Salina Shuler,MSW
Founder & Chief Executive Officer/ Program Director
Salina Shuler is the founder and driving vision behind Salterra OC Detox & Treatment. With more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health and addiction treatment, her work has been guided by a belief that recovery is about much more than stopping the use of drugs or alcohol. It is about helping people rediscover hope, recognize their strengths and gifts, and begin to imagine a meaningful life beyond addiction.
Salina earned her Master’s in Social Work with a Mental Health focus from the University of Southern California and holds a BA in Psychology with honors from Chapman University. Her specialized training includes a two-year Gestalt Therapy program at the Institute for Effective Psychotherapy in Malibu and National Certification as a Drug and Alcohol Interventionist.
From 2012 to 2025, Salina served as Co-Founder, CEO, and Program Director of South Orange County Detox & Treatment. She also co-founded Matthew’s Path Extended Care Sober Living in 2011 and has helped establish multiple licensed detox & treatment programs throughout Orange County. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with individuals and families during some of the most difficult moments of addiction and early recovery.
Those experiences shaped Salina’s individualized, strengths-based approach. She believes every person entering detox and treatment brings more than a history of substance use. They also bring abilities, interests, creativity, resilience, and parts of themselves that may have become lost or overshadowed during addiction. Her work focuses on helping people reconnect with those qualities and begin building a new vision for their lives in sobriety.
In 2025, Salina founded Salterra to create the kind of private, six-bed detox program she believes allows this individualized approach to be possible. The smaller environment gives the treatment team an opportunity to know each client as a person, understand what matters to them, and provide support that is responsive to their individual needs rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all model.
Creativity is also an important part of Salina’s philosophy. Influenced by her Gestalt Therapy training, she believes self-expression can help people reconnect with parts of themselves that may be difficult to express through words alone. She encourages opportunities for creative exploration, including art and other forms of self-expression, as clients begin identifying their interests, strengths, values, and possibilities for the future.
Salina’s experience as an interventionist has also shaped her belief that families need guidance and hope. She understands how overwhelming addiction can become for everyone involved and believes families benefit from clear information, healthy boundaries, thoughtful support, and help identifying appropriate treatment options.
At Salterra, Salina leads with a simple goal: to help people move beyond seeing themselves only through the lens of addiction. Her vision is to create an environment where clients can begin to recognize who they are, what they are capable of, and what their lives can become in recovery.
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