How Do Peer Support Services Help People in Addiction Treatment?

Summary: Peer support services help people in addiction treatment by promoting personal development, fostering independence, and helping patients develop effective skills that increase their likelihood of successful, long-term, patient-centered recovery.

Key Points:

• Each state defines and regulates the scope and details of the service and support peer support specialists provide to people in recovery.
• Peer support specialists must have a personal relationship with recovery, have significant time in successful recovery, and adhere to a specific code of ethics.
• For people in addiction treatment, peer support specialists offer valuable insight from their lived experience in addiction recovery, which often resonates more powerfully with people in treatment than insight and advice offered by people with no personal experience with addiction recovery
• Peer support services in California launched in 2022 and are currently active in 54 counties statewide.

What Are Peer Support Specialists?

Peer support specialists are people who’ve been through recovery themselves and have received specialized training from state licensing bodies to help others in mental health treatment or addiction treatment and recovery programs.

The addiction experts at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) describe how peer support services, delivered by peer support specialists, help people in addiction recovery. Peer support specialists help patients develop the skills to:

• Clarify and improve their personal relationship to recovery from alcohol or drug addiction
• Advocate for themselves during recovery
• Create and sustain relationships that support recovery
• Identify and live according to a personally defined set of values
• Direct their own recovery journey according to their personal needs and goals

A peer support specialist helps people in treatment understand that recovery is not one-size-fits-all. During the recovery process, peer support helps patients determine their own path and own criteria for successful recovery. Here’s how a peer support specialist defines recovery:

“Recovery is a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential.”

And here’s a definition of the roles and duties of a peer support specialist:

“Peer support workers engage in a wide range of activities, including advocacy, linkage to resources, sharing of experience, community and relationship building, group facilitation, skill building, mentoring, and goal setting.”

Now let’s take a closer look and learn about the nuts and bolts of peer support services.

Peer Support Services, Peer Support Specialists: Guiding Principles and Core Competencies

In the 2015 publication “Core Competencies for Peer Workers in Behavioral Health Services,” the treatment experts at Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) define four major dimensions that promote long-term, sustainable addiction and/or mental health recovery:

Dimension 1: Health

Learning to overcome, manage or more successfully live with the symptoms and making healthy choices that support one’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

Dimension 2: Home

A stable and safe place to live.

Dimension 3: Purpose

Meaningful daily activities, such as a job, school, volunteer work, or creative endeavors; and, increased ability to lead a self-directed life; and meaningful engagement in society

Dimension 4: Community

Relationships and social networks that provide support, friendship, love, and hope

Peer support specialists receive training to help connect people in recovery to services, education, or programs that ensure stability in these four critical dimensions. Each state develops specific guidelines for peer support that align with the structure, budget, and existing infrastructure capacity. In 2025, many states – including California – are in the process of expanding peer support services, based on funding priorities identified during the post-COVID period, 2022-2024.

In most states, peer support services include but are not limited to:

1. An ongoing assessment of patient recovery needs
2. Helping patients achieve personal independence in whatever way they define it
3. Encouraging hope, optimism, and a positive attitude toward the treatment and recovery program and process
4. Helping patients develop life skills necessary for personal success, such as budgeting, accessing community resources, and participating in recovery-friendly activities
5. Helping patients meet and exceed recovery goals
6. Modeling personal responsibility for recovery, which may include sharing personal experiences with the treatment and recovery process
7. Teaching skills necessary to navigate to the health care system so patients get the support and services that maximize recovery success
8. Helping patients overcome barriers to recovery, employment, education, or housing, and mitigate discrimination or stigma that may itself be a barrier to treatment
9. Helping identify and access the natural supports in the community, such as family, recovery peers, spiritual/religious organizations, and/or any programs or services that promote overall health, wellness, and recovery
10. Coordinating crisis interventions if needed
11. Helping patients develop the self-advocacy skills required to connect to and participate in activities that inspire hope

Peer support specialists also act as role models for recovery. Most, if not all, peer support specialists are in recovery themselves, and therefore have direct, experiential knowledge of the recovery process, including all its ups and downs. They can empathize, share their experiences, advocate, and help patients connect and communicate with family, peers, and your treatment team. Their job is to help people in recovery be authentic, true to themselves, recover in a way that meets their needs and is best for their life and overall recovery goals.

How Peer Support Services Help People in Addiction Treatment

SAMHSA identifies the following evidence-based benefits of peer support for people in recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) and/or substance use disorder (SUD):

• Decreased criminal justice involvement
• Improved relationship with treatment providers
• Decreased engagement with emergency services
• Reduced rates of relapse to alcohol or substance use
• Increased time in treatment
• Reduced rates of alcohol or substance related re-hospitalization
• Increased satisfaction with treatment
• Reduced use of alcohol and substances
• Improved access to social services and support
• Increased housing stability

Here’s how three people in addiction recovery describe the function and value of peer support in their recovery journey:

“When I needed someone to walk beside me, peer support was there.”

“Peer support helped me see that I was not hopeless. It gave me my voice back and bolstered my self-worth.”

“Because of peer support I am alive!”

Feeling less alone and feeling supported are essential elements of recovery. The last quote drives home just how important wisdom, kindness, and support from peers can have during addiction recovery. For that person, it meant the difference between life and death: that’s the power peer support can have.

In California, a recent newsletter from Dr. Amie Miller, Executive Director of the California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA), details the scope of these life-affirming – and potentially life-saving – programs since their inception in 2022, with additional details available on the California Peer Certification Program Dashboard.

Peer Support Services in California: Facts and Figures

• Total peer support specialists certified: 7,445
• Certified for mental health support: 5,964
• Certified for addiction support: 4,023
• By location:
  • LA area: 1,727
  • Southern: 2,769
• By gender:
  • Female: 62%
  • Male: 34%
  • Genderqueer: 2%
  • Transgender: 1%
• By race/ethnicity:
  • Hispanic: 33%
  • White: 33%
  • Black: 16%
  • Multiracial: 10%
  • Asian/Pacific Islander: 7%
  • Native: 1%

Those figures tell us something important: if you need peer support services for addiction treatment – and you live in California – you can most likely find someone with a similar background. As the facts show, sometimes that can make all the difference, and increase the likelihood of achieving long-term, sustainable recovery.