Like many who’ve endured childhood trauma, Shannon Hicks turned to medication at an early age. Pregnant by 16 and a mom of two by 19, she was married and dwelling in her first residence — believing she was dwelling the dream.
Shortly after her twentieth birthday, Hicks was in a critical automotive accident and prescribed opioids for the ensuing ache. However the treatment unearthed long-suppressed trauma from childhood sexual abuse, intensifying her opioid use and deepening her dependence. She described the impact of medication as much like being shielded from a storm.
“When it’s pouring down rain in your automotive, and it’s so loud you’ll be able to’t hear anything … you then go underneath a bridge and immediately, it’s quiet. Medicine had been my bridge,” Hicks stated.
Over the following 20 years, Hicks’ dependancy spiraled uncontrolled. She endured 4 aortic valve replacements — two as a consequence of coronary heart infections from reusing needles. Her physique was deteriorating, and demise felt imminent. However surviving the unthinkable turned her turning level. Decided to reclaim her life and assist others do the identical, she started her restoration journey.
However how, given the depths of her dependancy?
Sheer dedication and braveness gave her the energy to strive. And Suboxone (buprenorphine) was the catalyst that made it potential.
Utilizing a “substitute” treatment, known as medication-assisted therapy, to deal with opioid dependancy is backed by many years of analysis which have led to the event of a set of such medication. Scientific trials to find out the effectiveness of MAT have since proved their price by serving to lots of of hundreds overcome opioid use problems. It was the medical help Hicks wanted to start the difficult work of therapeutic.
Simply as important to her restoration had been harm reduction strategies. Entry to sterile injection provides helped her keep away from additional an infection. Naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose, provided a security internet. And efforts to scale back the stigma surrounding dependancy gave her area to hunt assist with out disgrace.
Stigmatizing language portrays individuals who use medication as immoral or felony, pushing them away from care. Proof exhibits that those that profit from hurt discount and anti-stigma efforts are five times more likely to enter treatment than these not utilizing the packages.
These life-altering measures had been made potential by federal investments in dependancy science. The Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, has led a lot of the analysis on threat components for dependancy and the way greatest to forestall it and, in these addicted, methods to deal with it. And the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Companies Administration and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention have translated this science into public well being follow — bringing therapy and prevention packages into faculties, clinics and communities.
These businesses have helped gas transformative progress — growing therapy entry and outcomes, decreasing secondary illness transmission, supporting households and stopping youth from utilizing medication. Insurance policies knowledgeable by this analysis have lowered addiction-related crime, suicide, overdose and public well being prices — proving to be not solely efficient, but additionally economically smart investments.
However now, all of the hard-won progress made for individuals like Hicks is in danger.
Actions by President Donald Trump, the Division of Authorities Effectivity initiative and Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have already disrupted operations of federal businesses that fund dependancy analysis.
And most just lately, the 2026 finances — in any other case referred to as the “large, stunning invoice” — was handed into regulation, forecasting even deeper cuts to those businesses, billions under 2025 ranges. Including harm to insult, reductions in Medicaid, the most important single payer of behavioral health services within the U.S., together with dependancy therapy, will start to take impact.
If enacted, these cuts would additional devastate addiction science and practice. Analysis into the causes, penalties and therapy of dependancy would stall. Lifesaving scientific and group companies would shrink or disappear. Packages proven to forestall youths from initiating drug use would vanish. We threat reversing many years of progress, condemning future generations to unnecessary struggling and growing the general prices to society.
This imminent risk has galvanized the dependancy science group. In response, the Addiction Science Defense Network was fashioned to advocate for preserving dependancy science analysis and research-based therapy, prevention and insurance policies that assist us to fight dependancy. Practically 500 dependancy scientists and practitioners, 32 organizations representing greater than 32,000 scientists and 100,000 suppliers, and the advocacy group Stand Up for Science — with 60,000 members — have endorsed a statement of concern.
The assertion and different advocacy efforts urge Congress, Kennedy and the administrators of NIH, the CDC and SAMHSA to meet their accountability to help science-driven insurance policies and practices that defend public well being. We ask that the harm already accomplished be mitigated with bipartisan revisions to their budgets in order that funding for these businesses is preserved to guard the options that assist individuals get better, the companies that stabilize households and the infrastructure that safeguards future generations from substance abuse.
For Hicks, her story is one in all each tragedy and triumph. Her life was practically misplaced to dependancy, however science-based therapy and compassionate care saved her. Right now, she is a restoration coach, hurt discount specialist, youth prevention facilitator and enthusiastic advocate for medication-assisted restoration. She’s additionally a full-time faculty pupil pursuing a grasp’s in public well being.
Her transformation is proof of what’s potential when analysis and restoration meet. With the precise help, lives might be rebuilt. Futures might be reclaimed. Communities can heal.
However with out sustained funding in dependancy science, Hick’s story may turn out to be the exception — not the rule.
