There’s a difference between being sober, and being in recovery.That’s according to Alicia Vincent, project director at Project WARM: Women Assisting Recovering Mothers. Anyone can white-knuckle through sobriety, she said.

“Recovery is an absolute lifestyle change,” Vincent said. “Change in the people, places and things in your life.”

All this year, I will periodically check in with Hillary Medlin, a new mother and opiate addict who’s going through recovery at Project WARM. When I first met Medlin last year, she had just given birth to her son and he was going through detox in the hospital; she called him her second chance.

“You asked early on where do I predict [Medlin] long-term,” Vincent said. “As long as she follows through with what she’s being taught, I can see long-term recovery for her.”

Medlin’s story isn’t unique, but it is newsworthy. In 2014, 4.3 million Americans reported using opiates that weren’t prescribed to them. It’s become such an issue, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledged $1 billion to help states deal with the crisis.

“That’s an epidemic we cannot afford to ignore,” said Dr. Pamela Carbiener, Medlin’s OBGYN. “Especially in these young people when it affects entire families, disrupting the fabric of family life and resulting in children being taken from the home and put into foster care.”

WMFE is a partner with Health News Florida, a statewide collaborative reporting on health care.

Health reporting on WMFE is supported in part by AdventHealth.