A addiction treatment center on the Chesapeake Bay has opened a new freestanding facility devoted entirely to research, and staff say it is the only one of its kind on the East Coast. Ashley Addiction Treatment in Havre de Grace is using the space to test whether medications originally developed for weight loss can help patients break free of drugs and alcohol.
The expansion was first reported by WBAL News Radio, which detailed how the new facility is dedicated specifically to addiction-based research rather than day-to-day treatment. Ashley Co-CEO Greg Hobelmann said the goal of the research push is to improve how quickly and how durably patients recover, according to the station's report. Dr. Wendy Insalaco, the center's director of clinical quality outcomes, added that the facility measures a wide range of factors and uses that information to maximize outcomes for individual patients, per the same account.
Ashley Addiction Treatment's History
Ashley Addiction Treatment's history predates its new research facility.
Today the organization sits on a 147-acre waterfront campus overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, according to Ashley Addiction Treatment.
Testing GLP-1 Drugs Against Cravings
At the center of the new research effort is a class of medications known as GLP-1s, originally prescribed for weight loss, which Ashley is now testing as a potential tool to curb substance use, per the WBAL report. The research examines whether GLP-1s could help curb substance use.
Ashley is partnering with Johns Hopkins on a clinical trial pairing GLP-1s with naltrexone, an already-established treatment for alcohol use disorder, to determine whether the combination reduces cravings to drink. The trial's principal investigator is Andrew S. Huhn, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, according to the ICH GCP Clinical Trials Registry. The study is scheduled to begin in early 2027 and is expected to report results roughly two years after it starts, per WBAL's reporting.
Peer-Reviewed Data Backs the Approach
The trial builds on a growing body of outside research. A study analyzing electronic health records of more than 140,000 adults, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry in March, found that patients prescribed GLP-1 medications had 74% lower odds of alcohol use disorder and 69% lower odds of opioid use disorder, drawing on real-world data from the NIH All of Us database. Hoodline previously reported on similar findings tied to large-scale observational research on GLP-1 prescriptions and reduced substance use disorder risk.
Despite that promise, researchers emphasize the underlying problem remains stark: historical clinical research indicates that fewer than 10% of people with alcohol use disorder receive any form of treatment, and only about 2% use FDA-approved medications for the condition, according to Medical News Today. Traditional treatments for alcohol use disorder include naltrexone and disulfiram, but uptake has lagged for decades.
A Statewide Backdrop of Falling Overdose Deaths
Ashley's expansion arrives as Maryland reports encouraging numbers on the overdose front. Fatal drug overdoses in the state fell to 1,315 in 2025, a 26% decline from 2024 and a 53% drop from the state's historic high of 2,800 deaths in 2021, marking a 10-year low, according to CBS News. The state also reported record distributions of naloxone and drug test strips.
The new research facility marks an expansion of Ashley's research effort. With the Johns Hopkins-backed trial still less than a year from launching, the center's bet is that pairing a familiar alcohol medication with a newer class of drugs could offer patients another option in a field where treatment rates have long lagged behind need.
