Opioid Addiction Treatment

Opioid use disorder is a medical condition with an unusually clear treatment answer: medication plus therapy, sustained over time, which reduces relapse and reduces death. Whether someone gets that combination is the single biggest variable in how this goes.

Golden Coast Rehab treats opioid use disorder in adults across San Diego County on an outpatient basis, whether the opioid was prescribed, bought, or both.

Nearly every illicit opioid in California now carries fentanyl risk, including pills that look pharmaceutical. That changes the overdose math for everyone using, regardless of tolerance or experience.

How opioid use disorder is treated here

Golden Coast Rehab holds California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) substance use disorder certification 370254AP for outpatient detoxification, outpatient, intensive outpatient, and medication-assisted treatment. We do not provide residential or inpatient treatment, and there is no substance use partial hospitalization program here — partial hospitalization at Golden Coast Rehab is a specialty mental health service under our County of San Diego contract.

Outpatient detox

Opioid withdrawal is rarely life-threatening but is severe — muscle and bone pain, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, and profound restlessness. Very few people get through it unaided, which is why unsupported attempts so often end in relapse, and relapse after a period of abstinence is when overdose risk is highest because tolerance has dropped.

Medication-assisted treatment

This is the central treatment for opioid use disorder, not an optional extra. Medication relieves withdrawal and craving without producing a high at therapeutic doses, and it substantially reduces overdose death. It is delivered here alongside counseling, never as a prescription in isolation.

Intensive outpatient program

The core of treatment: several sessions a week of group and individual therapy while you live at home and, in most cases, keep working. This is where the actual work on triggers, craving, and the life around the using happens.

Outpatient program

A lighter weekly schedule that follows intensive outpatient and keeps the clinical relationship intact through the first year, when relapse risk is highest.

When a mental health condition is also present

Depression, anxiety, trauma, and bipolar disorder frequently sit alongside a substance use disorder, and treating only one of them is the most reliable way to end up back where you started. Both are treated here by one clinical team — see dual diagnosis, or the same care framed from the mental health side on co-occurring disorders.

Coverage and cost

Substance use treatment for Medi-Cal beneficiaries in San Diego County runs through the Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System, administered by San Diego County Behavioral Health Services rather than by your managed care plan. If you have Medi-Cal in the county — any of the four plans — and you meet criteria, care here can be covered at no cost to you. See how Medi-Cal works here.

Call (858) 925-8589, answered 24 hours a day. In a crisis, the San Diego County Access and Crisis Line is available around the clock at 1-888-724-7240.