This Is Not a Solo Mission: One Year After the SUPPORT Act, What "Recovery Happens Together" Actually Requires
Published by NorthStar Behavioral Health Advisory | September 20, 2026
Today marks 36 years since my recovery began. It also marks one year since I launched NorthStar Behavioral Health Advisory. I chose the date deliberately.
Two years ago, in a Recovery Month post, I wrote four words that I keep coming back to: this is not a solo mission. I meant them then. I understand them better now.
This year's National Recovery Month theme is Recovery Happens Together. SAMHSA's framing is direct. Research shows that meaningful human connection supports resilience, hope, and long-term recovery, and that every connection can make a difference. That is not a sentiment. It is a design specification for how we build systems. And a year into building something of my own, I have some thoughts about what it costs when we get it wrong.
A Reflection on Last Year's Story
Last September, I told the story of a 13-year-old kid at the final regatta of the summer. There weren't enough boats, and my only option was to take a single-person Sunfish out alone. I was terrified. I went anyway, read the wind, trusted my instincts, and won my class. I told that story as one of self-reliance. It is. But that is not the whole of it.
I was only in that boat because a skipper named "Tippy Teddy" believed in me, and encouraged me to take a calculated risk (with an appropriate safety net!). I could read the wind because crews had spent years teaching me how. Sure, now I was alone in the hull and surrounded by a fleet, but the solo run wasn't a departure from the community. It was what the community had prepared me to do.
This is also an apt description of how recovery works. Nobody recovers by committee. Nobody recovers alone.
Twelve months ago, I felt as though I had been thrown up in the air again, tumbling toward a ground I couldn't see. Trust me when I say my recovery had everything to do with creating a landing that no one else was going to create for me. What was the key? Social connection. Many of you took my calls, answered my emails, offered sage advice, and reminded me to breathe. I did the work. You made the work survivable.
The Part I Have Always Been Careful About
Six years ago I wrote that I began recovery at 18 with an incredible amount of social capital at my disposal, and that not all are as fortunate. I graduated high school, moved away from home, started college, started a relationship, and got into recovery, all in one summer. What carried me was my support system. Many people don't have that. Which is precisely why the systems question matters more than my story does.
Johann Hari's line about connection being the opposite of addiction has resonated widely, and for good reason. He is right that isolation drives use and that social environment shapes outcomes. He overstates it when the argument slides toward treating neurobiology as secondary, because it isn't. Both are true. Substance use disorder is a medical condition, and recovery capital determines whether treatment holds.
The mutual aid tradition understood this long before anyone was billing for peer support. AA and NA built the infrastructure of community-based recovery out of nothing but people showing up for each other. The evidence has caught up. The 2020 Cochrane review found that AA and Twelve-Step Facilitation performed at least as well as other established treatments, and better on continuous abstinence.
The pandemic ran the experiment in reverse. I was 30 years into my own recovery when the meetings closed. I wasn't the one at risk. The people with 90 days were. We were reminded that recovery capital is fragile when it depends on physical proximity, and that the programs that survived were the ones that built redundancy into how people stay connected.
One Year Later: What Actually Happened to the SUPPORT Act
Last Recovery Month, I wrote about the Senate passing the SUPPORT Act Reauthorization. It was signed into law on December 1, 2025, as Public Law 119-44. So did the promise hold?
Partly. The law reauthorizes the programs that build exactly the connective tissue this year's theme describes. Building Communities of Recovery is authorized at $17 million annually through FY2030. The National Peer-Run Training and Technical Assistance Center was reauthorized and expanded to cover professional development for peer specialists and recovery support in nonclinical settings. Roughly $505 million is authorized for overdose prevention from FY2026 through FY2030.
But authorization is not appropriation. Congress can authorize a program without funding it, and the gap between the two is where good policy quietly dies. Watch the appropriations line, not the press release. There is also a deadline most organizations are not tracking. The telehealth prescribing flexibilities for medications for opioid use disorder, the ones I celebrated last September, were extended by DEA and HHS only through December 31, 2026. That is the fourth temporary extension. It expires 102 days from today.
We already know what happens when this connective infrastructure lapses. When Medicare telehealth flexibilities were allowed to expire in September 2025, fee-for-service telemedicine visits dropped 24 percent. Remove the connection, and access falls measurably. That is the theme of this Recovery Month, stated as data.
What This Asks of Us
Recovery happens together. So does everything that makes recovery possible: the funding, the workforce, the peer networks, and the prescribing rules that let someone in a rural county start buprenorphine without a three-hour drive.
At NorthStar Behavioral Health Advisory, I work with organizations to navigate these systems so that all communities may thrive. If your organization is positioning for SUPPORT Act funding, building peer recovery capacity, or preparing for the telehealth question, I would welcome the conversation.
But today, the more important ask is the smaller one. Check in with someone in recovery. Ask them what gives their life meaning, and then listen to the answer. Showing that you value what they value is how this works.
Recovery is possible! The path is clearer than ever! Now is the time to walk together!
Reach out at eric@northstarbhadvisory.com or visit www.northstarbhadvisory.com.
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