Pathway provides drug and alcohol treatment services: ‘Don’t give up’

For over 50 years, Pathways has provided drug and alcohol treatment services to locals.

“We guide individuals through a process of change, help them improve health and wellness, learn to live a self-directed life and strive to reach their full potential,” according to the Pathways website. “Pathways provides many levels of care designed to fit each individual’s needs at an affordable price.”

A prevention instructor with Pathways, Shane Higgins, said that the advice he would give to people who are at the beginning of their recovery journey would be to not give up.

“You’re going to have good times, bad times, you’re going to have all of these feelings, and just understand that those feelings will pass,” Higgins said. “As long as you don’t give up, and you try to go one more day, then everything will start looking up in time.”

Higgins has personally gone on his own recovery journey and said that his kids are a big motivation.

“I grew up in a household where both my parents were functioning alcoholics. My mother passed away from alcoholism,” Higgins said. “She just couldn’t deal with her demons, and I was lucky enough to deal with mine.”

He said that he always wanted to be the one in his family to break that cycle.

“With my recovery, I mean, this job helps keep me in recovery,” Higgins said. “I’m always working with people that are addicted, or people that want to become unaddicted and that need help. So it’s just kind of like a fail safe for me. I also go to meetings.”

There are many different factors that go into addiction. He said that it is a biopsychosocial disease.

“It’s not a choice, and just because you’re addicted doesn’t mean you are a bad person,” Higgins said.

Through his job, there are meaningful moments that arise, like when Higgins can tell that someone is listening in one of his groups.

“Or when I can talk to a kid who is using and explain to him the benefits of not using, and see it kind of click in their head,” he said.

His wife, Sarah Higgins, also works as a prevention instructor for Pathways. As prevention instructors, they do group outreach and Narcan presentations with the Yuba-Sutter community.

Clinical Director of Treatment Brandy Chastain said that it is outstanding the amount of people who will do anything to help others change their lives for the better.

She has received help herself.

“I am an alumni of the Yuba County Drug Court program, and they sent me to treatment. And, you know, I’ve taken enough from my community in my 24 years of addiction. My goal was to give back and be supportive,” Chastain said. “There’s another way to live.”

Chastain said that she is from this community and she knows that she is a positive figure.

“I have helped generations of people here,” Chastain said. “We are a small community with a huge substance abuse problem.”

Pathways offers a variety of treatment programs, including residential treatment.

“Pathways Treatment Facility provides residential treatment to men and women over the age of 18 who suffer from drug addiction and or alcoholism. Our goal is to provide you with a safe, non-shaming, healthy environment for you to stabilize in, and from the immediate effects of your current drug or alcohol use,” according to Pathways.

To receive help for addiction, contact Pathways at 530-742-6670. Their Treatment Program location is in Marysville.