This place saved my life. They welcome you with genuinely caring open arms no matter what condition you are in. The office has water, coffee and a wide variety of pamphlets with great information on them. read more

This clinic cares nothing about the methadone supplied to patients. A month at a time, even to mental health suicidal patients! What happens? They overdose on Methadone and die. No follow up read more

My daughter has been going to Aegis for a few months. I am appalled at the absolute lack of care this place is providing!! No one answers the phones, hours posted are NOT TRUE HOURS. They wont give her meds for NO REASON. I am not sure they actually know what helping addicts mean. The staff is not informative, lacksidaisical attitudes. I am not sure they even care. Its just a (job) to them. The HIPPA at this place is non existent. They need to clean house. The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing!! My daughter is trying her best, it is hard for everyone addicted. Someone needs to come through and clean house at this place!!!!!!!!!!! read more

This place is amazing!It is professional, caring, and willing to help people who are needing medical treatment to get off of drugs. Thankyou Aegis! read more

You are nothing but a dollar sign. They don't genuinely care about anything but cash. If you rock the boat be prepared to be punished by the staff. They keep clients in a constant state of anxiety. Threatening to kick you out or taking away "privileges". Dr. Howalt has had numerous private practices. He's billed himself as a pain specialist... & an addiction specialist. He was employed by aegis years ago, left to try and make it on his own. When private practice went bust he returned to Aegis for the sure money. His other job is treating inmates at the county jail. The jail is corrupt itself! Dr. Howalt treats the patients at Aegis the same way he treats people in jail. He's demeaning, doesn't follow through with treatment goals, and never gets paperwork done. Speaking of which, staff is great about losing paperwork and will falsify documents to suit their narrative. I genuinely think it's frightening that 25 out of around 30 methadone clinics are owned by this cooperation. They need to be bought out and shut down. read more

I don't know if Santa Maria is any better, since it's still the same doctor, but I just know that this Aegis sucks. They used to be helpful and supportive, but in the last couple months everyone who works there seems to be miserable, on edge, and ready to lie and torture you at the drop of a hat. There's a reason the front desk people are in such frequent rotation. Because this place sucks the soul out of them and turns sweet, nice, caring people into bitter, miserable gossip hags. What ever happened to confidentiality? This place doesn't follow any of their own protocol, nor do they respect your rights. They will nearly force you to move up your dose every time you see the doctor, even if you say you don't want to and that you're feeling good at the dose you're at. They do this so that they can make sure it will hurt as much as physically possible when they pull the rug out from under you and kick you of the program, despite having no legitimate reasons for you to be discharged. Actually they'll ignore all of the serious pre-existing medical conditions for which you shouldn't be taken off of 130 mg in 15 days. Not to mention their bogus way of tapering you down in those 15 days. ANYWHERE you read anything about methadone, it says that the only way to successfully and safely be taken off of it is to taper sllooowlllyyyyy. Yet they'll do the exact opposite. 130mg/15 days...8.6666mg less a day, correct? False. THEY seem to think that doing it by a percentage is better(which, they will refuse to tell you what the percentage they use is) which will have you dropping 25mg the first day, 23mg the second, and by the 7th day, you're down to 12mg or so. Then you still have 8 days to taper the ridiculous 12mg that doesn't even touch your withdrawal symptoms. And during these 15 days, the staff will treat you like you are the biggest piece of garbage to ever exist, and they will pick on you and push you to your breaking point by asking for ridiculous things like UAs and saying you have to wait to dose when you haven't missed anything. If I'm kicked out, then why do they still want to even waste time and money collecting my urine? OH, and all of this will be happening to you because of an unrelated infection on your leg, for which you have been seen by 3 emergency room doctors and your personal doctor and are on antibiotics for, and because there was someone in your car when you came to dose, who stood up outside the car for a second to adjust their seat and happened to be sharpening a knife before standing up. Not in a threatening way at all. And even though you cooperated with the staff by ratting out your friends name to their overly paranoid staff. OH, and if you were wondering about your rights and how much of this they've been doing to you is legal? Well good luck! Cause they'll lie about the reasons you're getting kicked out in order to make you suffer as much as physically possible while you try to be your own advocate and stand up for yourself, despite barely being able to literally stand up without having a seizure. (That's right, I was having multiple seizures due to the withdrawals, which they were VERY aware of, yet they kept the torturing going). So in conclusion, should you go to aegis in order to get your life back on track? Sure, if you only want that new life to last a short amount of time, just to have it all come crashing down while your life is put at risk and the employees at this "medical office" do everything to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible. I do believe methadone is a fantastic way to get off of opiates, but only if it's done correctly, and tapered slowly. Like over the course of 6 months or so. Or even 3. Just NOT 15 DAYS!!! That will NEVER be enough time to come off of 130mg methadone safely and successfully. I recommend the doctor and staff take a step back and try to remember a time when they got into this field of work in order to HELP people, not kill people, and try to get back to that mind set. I can't believe there haven't been more lawsuits....well, it's never too late, right? read more

I have been blessed to have had the help of this treatment center. They encourage you to do better and be a better person! I don't know where I would be if I didn't have the help of AEGIS read more