Positive Pathway and Wellness Center
Substance Abuse Treatment in Hagerstown, Maryland
At Positive Pathways & Wellness Center in Hagerstown, Maryland, we provide comprehensive substance abuse treatment to help individuals break free from addiction and regain control of their lives. Our evidence-based approach focuses on recovery, relapse prevention, and emotional healing. We combine professional guidance with compassionate support to create lasting change. Through personalized treatment plans, individuals develop healthy coping mechanisms and rebuild their sense of self-worth. Located in the heart of Hagerstown, Maryland, our center offers a safe, nonjudgmental environment for recovery — helping you find hope, strength, and freedom from addiction.
Treating Substance Use and Mental Health Together
Substance use and psychiatric conditions are entangled far more often than they are separate. Alcohol becomes the answer to insomnia. Cannabis takes the edge off anxiety and then makes it worse. Stimulants lift a depression for a few hours at a cost that compounds. Opioids prescribed for pain become the only thing that quiets a trauma history.
Treating one side and ignoring the other rarely holds. Addressing the substance use without treating the depression, PTSD, or anxiety underneath it leaves the original reason for using fully intact. We assess and treat both together.
Signs It Is Time for an Assessment
- Using more, or for longer, than you intended
- Repeated attempts to cut back that have not lasted
- Needing more to get the same effect, or withdrawal symptoms when you stop
- Time increasingly organized around obtaining, using, or recovering
- Continuing despite clear consequences to health, work, money, or relationships
- Family, friends, or a physician raising concerns
- Using to manage sleep, anxiety, or memories rather than for enjoyment
You do not need to have hit a crisis to qualify for help. Earlier is easier.
Our Assessment
The evaluation covers what you use, how much and how often, when it began, what has changed recently, and what happens when you stop. We ask about previous treatment and what helped or did not. We screen for co-occurring psychiatric conditions and for medical complications, and we assess withdrawal risk — alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal can be medically dangerous and sometimes require supervised detoxification before outpatient work can begin.
The conversation is clinical and direct. Honest answers produce a safer plan; nothing here is about judgment.
How Treatment Works
Treating the Underlying Condition
When a mood, anxiety, or trauma disorder is driving the use, we treat it with medication management and counseling. Removing the reason someone reaches for a substance is what makes stopping sustainable.
Counseling for Change
Therapy works on ambivalence, triggers and high-risk situations, alternative coping, repairing relationships, and rebuilding structure in a life that use has hollowed out. Goals are set with you, and we work with people at every stage — including those not yet certain they want to stop.
Relapse Prevention
Relapse is common and is treated as clinical information, not failure. We map your specific warning signs and high-risk situations, build a concrete plan for each, and identify who you will contact and when. A patient who returns after a lapse is doing exactly the right thing.
Coordination and Referral
Where medication-assisted treatment, medically supervised withdrawal, or an intensive outpatient or residential program is indicated, we will say so and help arrange the referral. We also coordinate with existing recovery supports, sponsors, and peer programs when you want that.
Who We Work With
- People concerned about alcohol, cannabis, stimulant, or opioid use
- Patients with a psychiatric diagnosis whose substance use has never been addressed alongside it
- Individuals leaving detox, residential, or intensive outpatient care who need continuing treatment
- People who have relapsed and want to re-engage without being lectured
- Family members seeking guidance on how to help
Buprenorphine Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder
We prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. It is one of the most effective treatments in medicine — it substantially reduces overdose death, and it works by occupying the same receptors as other opioids, enough to stop withdrawal and cravings without the cycle of intoxication and crash.
Treatment begins with an assessment covering your use history, previous treatment, withdrawal history, and other substances, particularly benzodiazepines and alcohol, which change the safety picture. Starting buprenorphine at the right point in withdrawal matters, because beginning too early causes precipitated withdrawal. We walk you through that timing in detail beforehand so it does not catch you out.
From there the work is finding a dose that holds cravings flat across a full day, then staying on it. The evidence here is not ambiguous: people who remain on maintenance treatment do markedly better than people tapered off early, and we will not push you off it on a schedule that suits anyone but you. Appointments are available in person and by telehealth depending on where you are in treatment and what current prescribing rules allow — ask and we will tell you exactly what applies to your situation.
Medication for Alcohol Use Disorder
Medication is badly under-used for alcohol, and it works. Naltrexone reduces the reward from drinking and reduces heavy drinking days. Acamprosate helps maintain abstinence after stopping. Disulfiram has a role for some people in specific circumstances. Most patients arriving here have never been offered any of them.
One safety point worth stating plainly: withdrawal from alcohol can be dangerous in a way that opioid withdrawal generally is not. If you drink heavily every day, do not stop abruptly on your own. Seizures and delirium tremens are life-threatening, and medically supervised withdrawal exists for exactly this reason. Tell us honestly how much you drink and we will tell you honestly whether an outpatient taper is safe.
What We Do Not Provide
We do not provide medically supervised inpatient detox, residential treatment, intensive outpatient programmes, or methadone. Methadone is dispensed only through federally licensed opioid treatment programmes — that is a legal restriction rather than a preference on our part.
Where one of these is what you actually need, we say so early and help you get there. Months of appointments in a setting that was never going to be enough is a worse outcome than an honest conversation at the start.
Reaching Out
We see patients in person at 28 Jonathan St in Hagerstown and by secure telehealth across Maryland. Call (240) 413-1255 to arrange an assessment.
If you or someone else may be experiencing an overdose, call 911 immediately. For urgent mental health support, call or text 988.
Substance Use Treatment Questions
Do I have to be ready to quit completely?
No. We work with people across the full range, including those still weighing whether they want to change. Setting a goal you actually believe in is more productive than agreeing to one you do not.
Will you report me?
Substance use treatment records carry strong federal confidentiality protections. The limits are the same as for any care here: imminent danger to yourself or another person, and suspected abuse of a child or vulnerable adult.
What if I relapse during treatment?
Come back and tell us. Relapse is a common part of the course of the condition and it is clinical information we use to adjust the plan. Nobody is discharged for it.
Is stopping on my own dangerous?
It can be. Alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal can be medically serious and sometimes requires supervised detoxification. Tell us what and how much you are using so we can assess that before you make any changes.
Contacts
We’re here to help — reach out to us with any questions or inquiries.
Address
28 Jonathan St,
Hagerstown, MD 21740