By Joe Schrank, 28 years sober, not dead, and still not impressed

Let’s all give Elon Musk a big round of applause. Not for advancing civilization or ending hunger or even managing to be slightly tolerable at a dinner party. No, Elon pissed in a cup and declared himself “clean.” In the world of MAGA mind-mush, that’s apparently the new Nobel Peace Prize.

You heard me. The apartheid aficionado, Tesla’s favorite racist stepdad, the guy who thinks free speech means threatening journalists on Twitter—sorry, “X”—posted a clean urine screen like it was proof of moral superiority. Elon, buddy, no one asked. And more to the point: no one cares. A self-administered urine screen is the wellness equivalent of grading your own SAT. You don’t get a dream date with Marjorie Taylor Greene for not doing meth. Especially when you still act like you do.

America has a religious obsession with urine. Not in a fun, icky German club kind of way, but in a beige, bureaucratic, punitive way. Piss tests are the golden calf of our broken drug policy—a warm cup of false virtue in a culture so terrified of consciousness it needs a purity certificate from Quest Diagnostics. And while a urine screen can be a useful data point, it is absolutely not the sole metric of mental health, recovery, or decency.

Being “drug-free” does not mean being functional. And being a drug user does not mean being broken. Most drug use is recreational. Most drug users are unimpaired. If there’s no impairment, there’s no diagnosis. And if there’s no diagnosis, what the hell are we even talking about?

But America is addicted to punishment. In this culture, drug use is either pathology or crime—never just a choice. Never just a Tuesday night. We don’t arrest people for bingeing Taco Bell or vaping battery acid-flavored nicotine in parking lots, but God forbid someone smokes weed to tolerate Florida, their in-laws, or trailer park Scientology stupidity.

And this isn’t theoretical. This is strategic. Conservative America loves the war on drugs, not because it works—it doesn’t—but because it’s a convenient license to brutalize people they already hate. You can do anything to a young Black man—tase him, shoot him, lock him up for eternity—if you say, “he was on drugs.” Drug policy is the camouflage for institutionalized racism. It’s not about safety. It’s about control.

Let’s talk about family values. You want to rip a child out of their mother’s arms because she tested positive for weed? That’s your moral stance? Because where I come from, you don’t separate families for making questionable health choices. If that’s the standard, Child Protective Services should be outside every KFC in Georgia.

And fiscally responsible? Get the fuck out of here. The drug war is a money pit. We could pay every teacher in America a six-figure salary, pave the roads in actual gold, and still have cash left over if we stopped wasting money locking up people for carrying Adderall without a script.

If conservatives actually lived by their own values—individual liberty, small government, fiscal conservatism—they’d be the first ones to demand we decriminalize all drugs. Because who the hell is the government to tell you what you can put in your own body? They don’t stop you from eating bacon-wrapped cheese sticks at the county fair while wearing Crocs and waving a Don’t Tread On Me flag. But God forbid you microdose.

Meanwhile, back at the social media circus, Elon’s holding up his piss cup like it’s the Ark of the Covenant. A clean urine screen doesn’t mean you’re healthy, safe, or remotely tolerable. It just means you didn’t use certain substances in the last few days. That’s it. That’s the whole science. If he really wanted to prove anything, he’d take a supervised hair test—live. But he won’t. Because the only thing more unreliable than Elon’s leadership is his honesty.

And look, maybe Musk is drug-free. Maybe. But even if he is, that’s not the problem. The problem is that he’s an unrelenting asshole. He’s reckless, narcissistic, and somehow both delusional and boring at the same time. Drugs might actually help.

True recovery—real, sustainable recovery—is about behavior, consistency, and attitude. It’s not about temporary abstinence or self-reported abstinence or pissing clean while running your company into the ground and tweeting like a tween with a gas station vape. When someone’s words match their actions, when they treat people well, when they show up day after day with humility and self-awareness—that’s recovery. For some, that means no drug use at all. For others, it’s about moderation, management, or just moving toward something less destructive.

But in MAGA land, it’s all black and white. Good people pee clean. Bad people pee dirty. And there’s no nuance, no compassion, no curiosity—just culture war cosplay and piss jars.

So no, Elon. You don’t get a dream date with Marjorie Taylor Greene for peeing in a cup. And if that’s the best you have to offer, maybe you should consider trying some drugs. It might chill you out enough to stop being such an insufferable goblin in a Patagonia vest.

Purple haze, indeed.

by Joe Schrank, 28 years sober, not dead and still showing up

F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t just give us The Great Gatsby. He gave us the language of longing—the blueprint for beautiful despair wrapped in Art Deco trim. And sure, Gatsby gets all the glory, but Fitzgerald also cleared the path for the likes of Salinger. Without Fitzgerald, there’s no Franny and Zooey—that brooding, exquisite little book doesn’t hit the same without the trail he blazed through American prose. His writing, like Salinger’s after him, manages to be intimate and epic, sacred and sad, without being fussy—like the perfect fastball, simplicity that rushes by you without quite knowing what happened.

As for Zelda? She wasn’t just “the wife.” She was chaos and charisma, talent and tragedy. They were the Sid and Nancy of the Jazz Age, minus the punk and plus the gin. Maybe even the OG Kurt and Courtney before Courtney became a junkie Auntie Mame. Zelda didn’t just dance on tables—she broke the tables, and the floor beneath them, and everything around her, including Scott’s big, sensitive, brilliant alcoholic heart. Their love was a Category 5 hurricane that blew through salons, sanatoriums, and sad little hotel rooms.

Hemingway treated Fitzgerald like a twerpy little brother, a junior varsity drinker with a writing problem. But Fitzgerald’s work endures. It’s foundational. Any brooding undergrad at a New England liberal arts college better be able to tell her bestie, “You’re the Jordan to my Daisy,” and sound like she’s actually read it.

So yeah, the Fitzgeralds were messy. They drank too much, loved too hard, and burned out like busted chandeliers. But they mattered. Their damage didn’t cancel their brilliance—it was stitched into it.

Alcoholics have shaped American life. If you’re an alcoholic, be proud. Raise a glass of Diet Coke, lads—you’re in brilliant company

So you’ve been “told” you have to join AA to stay sober? Spare me. A dude just celebrated 28 years without a drop and says flat‑out: you don’t need AA if it doesn’t serve you. And guess what? He’s exceptionally qualified. Congrats, Reddit!

AA isn’t the magic bullet—and rehab is a cash cow

Rehab is a $159 billion industry, monetizing what AA’s classic Tradition Six explicitly prohibits—“AA should never be a place of profit.” And yet, many rehabs are little more than AA indoctrination camps. Ironic, isn’t it? The program zealots have done the very thing forbidden by the system they claim to revere. Think I’m wrong? Go ahead—try to find a rehab that doesn’t require AA. There’s a lot of shiny rhetoric out there about “multiple pathways to recovery,” but very few walk that talk. Most just ring that bell while creating unspoken pressure to join them in a church basement.

The evidence paints a messy picture

AA helps some, not all

A Cochrane review found that manualized AA or 12‑Step Facilitation produces higher continuous abstinence rates than CBT, with cost savings. But other studies show that only people with deep engagement—like getting a sponsor, doing the steps, and attending regularly—tend to see results. And even then, it’s correlation, not causation. Meanwhile, dropout rates are high, and for many, it just doesn’t click.

Other pathways are legit too

SAMHSA’s working definition of recovery?

A process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self‐directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.

That’s it. No mention of meetings, sponsors, slogans, or being guilt-tripped over a pot of stale coffee. Why is the coffee so bad? Is it penance for wrongdoing? Are we just undeserving of good coffee?

SAMHSA backs “many pathways to recovery”—including clinical treatment, meds, faith, peer support, self‑care, and secular groups like SMART Recovery, LifeRing, Refuge Recovery, Women for Sobriety, and more. You’re allowed to build a life without ever saying the Serenity Prayer in fluorescent lighting.

AA does offer value—just not a universal panacea

Yes, AA’s peer support, accountability, and spiritual connection help a lot of people. That’s real. Studies show it strengthens social bonds and supports impulse control. But if you’re not into spiritual surrender or sitting through 90‑minute sharefests that devolve into “who got a new coffee commitment,” you’re not broken. You’re just not into AA. That’s allowed.

The real secret to sobriety? Barriers, baby!

“The key to staying sober is putting as many barriers between you and a drink as you can.”

Build a fortress of…

• 🏋️ Workouts
• 💬 Therapy
• 💊 Medication (naltrexone, acamprosate, bupropion—work that out with your doctor, not your sponsor the plumber
• 🏘️ Community involvement
• 💪 Mutual-aid groups, including but not limited to AA

What keeps you grounded is what works. If that’s yelling affirmations in a cold plunge, go nuts. If it’s knitting with the local Unitarian recovery circle, good on you.

Bottom line

AA is a powerful tool—but just one tool. Want to skip the meetings? Go for it. Want to mix AA with therapy and meds? Cool. Want to just lift weights and volunteer your way sober? That’s legit. As long as you’re actively building barriers between yourself and a drink, you’re in recovery.

If you want to talk about it, I offer a free discovery session to see if I might be the right fit as your sobriety Sherpa. I’m certainly not right for everyone. Ask an ex-wife or two—or my mother. They’ll tell you that’s true.

No permission slip needed. But if you want one? Here.

Signed,
Joe Schrank—28 years sober, not dead, and still showing up.

When it comes to recovery, AA isn’t the only way—it’s not even the most common way.

By Joe Schrank — 28 Years Sober, Not Dead, and Still Showing Up

Let me tell you a secret, and this might sting if you’re clutching your Big Book like a security blanket: most people in recovery are not in AA. I know. I’ve been sitting in musty church basements since before Monica Lewinsky went to prom, so I get it. I owe AA a lot. I got sober there—and more importantly, I got a life. The 12-step roadmap, the peers I made, the mentors I was lucky to have—those things helped me build something solid and meaningful. Not just sobriety, but sustainability. A life with purpose, direction, and fewer mornings waking up in jail or next to someone I had to block immediately. The principles I developed in AA helped me steward my son—adopted from Kenya and orphaned by the HIV crisis—into becoming a physician. From trauma to healing, from abandonment to a white coat and stethoscope. That’s the ripple effect of AA.

But here’s the truth: AA is not the whole story. Hell, it’s not even the first paragraph anymore.

The Numbers Game (aka Let’s Talk Math Before Coffee Kicks In)

According to the National Recovery Survey and other credible sources, roughly 20 to 22 million Americans consider themselves to be “in recovery.” That’s a real number. Bigger than the population of Florida. Which, coincidentally, is also a state that could use a few more mental health resources, but I digress.

Now, take a wild guess how many of those 20-something million are in Alcoholics Anonymous? Around 2 million. Yep. That’s it. Two million people worldwide are holding hands and reciting the Serenity Prayer, and about 75% of them are in the U.S. or Canada.

So, for those keeping score at home, about 90% of people in recovery don’t go to AA. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a landslide.

So Where Are the Other 18 Million People?

They’re everywhere. They’re in therapy, they’re doing SMART Recovery, they’re working with coaches, they’re using medication, they’re leaning into their faith, or their dogs, or CrossFit. Some of them just stopped using and moved on with their lives, which for the record, is totally valid. Recovery isn’t a gated community guarded by the ghost of Bill W.

The idea that the only path to redemption is through 12 steps, a resentment list, and whatever Sharon has to say at the Wednesday night meeting is… well, let’s just say misguided.

The Cult of One-Size-Fits-All

AA works for some. It worked for me. But let’s not pretend it’s the universal remote for addiction. The program was built in the 1930s by white Protestant men who chain-smoked and wore fedoras to breakfast. It reflects that time. It’s spiritual but not religious, except when it is. It’s free, but it costs your time, your Thursday nights, and sometimes your sanity.

AA also loves the bootstrap narrative: “You just weren’t willing.” That’s convenient. That way, if the program doesn’t work for you, you failed, not the program. That’s like blaming the patient for dying on the operating table and saying, “Well, he just didn’t believe in surgery hard enough.”

One of the industry’s dirty secrets is its ability to deflect responsibility under the guise of “you weren’t ready.” That kind of gaslighting is more common than caffeine at a speaker meeting.

Recovery Is Bigger Than a Folding Chair

If you’re in recovery, congratulations. However you got here—great. If you’re sober through AA, rock on. If you use Suboxone, therapy, journaling, CrossFit, psilocybin, prayer, harm reduction, or sheer willpower—also great. There’s room for all of it.

Recovery is not a cult. It’s not a uniform. It’s a spectrum. A process. A long, winding road with a lot of detours, and sometimes a pit stop at In-N-Out because you’re feeling sad and hungry.

What recovery isn’t? A contest. A purity test. A forced march to the same meeting forever because that’s what some crusty dude with a 1993 sobriety date told you is the only way.

Final Thought from a Grizzled Old-Timer (Me)

Look, I’m still in AA. I still go to meetings. But I don’t pretend it’s a magic spell that works for everyone. What AA gave me was a foundation. What kept me going was curiosity, community, and a willingness to change. I’ve evolved, and so has my recovery.

So let’s stop gatekeeping. Let’s stop acting like AA is the only lifeboat and everyone else is just treading water. The numbers don’t lie: most people in recovery are doing something else—and it’s working just fine.

If you want help figuring out what might work for you, I offer a free discovery session to see if we’re a match to work together. It might be AA. It might not. What matters is that it fits.

By Joe Schrank — 28 Years Sober, Not Dead, and Still Showing Up

So Matthew Perry’s doctor pleaded guilty. The media’s breathless with the news. “The man who gave Chandler Bing his pills!” It’s tempting to see this as some clean little morality tale: reckless prescriber, tragic addict, lesson learned. But addiction isn’t a story you can wrap in a bow and posthumously hand to the public with a stern warning. And it sure as hell isn’t fixed by handcuffs and courtrooms.

Let’s be clear: if you’re a doctor writing scripts for controlled substances under fake names, that’s a crime. Period. Dr. Feelgood here deserves every consequence the law allows. But if we stop there—if we make him the scapegoat—we’re missing the entire goddamn point.
If we really want to assign blame, let’s be accurate. We’re all to blame—the entire dysfunctional American family. The one that lives in denial and pretends we will someday incarcerate our way out of addiction or that with enough cruelty at the southern border, people will stop using drugs. Bitch, please. If we’re all to blame—and we are—then we all have to participate in the solution.

America has always tried to control addiction by controlling supply. It’s a strategy older than disco and dumber than Twitter. We blamed Chinese immigrants for opium, jazz musicians for reefer, and now we’re back to blaming doctors for opioids. The pendulum always swings from overprescribing to overcorrecting, like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. It never lands on actual care.

Matthew Perry was not a victim of one man in a white coat. He was a man with a chronic, relapsing brain condition that hijacks your logic, shreds your relationships, and convinces you that the only way to feel okay is to slowly die. He knew that. He wrote about it, talked about it, and lived it every day. This is a man who spent millions trying to get better, who opened a sober living house for others. He wasn’t clueless. He was in pain.

But when we assign all the blame to the doctor, we erase something crucial: recovery only works when we take personal responsibility. No one can make you get better. They can help—God knows we all need help—but no intervention, no rehab, no pill, no sponsor can save you if you’re not willing to face yourself in the mirror and say, “I have to do this work.”

Blame culture is easy. It’s so much easier to blame a dealer, a doctor, a dad, the Democrats, the cartel, the curse of celebrity. It’s a lot harder to confront the messy, brutal truth that addiction is a deeply human struggle, and humans make decisions—bad ones, heartbreaking ones, sometimes fatal ones. That doesn’t mean we abandon compassion. It means we stop pretending people are puppets with pills pulling the strings.

What happened to Matthew Perry is a tragedy, not a whodunit. And while the doctor bears responsibility, we all need to remember that addiction is never just about supply. If we want to reduce harm, we need better mental health care, honest education, harm reduction options, and compassionate accountability—not just another perp walk and a shrug.

Let the doctor take his medicine. But let’s not pretend that justice here means we’re anywhere closer to solving the actual crisis. If you want to train for a marathon, the shoes have to fit. The same goes for recovery. No one-size-fits-all. No easy villains. Just people trying to find a way out.

Let’s talk about JD Vance. Yes, that JD—the Yale Law grad turned cosplay hillbilly turned U.S. Senator with a forehead full of think tank talking points and a heart full of MAGA merch.

In his latest act of performative populism, JD decided to blame his own mother’s addiction on the southern border. That’s right. Not poverty. Not untreated mental illness. Not a shredded safety net or lack of access to evidence-based treatment. Nope. According to JD, it was José from Juárez who somehow made his mom sick in Middletown, Ohio.

This isn’t just intellectually lazy—it’s a slap in the face to the 13 million American children who currently live with a parent battling addiction. Kids who are watching someone they love disappear into a bottle, a pipe, a needle—not because of the “border crisis,” but because we live in a country that treats addiction as a crime until it’s time to wring political sympathy out of it.

JD, you went to Yale. You know addiction is a chronic health condition rooted in trauma, biology, environment, and yes, personal responsibility. But you’ve traded your Ivy League brain for red-state applause lines that sound like crap one would overhear in line at the Walmart Cheeto sale. You know better—but you’ve decided it’s more politically convenient to pander to the rubes with border wall bedtime stories than to actually propose meaningful solutions.

Let’s be clear: America’s addiction crisis is complex. It’s about disconnection, despair, and the industrial-scale failure of our mental health system. It’s about Big Pharmacy and Big Alcohol’s greed, economic collapse in forgotten towns, and decades of bipartisan negligence. It’s not about some poor guy in Tijuana hoping to make it across the Rio Grande to clean your damn hotel room.

Real answers would mean a conversation about the very nature of drug use—what it means, why people do it—and reframing it as a public health emergency, one that isn’t solved by paramilitary hardware and thinly veiled racism. That takes leadership. That takes backbone. What we’re getting from JD is empty calories for the culture war crowd.

Because here’s the rub: JD Vance doesn’t want real answers. Real answers don’t poll well with the Tucker Carlson crowd. Real answers require action, nuance, science. And JD would rather strike a pose than strike a nerve with his donor base.

And while we’re cutting through the performative crap with brass tacks: it’s arguable that power is the drug JD is addicted to, and apparently, he’d sell out his own mother for a fix.

And just for the record—since we’re telling the truth here—he also looks like Teddy Ruxpin. Just wind him up, and he’ll tell you whatever bedtime story the base wants to hear.

Let’s talk numbers.

America spends $150 billion a year on addiction treatment. That’s billion with a B—as in, “Better hope your insurance has no idea what it’s actually paying for.”

And what do we get for that investment?

Relapse rates after traditional treatment hover between 70–90% within the first year. Statistically, you’re more likely to get into Stanford—where the acceptance rate is under 4%—than to stay sober after many rehab stays. But somehow, treatment programs still get sold like they’re a guaranteed cure, complete with yoga mats, ocean views, and laminated mantras.

While no program is perfect, some are certainly better than others. Some programs are excellent. They’re run by licensed clinicians, trauma-informed therapists, and people who understand substance use as a complex mental health issue—not a moral failure. But a large portion of the industry? It’s built on personality, hustle, and pure marketing.

A lot of these places are run by people whose main qualification is “I used to be high and now I’m not.” That’s not nothing, but it’s definitely not everything. Much of the rehab business is still operated by former drug dealers who just swapped grams for group therapy and kept the ethics of their former profession—now dressed up in Allbirds and inspirational wall quotes between pontificating platitudes and insurance fraud.

And when the treatment doesn’t work? There’s a fallback script:

You weren’t ready.
You didn’t surrender.
You need to hit a lower bottom.

One of the dirtiest secrets in the rehab industry is this built-in escape hatch: blame the consumer. The same system that doesn’t measure success, doesn’t provide meaningful aftercare, and doesn’t adapt to individual needs will still claim it’s your fault when things fall apart.

Imagine if that happened after surgery. You wake up in pain and the hospital says, “Well, we don’t track outcomes here, but you probably didn’t believe in the process hard enough.” That’s the level of accountability in most of this $150 billion industry.

If you’re looking at treatment options, don’t get hypnotized by glossy brochures, beachfront bonfires, or promises of spiritual rebirth between CrossFit and cold plunges. Ask for outcome data. If they don’t have any, what does that tell you? A site visit is totally appropriate. If it doesn’t feel right, it most likely isn’t.

If this all sounds overwhelming, I get it. I’ve lived it—from both sides and seen the game of three card Monty for decades.

That’s why I offer  a free discovery sessions to help people navigate this mess. No pressure. No preachy pitch. Just honest help sorting out what’s actually useful, what’s overpriced nonsense, and what will work for you. Most likely will take some time but first session with me is free and that rule of thumb, if it doesn’t feel right, it most likely isn’t also applies to me

Because your recovery shouldn’t depend on slogans, sales tactics, or someone else’s idea of “the right way.” It should be about finding a path forward that makes sense for your life.

Book a free session. Let’s build something that works.

If there’s a Mount Rushmore of American hypocrisy, Billie Holiday deserves a spot right next to MLK and that eagle we keep pretending stands for liberty. Because here’s the brutal, beautiful truth: Lady Day sang about lynching, and the U.S. government lost its MFing mind—not because of heroin, but because she dared to tell the truth while Black and a woman.

Let’s stop pretending Billie was just a tragic jazz singer with a “drug problem.” She was a prophet with a microphone, rattling the collective American cage from a smoky Harlem jazz club. “Strange Fruit” wasn’t just a song—it was a eulogy for the country’s moral compass. A slow, haunting dirge that called out the barbarism of the South while the rest of America clutched its pearls and pretended not to know.

And Harry Anslinger—America’s original drug czar cum racism enthusiast—couldn’t stand it. Not the melody. Not the voice. The message. A Black woman, standing on stage, fearless, singing about actual American terrorism? That was more dangerous to the status quo than any bag of dope.

So he went to work.

Anslinger was the godfather of weaponized mental health stigma—long before we figured out how to hashtag it. He knew Billie had trauma. Of course she did. A Black woman born in 1915? Who survived rape, racism, and the music industry? That’s a DSM diagnosis wrapped in a fur coat. But instead of help, she got surveillance. Instead of care, she got cuffs. Instead of compassion, she got criminalized.

Why? Because she refused to stop singing “Strange Fruit.”

This  wasn’t about heroin. This was about silencing a truth-teller. Billie Holiday wasn’t just a legendary jazz artist—she was one of the first public cases of what we still do today: pathologize pain in Black bodies, especially when those bodies belong to women. Use “mental health” as a smokescreen for racism. Label someone unstable, addicted, dangerous, and suddenly it’s open season. You’re no longer a person, you’re a problem to be removed.

All of this, by the way, was happening while Hitler was across the Atlantic, trying to soothe his festering insecurity over flunking out of art school and only having one ball by plotting the systematic murder of six million people. A global fascist movement was gaining steam, and America’s bright idea was to put Billie Holiday under federal surveillance for singing about lynching. Priorities, baby.

They took away her cabaret card. They followed her. They arrested her. And when she was dying, literally dying in a hospital bed, they sent agents to shackle her and blocked her from receiving methadone. That’s not public health. That’s plantation psychology with federal funding.

Billie Holiday was brilliant, fragile, defiant—and targeted. She wasn’t a threat because she used drugs. She was a threat because she used truth. And she did it while Black and a woman—with a voice like smoke and a backbone stronger than the country that tried to break her.

The legacy? Still alive and kicking.

Today, we still criminalize the symptoms of trauma. We still treat Black and brown mental illness as violence, while treating white suffering with therapy dogs and podcasts. We still love to say “get help”—then gut the funding for that help, especially if the person asking is Black, a woman, or both.

In America, one can pretty much get away with any violence against a Black person by saying, “he was on drugs.” It’s the country’s favorite magic trick—turn a victim into a threat, and poof, accountability disappears. Works like a charm for cops, Karens, and policymakers alike.

Final note: If Billie were around today, she’d be in some overpriced detox center being psychoanalyzed for “treatment-resistant depression,” while white girls with ukuleles sing “Strange Fruit” at TED Talks. Meanwhile, the people she sang for are still overpoliced and under-treated.

So next time you hear that chilling first line—
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit…”
—remember: the real horror wasn’t just in the song. It was in how America responded to it. And still does.

This isn’t just history. It’s policy. It’s pathology. And it’s still killing people.

And somewhere, Billie’s voice still rises—clear, beautiful, inconvenient as hell.

By Joe Schrank (or someone channeling his vibe with a thesaurus, Wi-Fi, black coffee, and a pissy attitude)

So RFK Jr. wants to cut the budget for SAMHSA. For the uninitiated, that’s the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — the federal agency tasked with helping Americans not completely lose their minds or die from untreated addiction. Think of it as the government’s underfunded, overstretched mental health first responder, operating with duct tape, good intentions, and a prayer. They might even have an old coffee pot, shitty coffee, and Styrofoam cups just for authenticity.

Now, a Kennedy slashing the mental health budget is rich. If ever there were a family that could’ve benefitted from generational therapy, it’s the Kennedys. But here we are — RFK Jr., who sounds like he just licked a mercury thermometer and washed it down with colloidal silver, wants to cut funding to the one agency trying to stop America from descending into a full-blown mental health apocalypse.

This isn’t just bad policy. It’s dangerous. And it matters for everyone — not just the guy talking to himself outside the bodega or your cousin who’s been to rehab six times and now sells crystals on Instagram. No, this affects all of us.

Here’s why this matters:

1. Mental Health Is Infrastructure.

You want safe communities? Lower crime rates? Less homelessness? Kids who can function in school? Cool. Then invest in mental health. Cutting SAMHSA is like cutting the fire department budget because there haven’t been any four-alarm blazes lately. Spoiler: The fire’s already burning. It’s called anxiety, depression, addiction, PTSD, trauma, and untreated psychosis, and it’s lighting up every ZIP code in America — red and blue alike.

Post-pandemic America has been an anxious and depressed place. We’re still learning the long-term impact of the pandemic years — isolation, grief, uncertainty, the collective nervous breakdown we all lived through but never fully addressed. If now isn’t the time to invest in national mental health infrastructure, when would be?

2. Addiction Doesn’t Care Who You Voted For.

RFK Jr. might be trying to cosplay as some libertarian savior of freedom, but the opioid epidemic has body counts in every demographic. Rural, urban, rich, poor, Black, white, trans, cis, Christian, atheist. Addiction is nonpartisan. So when you cut funding to SAMHSA, you’re not making some ideological stand. You’re just ensuring that more people die in bathtubs with fentanyl in their bloodstream and no access to care.

3. Emergency Rooms Are Not Mental Health Clinics.

You think you’re saving money by cutting this budget? Please. We already pay for untreated mental health. We pay it in ER visits, incarcerations, lost productivity, broken families, dead kids, and teachers quitting in droves because they’re now expected to be social workers. Every dollar not spent on prevention and care ends up being spent reacting to the consequences. It’s the most expensive game of whack-a-mole we’ve ever played.

4. RFK Jr. Might Be the Poster Child for Mental Health Reform.

Listen, I’m not trying to diagnose anyone from afar — but if someone insists that Wi-Fi is causing autism and vaccines are a global conspiracy while running for president on the “I’m not like other candidates, I’m worse” platform, maybe — maybe — he’s not the guy who should be leading the national conversation on behavioral health funding.

Ok, if you insist, I’ll diagnose RFK Jr. officially. His diagnosis would be: crazier than a shithouse rat.

5. People Want Help. We Just Don’t Offer It.

Most people struggling with substance use or mental illness aren’t lazy or unmotivated or broken. They’re unsupported. SAMHSA doesn’t do everything right — but it funds community mental health centers, suicide prevention hotlines, peer recovery programs, culturally competent care initiatives, and outreach to underserved populations. In a sane country, we’d triple its budget, not gut it.

This is a values issue.

Cutting the SAMHSA budget tells the country that we don’t care if you’re suffering. That we’ll punish you for being sick. That mental illness is a moral failing and addiction is a choice. That “personal responsibility” is the answer — as if anyone ever bootstrap-ed their way out of a psychotic break.

If you think this doesn’t affect you, give it time. Mental illness and addiction are the great equalizers. Eventually, it knocks on your door — your kid, your partner, your friend, you. And when it does, you’re going to wish there was a lifeline. That lifeline is what SAMHSA is.

So yeah, RFK Jr. wants to slash that.

If ever someone needed mental health services, it’s the guy holding the scissors.

Joe Schrank is a social worker, recovery advocate, and someone who knows how much a life costs — and how little we invest to save one.

Let’s just get the uncomfortable question out of the way: was saving the Union even the right move?

Essentially, America is a dysfunctional family at odds with itself. It always has been. Maybe the effort to preserve the Union would’ve been better spent developing a refugee program to get enslaved people out of there — rather than forcing together states that fundamentally didn’t (and still don’t) want to share a house.

We keep pretending this is a “united” country, but it’s not. It’s stratified. West Coast folks aren’t going to care which restroom trans people use, any more than Southerners are giving up Jesus or guns. In a way, the whole thing feels like the perfect alcoholic decision: “It doesn’t work and we hate each other… let’s save it!”

And the guy who pulled off that chaotic Hail Mary? He was an alcoholic.

Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t some polished, idealized figure out of a marble statue. He was a messy, complicated, painfully human man — and a severe alcoholic. He drank himself out of the army once before the Civil War. He was known to disappear into benders that had his peers worried, embarrassed, or both. And yet, when the country was literally splitting in two, he was the guy who held it together.

He led the Union Army to victory. Not because he was clean-cut or sober or even particularly diplomatic — but because he was relentless. Smart. Tough. And oddly moral in his own quiet way. Later, as President, he tried (and mostly failed) to steer Reconstruction in a more just direction. Still, he fought for Black Americans’ civil rights when it wasn’t exactly a winning political strategy.

Grant’s drinking was never a footnote — it was part of his story. His critics used it against him. His supporters tried to cover it up. But the truth is, he was a man at war with both the Confederacy and his own demons — and still managed to do something extraordinary.

And yet, ultimately, Grant lost his fight. We know now what he didn’t: that heavy drinking combined with smoking exponentially increases the likelihood of cancer. Grant died of throat cancer in his 60s — not that old — after enduring a brutal final year writing his memoirs so his family wouldn’t be left penniless. Even at the end, he was grinding it out, doing what needed to be done.

If you’ve ever felt like you were too broken, too addicted, or too far gone to make a difference, remember Ulysses S. Grant. The guy might’ve smelled like bourbon and bad decisions half the time, but he still saved the goddamn country. You’re not out of the fight.