Can a sidemenu link be navigated/routed to?

Currently my app has a login modal and a side menu. After the modal is dismissed I want to navigate to one of the side menu items.

I’ve tried using $state.go([route name]) but this pushes another view on top instead of triggering one of the side menu links.

Is there any way to programmatically (click/route to) one of the side menu links and not have another view pushed on the stack?