - $62,860
Substance Use Disorder Technician - $59,990
Associate Substance Use Disorder Counselor - $53,710
Substance Use Disorder Counselor - $89,920
Clinical Substance Use Disorder Counselor - over $89,920
Independent Substance Use Disorder Counselor/Supervisor - $89,920 and up

As you can see, there’s not a lot of clear differences in the data for top-tier counseling roles. It wouldn’t be unusual to see supervisory or senior counseling roles pushing into the six-figure range depending on responsibility, however.

The final analysis makes it clear that you can earn a perfectly respectable living anywhere in the country as a substance abuse counselor, however. On top of the base salary levels listed here, it’s also common to find fairly generous healthcare and retirement benefits with organizations that hire for these jobs. That assures you and your family that you have exactly the kind of safety net that many of your clients may lack.

Ultimately, substance abuse counselors deserve salaries far higher than society can pay them. It’s a field where you can expect much of your take-home compensation to come in the form of gratitude and thanks from clients and their families. And there’s no price you can put on that.

2023 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary and employment figures for Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors, Psychiatric Technicians and Aides, and Health Education Specialists reflect national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed April 2024.