The Trump administration's 24-hour reversal of $2 billion in addiction treatment funding wasn't just bad policy, it was a perfect demonstration of how addiction behavior manifests for millions of American individuals and families.
Late Tuesday night, approx. 2,000 organizations got termination letters. By Wednesday evening, after bipartisan outcry, the funding was restored.
Crisis. Panic. Reversal. Relief.
Sound familiar? It should. It's exactly what living with active addiction looks like: You never know what's coming next. You're always reacting to something. You're constantly stressed. You can't plan. You can't build. You're just trying to survive the next crisis.
The cruel irony: we're trying to help people recover from chaos by subjecting them to governmental chaos that mirrors the disease itself.
As the saying of our times goes … make it make sense.
What We Measure Is What We Know
At Commonly Well, we've tracked 16,487 Recovery Capital Index assessments from 5,622 participants across 57 organizations over the last year. We measure recovery capital — the breadth and depth of internal and external resources people can draw upon to initiate and sustain recovery.
Our data shows one unequivocal truth: uncertainty depletes recovery capital.
When people don't know if their counselor will be there next week, if their recovery housing has stable funding, if the peer support group will keep meeting, they default to survival mode. They disengage. They stop showing up. Just like families living with active addiction eventually stop planning vacations or believing promises, because chaos makes planning impossible.
Here's why this matters economically: Research shows substance use treatment generates an average of $10,628 in economic benefits per person—$727 in reduced healthcare costs, $4,731 in increased earnings, $3,626 in reduced criminal activity, and $1,543 in reduced social services utilization.
But those benefits require sustained engagement over time. They require stability. They require the opposite of what this administration just modeled.
The Federal Government Behaving Like the Disease We’re Fighting
The total economic burden of substance use disorders exceeds $740 billion annually when you account for healthcare, criminal justice, lost productivity, and premature mortality. The $2 billion in grants that almost disappeared? That's 0.3% of the annual cost of the problem.
But it's leveraged across the entire continuum of care. Remove it suddenly, and the cascade looks exactly like active addiction in families:
Active Addiction in Families:
You never know if your loved one will come home tonight
You're always bracing for the next crisis
You can't make plans because everything might change instantly
Trust erodes because promises mean nothing
You stop investing in the future because there might not be one
This 24-Hour Funding Crisis:
Organizations didn't know if they'd exist tomorrow
Staff braced for layoffs
No one could make plans because everything changed instantly
Trust eroded because federal commitments meant nothing
Organizations stopped investing because there might not be a future
The federal government — with a supposed responsibility for creating stable conditions for the American people — behaved exactly like the disease its agency is mandated to fight.
Why Measurement Creates Certainty
This is why we measure recovery capital. Measurement is the antidote to chaos.
When someone in early recovery completes the Recovery Capital Index (RCI), they replace chaos with clarity.
Instead of "I'm a mess and everything is terrible," they get: "Here are my specific strengths. Here are my specific challenges. Here's what we can work on together."
That certainty — knowing where you are, what you need, what progress looks like — is the foundation of recovery capital. It's what allows people to move from crisis mode to growth mode.
But measurement works best in stable systems. You can't track progress if the system keeps changing. You can't build on strengths if the resources supporting those strengths might disappear overnight.
Recovery capital includes social capital (peer support, family engagement), personal capital (housing, employment), and cultural capital (purpose, belonging). Every dimension requires time and a stable system to develop within.
You can't build social capital when you don't know if your peer support group will exist next month — just like you can't maintain friendships when you're in active addiction and canceling plans constantly. You can't hold employment when your job training program might evaporate — just like you can't hold a job when every day is a crisis.
When Government Chaos Mirrors Personal Chaos
Here's what 24 hours of governmental chaos produces:
An organization gets a termination letter at 11 PM Tuesday. (The late-night crisis call. The unexpected disaster.)
By Wednesday morning, emergency board meetings about potential layoffs. (The morning-after scramble. Trying to figure out what just happened.)
Staff update resumes. Clinicians who planned to commit another year start looking elsewhere. (The erosion of trust. The realization you can't count on promises.)
Clients sense the tension. They ask: "Is my program closing?" "Should I even bother coming back?" (The impact on everyone around the chaos. The children asking if everything's okay.)
Some percent stop showing up. They disengage. They return to what feels certain — even if what feels certain is harmful. (The return to old patterns because at least those patterns are predictable.)
This is what active addiction produces in families and communities. And it's exactly what this administration just produced in the recovery system.
What Recovery Looks Like at the Systems Level
The swift reversal proved this isn't a partisan issue. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers pushed back hard. As NAATP stated: "These funds were appropriated by Congress on a bi-partisan basis based on the documented need for mental health and substance use disorder treatment."
But the reversal also proved something dangerous: if funding can be terminated by form letter at 11 PM on a Tuesday, we're stuck in the same cycle families know too well. The crisis. The promise. The relief. The waiting for the next crisis.
Recovery at the systems level requires what recovery requires at the personal level:
Keeping promises. Multi-year grants organizations can plan around. No midnight termination letters.
Creating stability. Clear communication about priorities, delivered months in advance. No surprises.
Building trust over time. Recognition that treatment providers need stable funding to hire qualified staff and build community trust.
Showing up consistently. People in recovery need to know services will exist tomorrow, next week, next month.
Our data across 16,000+ assessments shows recovery capital accumulates slowly and erodes quickly. People build trust over months and lose it in moments. Organizations develop capacity over years and can see it collapse in weeks.
This is exactly what happens in families affected by addiction. Trust builds through consistent actions over time and shatters with one broken promise.
Certainty as Treatment
When uncertainty becomes the norm, organizations shift from growth mode to survival mode. They stop hiring. They delay investments. They serve fewer people.
This is the opposite of recovery. Recovery is about moving from survival to growth. From reacting to planning. From chaos to certainty.
The federal government's job re: addiction and mental health isn't complicated: model recovery, not addiction. Create stable conditions. Honor commitments. Provide certainty. Show up consistently. Keep promises.
When it does this well, organizations can plan, staff can commit, and people can focus on recovery. When it mirrors the chaos of addiction with midnight crises and sudden reversals, the damage ripples through individuals, families, organizations, and communities.
Recovery capital is the sum of resources, relationships, and supports that allow human beings to rebuild their lives after chaos has nearly destroyed them. You can't build on chaos. You can't accumulate recovery capital when the ground keeps shifting, whether that ground is your own addiction or a federal government that acts like it.
The grants were restored this time (so far) … but we cannot accept a system where the government treating addiction behaves like addiction itself.
In behavioral health and recovery support services, certainty isn't a luxury; it's the treatment.
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