A recovery advocate who helps those with substance abuse confessed that the biggest mistake he's made in his own journey of sobriety was in supporting President Donald Trump in 2024.
Writing in a column for The Nevada Independent, Rob Banghart explained that after years of opioid addiction, he was finally able to find recovery. He has overdosed 15 times, and each time was "pulled back from the brink of death," he wrote.
Post-addiction, he has dedicated his life to helping those in "the forgotten tunnels beneath Las Vegas" who desperately need treatment.
On Friday, he wrote that, in the lead-up to the 2024 election, he "was energized, filled with a fragile hope that, finally, the recovery community would have a powerful voice. Donald Trump, with his populist rhetoric, seemed to offer that. He spoke about the economy with an infectious optimism, and when he championed figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who echoed our concerns about recovery, I, like many others, was swayed."
In the short six months since inauguration, however, Banghart has seen an unexpected reality behind the promises.
National Public Radio reported that the "Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, commonly known as SAMHSA, is in the process of being dissolved." Under Kennedy's leadership, the department "has lost more than a third of its staff of about 900 this year as part of recent reductions in the federal workforce."
A whopping $1 billion has been cut from the Department of Health and Human Services under the so-called "big, beautiful bill." Kennedy claimed that the SAMHSA's "mission is being folded into a new entity."
"I am at a loss for words when I reflect on how thoroughly I was fooled by the rhetoric leading up to the election," Banghart confessed.
"Watching the distressing and ongoing impact of these policies on our recovery community has been a brutal awakening. It has made me realize, with painful clarity and poignancy, that my vote was the biggest mistake of my recovery. It was a vote against the very principles of compassion, support and evidence-based care that define the path to healing."
He closed by saying, "We must choose to invest in life, not in policies that pave the way for more funerals."
