Addiction counselor certification: board, exam and title

A drug and alcohol counselor credential has three parts, and each comes from a different place.

• The exam. The consortium writes and scores it, and Prometric delivers it through its IQT division. It is the same test whether your board calls the result a CADC or a CASAC.
• The board. Your state or regional board reviews your coursework and hours, approves you to test, issues the title, and runs renewal and discipline. Passing the exam alone does not make you credentialed; the board that reviews your application makes that call.
• The title. Each board names its own. In the six boards we list below, the result is called a CAC or a CADC; elsewhere it can be an LADC, a CSAC or a CASAC.

That is why a search for "CADC certification" lands on board pages, while "IC&RC exam" leads to the test those boards require. This section covers both, and the exam overview explains the exam side in full.

The letters are chosen by each board, so the same abbreviation can sit on top of different exams. On the consortium's own member board list, as read on Nov 11, 2026:

• New York's CASAC, issued by the state's addiction services office, requires the ADC exam.
• Kentucky issues both a CADC and an LADC on the ADC exam, while its clinical LCADC requires the advanced AADC exam.
• Nebraska's LADC is a license that also rests on the ADC exam.
• Oklahoma's LADC requires the AADC exam plus an oral exam, so the same four letters mean a harder test there.
• Hawaii and the Pacific islands board issue a CSAC rather than a CADC, again on the ADC exam.

The practical rule: look up your title on your board's page, then check which exam the board lists next to it. If it says ADC, our free questions and domain guide apply as written.

The difference is who grants the right to practice. The consortium's reciprocity FAQ puts it this way: certification is recognition from a non-governmental body that you met its standards, while a license is the state's authorization to practice. The same FAQ notes that many jurisdictions blur the two by writing a private board's standards into law and still calling the result certification.

In practice:

• A CADC, or a CAC, is a certification. Of the six issuing boards in our table, four are independent certification boards and two, in Maine and North Carolina, are state bodies.
• An LADC is a state license. Depending on the state it rests on the same ADC exam as the CADC or on a harder one, and it may ask for a degree or more hours.
• If you move, a member board credential transfers only between member boards that offer it at the reciprocal level, and you receive whatever the new place issues: a license where it licenses, a certification where it certifies.