[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Kabir Singh is the Regional Executive Director for the TruHealing Centers in Maryland. Along with ARC COO Michael Silberman, Singh co-founded Fresh Start Recovery Center in Gaithersburg. Opening May 8, 2017, Fresh Start is the oldest of the existing ARC facilities, having just entered its fourth year of operation.
Singh was born, raised and still resides in Montgomery County. He feels that being able to open a treatment facility in his home county is an accomplishment like no other. He recognizes the need for quality care in substance use treatment, because he has been there himself.
“I graduated from College Park in 1999 and entered the working world,” Singh said. “I was gainfully employed in my twenties with large companies and a meaningful job. I bought my first home, all of the meaningful milestones in someone’s life. But I also liked to go to nightclubs on the weekend and come home at 8 a.m.”
Kabir’s Story of Addiction
At around age 31, Singh started abusing Oxycontin. The habit broke him down financially, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Without a job and health insurance, Singh entered an indigent treatment program in 2009.
The help he received during his own financial hardships has informed his work with TruHealing Centers. In 2019, the company opened Awakenings Recovery Center in Hagerstown, MD, a facility that serves the state’s Medicaid population.
“The Hagerstown project was a big deal for me and everyone else,” Singh said. “Having been a recipient of that myself, I had a particular allegiance to it.”
During his own time in treatment, Singh learned about substance use disorder as a treatable disease. After several years in recovery, Singh was back on his feet, working in real estate. But he knew he wanted to help others the way he was offered help out of addiction.
“Around that time, I started to realize that I wanted to do more,” Singh said. “In 2013, the state of Maryland was the first in a set of states beginning to recognize people in recovery as valuable.”
Singh became the 17th Certified Peer Recovery Specialist in the entire state. Initially he worked as a contractor with Behavioral Health treatment centers in Montgomery County, serving people without homes. Eventually he found work as a Recovery Specialist at a Substance Use Disorder treatment center in Rockville, MD.
Finding His Home at TruHealing Centers
It was around this time that Michael Silberman contacted Singh to discuss opening a center in Maryland. While working in Rockville, Singh used his real estate contacts to find a location for what would eventually be Fresh Start Recovery Center.
Singh has been a key part of the TruHealing Centers expansion, from Fresh Start to more than a dozen centers around the United States. Though the company is growing, Singh says at its heart, ARC is a local business.
“Although ARC is large, each center has its own local feel,” he said. “We hire people locally. It’s common for us to have alumni work for us in entry-level positions. Our centers are not what people who haven’t been to treatment think of. We’re not a sterile setting like a hospital with paper gowns.”
True to his Montgomery County roots, Singh is on the board of Mike’s Place, a recovery community in Rockville. He is also serving his second term as an elected member of Montgomery County’s Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council. Despite Amatus’ rapid expansion, Singh has kept his office right where he wants it: at Fresh Start, in Montgomery County. That way he doesn’t lose contact with clients.
“I believe that every interaction is therapeutic,” he said. “Whenever I am passing a client sitting alone, I stop and ask if they are okay. Everything that happens between staff and clients is an opportunity for a therapeutic interaction.”
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