Feeling the weight of losing support in the fight for recovery
Imagine waking up each morning with a quiet but persistent ache — a sense that something vital is slipping away, like a hand gently unraveling your sense of stability. For many women in recovery, this isn’t an abstract fear; it’s a daily reality. You might notice the subtle shift as programs that once supported you and your community start to disappear, leaving behind an echo of what could have been. When vital addiction recovery services are cut due to federal funding reductions, it’s not just numbers that are affected — it’s lives, families, and futures hanging in the balance.
Many moms battling substance use disorder rely heavily on community-based recovery programs, which do more than treat addiction — they help rebuild lives from the ground up. These programs often provide transportation to medical appointments, help craft resumes for jobs, secure housing, and foster social connections beyond drug circles. Imagine the relief of a pregnant woman in a rural area knowing that her support system is there for her — and then suddenly, that support vanishes. The loss of federal funding means programs are forced to lay off staff, cut outreach, and sometimes shutter entirely. For women in vulnerable communities, this can mean the difference between hope and despair.
The ripple effect of these cuts is profound. When programs like those in Colorado and Minnesota lose their funding, the immediate impact is on the ground: fewer outreach workers, less support for pregnant women with substance use disorders, and diminished chances for families to stay intact. It’s a stark reminder that recovery isn’t just about individual willpower; it’s about accessible, consistent support. Without it, many women face increased risks of maternal mortality — a crisis that disproportionately affects Black and Native American communities. The fear is that setbacks for recovery programs will undo hard-won progress in reducing overdose deaths and improving maternal health.
This is where the human cost becomes painfully clear. Think of Racquel Garcia, a Colorado-based leader whose organization employs women in recovery to serve others. When federal funds were threatened, she continued to support her team members, even covering their salaries herself. She couldn’t bear to turn away the moms and babies who needed her help. “I just can’t leave moms without services,” she says. Her commitment embodies the truth that recovery support is vital, not optional.
But the landscape is changing. The Trump administration’s reorganization of health agencies — merging and consolidating critical offices — signals a shift that many advocates fear could deprioritize recovery work altogether. Without a dedicated federal office focused on addiction, the programs that many women depend on may struggle to survive. Private foundations and state initiatives might fill some gaps, but they often lack the scale and consistency of federal support.
For women like those served by Garcia’s program, the stakes are incredibly personal. The support they receive isn’t just about avoiding relapse; it’s about nurturing their chances to become mothers, to build stable lives, and to break cycles of addiction and hardship. Garcia’s own story — employing women in recovery, many of whom have endured abuse and poverty — highlights how community-driven efforts can create a ripple of hope.
These programs also serve a broader societal purpose: they align with efforts to get more people into meaningful employment and reduce reliance on welfare. Yet, paradoxically, cutting funding undermines those very goals by leaving many potential workers unprepared or unable to sustain their recovery and employment. Recovery isn’t just about detox; it’s about restoring dignity, purpose, and stability.
The stories of individuals like Billy O’Bryan and Kaleab Woldegiorgis remind us that recovery programs are more than services — they are lifelines. They foster community, teach essential skills, and offer a message of hope that words alone cannot convey. When funding dries up, the community’s voice grows quieter, and the message of possibility is lost.
As we witness these shifts, it’s crucial to remember that behind every statistic is a person — a mother, a daughter, a neighbor — whose life could be transformed by the right support at the right time. Ensuring that recovery programs remain accessible isn’t just a policy issue; it’s a moral imperative rooted in compassion and the understanding that every person deserves the chance to heal and thrive.
Learn More: Moms in Crisis, Jobs Lost: The Human Cost of Trump’s Addiction Funding Cuts
Abstract: When the Trump administration cut more than $11 billion in covid-era funds to states in late March, addiction recovery programs suffered swift losses. An Indiana organization that employs people in recovery to help peers with substance use disorders and mental illness was forced to lay off three workers. A Texas digital support service for people with addiction and mental illness prepared to shutter its 24/7 call line within a week. A Minnesota program focused on addiction in the East African community curtailed its outreach to vulnerable people on the street. Although the federal assistance was awarded during the covid-19 pandemic and some of the funds supported activities related to infectious disease, a sizable chunk went to programs on mental health and addiction. The latter are both chronic concerns in the U.S. that were exacerbated during the pandemic and continue to affect millions of Americans. Colorado, for example, received more than $30 million for such programs and Minnesota received nearly $28 million, according to health and human services agencies in those states. In many cases, this money flowed to addiction recovery services, which go beyond traditional treatment to help people with substance use disorders rebuild their lives. These programs do things that insurers often don’t reimburse, such as driving people to medical appointments and court hearings, crafting résumés and training them for new jobs, finding them housing, and helping them build social connections unrelated to drugs. A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s cuts, allowing the programs to continue — for now — receiving federal funding. But many of the affected programs say they can’t easily rehire people they laid off or resurrect services they curtailed. And they’re unsure they can survive long-term amid an environment of uncertainty and fear, not knowing when the judge’s ruling might be lifted or another funding source cut. The week it slashed the funding, the Trump administration also announced a massive reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the consolidation of the main federal agency focused on addiction recovery services. Without a stand-alone office like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, many advocates worry, recovery work — and the funding to support it — will no longer be a priority. Although private foundations and state governments may step in, it’s unlikely they could match the tranches of federal funding. “Recovery support is treated as optional,” said Racquel Garcia, founder of HardBeauty, a Colorado-based addiction recovery organization. The federal cuts put at risk a roughly $75,000 grant her team had received to care for pregnant women with substance use disorders in two rural counties in Colorado. “It’s very easy to make sweeping decisions from the top in the name of money, when you don’t have to be the one to tell the mom, ‘We can’t show up today,’” Garcia said. “When you never have to sit in front of the mama who really needed us to be there.” Mental health conditions, including substance use disorders, are a leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S. And although national overdose deaths have decreased recently, rates have risen in many Black and Native American communities. Many people in the addiction field worry these funding rollbacks could reverse hard-earned progress. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard told KFF Health News that the department is reorganizing to improve efficiency, foster a more coordinated approach to addiction, and prioritize funding projects that align with the president’s Make America Healthy Again initiative. “We aim to streamline resources and eliminate redundancies, ensuring that essential mental health and substance use disorder services are delivered more effectively,” she said in a statement. But to Garcia, it doesn’t feel like streamlining. It feels like abandoning moms in need. Between the time the cuts were announced and when the federal judge paused them, two women served by Garcia’s program gave birth, she said. Though her grant funding was in limbo, Garcia told her employee to show up at the bedside for both moms. The employee followed up with daily check-ins for the new moms, connected them to treatment or housing services when needed, and helped them navigate the child services system. “I just can’t leave moms” without services, Garcia said. “I just can’t do it.” Nor can she abandon that employee, she said. Although the federal funding provided half of that employee’s salary, Garcia has continued to keep her on full time. Garcia said she primarily employs women in recovery, many of whom spent years trapped in abusive situations, relying on welfare benefits. Now they’re sober and have found meaningful work that allows them to provide for their families, she said. “We created our own workforce of mamas who help other mamas.” This type of recovery workforce development seems to align with the Republican Party’s goals of getting more people to work and reducing reliance on welfare benefits. The Trump administration’s drug policy priorities, released in early April, identified creating “a skilled, recovery-ready workforce” and strengthening peer recovery support services as crucial efforts to help people “find recovery and lead productive, healthy lives.” Many recovery programs train people for blue-collar jobs, which could support Trump’s goal of reviving the manufacturing industry. But the administration’s actions appear to conflict with its stated goals, said Rahul Gupta, the nation’s drug czar during the Biden administration. “You can’t have manufacturing if people can’t pass a urine drug test or continue to suffer from addiction or relapse,” said Gupta, who is now president of GATC Health, a company using artificial intelligence for drug development. Even if jobs return to rural America, cutting funding for recovery services and the main federal office overseeing such efforts could mean fewer people are employable, Gupta said. Research on recovery programs, particularly those run by people with personal addiction experience, suggests they can increase engagement in court-ordered treatment, reduce the prevalence of rearrest, bolster attendance at treatment appointments, and improve the likelihood of families reunifying and stabilizing. Billy O’Bryan sees these benefits daily. As a state director for the national nonprofit Young People in Recovery, O’Bryan oversees about a dozen chapters in Kentucky that teach people in recovery life skills, such as balancing a checkbook and interviewing for jobs, and show them how to have fun in sobriety, through group hikes and glow-in-the-dark Ultimate Frisbee games. Providing recovery services “is when we really invest in their future,” said O’Bryan, who is in recovery too. Six of his chapters were affected by the federal funding cuts. That has meant dipping into his organization’s rainy day fund to pay staff and cutting back on community events, including cleanup days in which chapter members gather used syringes off the street, pass out the overdose reversal medication naloxone, and talk to people using drugs about the possibility of recovery. He’s exploring fundraising efforts now, but not all his chapters have the same ability. “In a city like Louisville, fundraising is not a problem,” O’Bryan said, “but when you get out into Grayson, Kentucky” — a rural area in the Appalachian Mountains — “there’s not a lot of opportunities.” In Minnesota, Kaleab Woldegiorgis and his colleagues at Niyyah Recovery Initiative used to spend hours a day at soup kitchens, community events, mosques, and on the streets of East African and Muslim neighborhoods, trying to connect with people using drugs. They spoke Somali, Amharic, and Swahili, among other languages. Those outreach efforts allowed them to “find individuals in need of recovery services” who “weren’t seeking it out themselves,” said Woldegiorgis, who previously attended Niyyah’s support groups when he was dealing with addiction. After building relationships with people, Woldegiorgis could help them connect with formal recovery services that bill their insurance, he said. But help couldn’t always wait for a contract. One afternoon shortly before the federal funding cuts, Woldegiorgis and his colleagues spoke with a man who began weeping, recounting how he had wanted to get treatment a few days earlier but had lost his belongings, returned to using drugs, and ended up on the street. Woldegiorgis said he helped the man reconnect with a sister and begin exploring treatment options. With the federal funding cuts, Niyyah may no longer be able to support this type of outreach work. Woldegiorgis fears it means people won’t receive the message of hope that can come from interacting with role models in recovery. “People don’t pick up pamphlets to receive these messages. And people don’t read emails and people don’t look at billboards and find inspiration,” he said. “People need people.”
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Dr. David Lowemann, M.Sc, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the Institute for the Future of Human Potential, where he leads the charge in pioneering Self-Enhancement Science for the Success of Society. With a keen interest in exploring the untapped potential of the human mind, Dr. Lowemann has dedicated his career to pushing the boundaries of human capabilities and understanding.
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