In-Person Addiction Medicine in St. Louis County
St. Louis County is the practice’s home market and the source of most of our patients. Medication for addiction treatment with buprenorphine/naloxone is delivered face to face, by a physician who is board certified in addiction medicine and holds hospital privileges across the region.
Because this is the home market, most St. Louis County patients are seen on a schedule that fits around work rather than around the clinic. Medication for addiction treatment is reviewed face to face at every visit, and in-clinic screening happens in the same appointment rather than as a separate errand.
The clinic sits inside St. Louis County on Woodson Rd, reachable from I-70, I-170 and Lindbergh, with parking at the door. The clinic is at 4477 Woodson Rd, Suite 101, St. Louis, MO 63134, next to St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
What St. Louis County patients are treated for
Three programs, all delivered in person at the Woodson Rd clinic:
Opioid Addiction Treatment
Buprenorphine/naloxone started and reviewed in the room, not over a screen. What this involves.
Alcohol Addiction Treatment
Alcohol use disorder treated as the medical condition it is. What this involves.
Drug Addiction Treatment
Stimulants, polysubstance use, and the conditions underneath them. What this involves.
Office-based treatment is a different thing from a program
Most people searching for help in St. Louis County picture a facility — a residential stay, a schedule of groups, a period away from work and family. That model exists and it serves some patients well. It is not what happens here.
Office-based addiction treatment means the medical part of your care happens in a clinic, in an appointment, with a physician. You are examined, medication is started, and you go home. There is no admission and no leave of absence. For most people with opioid or alcohol use disorder that is the appropriate level of care, and the evidence for medication treatment delivered this way is stronger than for anything that depends on a bed.
The practical consequence is that treatment fits around a job rather than replacing one. That matters more than it sounds, because losing work is one of the reliable ways a recovery comes apart, and the people most likely to lose it are the ones who cannot explain a month-long absence. Opioid addiction treatment describes the medication side in detail.
Why medication is the treatment and not a crutch
Buprenorphine and naltrexone are frequently described, sometimes by people trying to help, as trading one drug for another. That framing is wrong in a way that costs lives, and it is worth addressing directly rather than politely.
Opioid use disorder produces durable changes in the brain’s reward and stress systems, and those changes outlast the last dose by a long way. Medication stabilizes those systems so that the rest of recovery — the behavioral work, the relationships, the rebuilding — becomes possible at all. Patients maintained on buprenorphine have substantially lower mortality than patients who are not, and the risk climbs again when medication stops. That finding should settle the argument, and in the research literature it largely has.
What medication does not do is fix everything by itself, and we do not present it that way. It removes the daily emergency so that everything else can be worked on. The clinic’s article archive collects the research as it comes out, including the repeated finding that most people with opioid use disorder never receive medication at all.
Pain and addiction are usually the same conversation
A substantial share of patients arriving here developed opioid dependence in the course of being treated for pain that was entirely real. The pain did not disappear when the dependence began, and treating the addiction while ignoring the pain is how people end up back where they started within a year.
This practice treats both, which is unusual and is the reason it exists in the form it does. Dr. Padda is an interventional pain physician and a diplomate in addiction medicine, so the pain that started the sequence can be addressed with procedures and with a plan rather than with more opioids.
It is also why the metabolic and behavioral side gets attention rather than being deferred to later. Sleep, blood sugar, inflammation and mood feed both problems at once, and none of them improves on its own while the other two are ignored. Pain and addiction are related sets out how the two are handled together.
What the first appointment actually involves
A history, a physical examination, and an honest account of what you are using and how much. Nothing about that is designed to catch anyone out. The examination exists because a starting dose is an estimate until a physician has looked at you, and because the conditions that travel with long-term substance use — liver, heart, infection, untreated psychiatric illness — are found by examining rather than by asking.
Where it is clinically appropriate, medication is started that day. Where something needs to be established first, we say what and why rather than booking a second appointment out of habit.
You will also leave knowing what the next few weeks look like: how often you are seen, what the screening involves, and who to call when something goes wrong outside clinic hours. Enrolling covers what to bring.
What St. Louis patients ask
Do I need a referral to be seen?
No. St. Louis County patients can book directly, and treatment begins once you have been examined in person.
Will I have to take medication forever?
That is a decision you make with your physician, not a condition of being treated here. Some patients taper off after a period of stability; others do better staying on medication long term, and there is no medical reason to force an ending. What we will not do is push a taper on a timeline that raises your risk of overdose.
Is any of this handled over the phone?
The medical visit — evaluation, examination and prescribing — is in person, every time. Phone contact is kept for urgent support between visits, because this population destabilizes and needs reaching, but the phone monitors and never prescribes. See the clinic FAQ.
Finding the clinic from St. Louis County
Addictionology Center
4477 Woodson Rd, Suite 101
St. Louis, MO 63134
Next to St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
Phone: +1 (314) 463-0100
Hours: Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM