The Privatization of Recovery

Someone who was barely managing just lost the thing that was helping them barely manage.

That's what the policy language obscures. "Federal grant terminations." Billions of dollars. Addiction treatment centers. Community mental health programs. The numbers are large enough to feel abstract—until you remember that each one lands in a body.

Recovery was never supposed to be a solo project.

We've absorbed a cultural story that healing is internal work—meditation apps, morning routines, the right supplements, enough willpower. And those things matter. But they were always meant to rest on something larger: the clinic that stays open late, the counselor who takes sliding scale, the support group that meets in a church basement because the rent is free.

When that infrastructure withdraws, it doesn't create a neutral gap. It creates a cascade.

The person who was using those services doesn't just lose access. They lose access while already depleted—already at the edge of what they can carry. The safety net wasn't a luxury they could swap out for a private alternative. It was load-bearing.

This connects to something I wrote about before, in The Infrastructure You Can't See: the invisible systems that hold daily life together until they don't. We notice roads when they crack. We notice water when it stops flowing. And we notice mental health infrastructure when someone we love can't find care.

But the metaphor breaks down in one important way. Roads don't need the road to repair themselves. A person in crisis needs capacity they don't have to navigate systems built for people who do.

This is the compounding problem at the heart of privatized recovery: the people who most need help accessing alternatives are the people least equipped to find them.

So what does this mean for pacing?

Not despair. Not a pivot into policy analysis. But a sharper question: What's actually holding your recovery together?

Most of us rely on more external structure than we realize. The friend who checks in. The routine that keeps us moving. The professional who noticed something was off. The co-pay that stayed low enough to manage.

Some of those supports are stable. Some are more fragile than they appear.

The invitation today isn't to fix a broken system—that's work for different hands, different timescales. The invitation is to look clearly at what's load-bearing in your own web of care, and to notice where you've been treating support as a sign of weakness. Some of those supports will hold. Some won't—and part of pacing is grieving what's already gone without collapsing under the loss.

Recovery is relational. It always was.

The pacing question:

What's one relationship or structure you've been leaning on without fully acknowledging it?

Name it. Not to create anxiety about losing it—but to create intention about tending it. The story that says you should carry this alone wants you to believe you should need less. But needing support isn't a failure of self-sufficiency. It's how humans have always healed.

If the structures around you are thinning, the response isn't to demand more of yourself. It's to get honest about what you're actually carrying, and to strengthen the connections that remain.

That might mean reaching out to someone you've been meaning to call. It might mean finally booking the appointment you've postponed. It might mean acknowledging that the "self" in self-care was never meant to be alone.

The systems are shifting. Your response to that shift is today's work.

Sources: NPR Health — federal mental health grant terminations