Aikins, whose struggle with drugs was chronicled in Vance’s memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ travels the country speaking at addiction recovery events.
GREENFIELD, Ohio—Far from the pomp and grandeur of sharing the stage with her son, Vice President JD Vance, at President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Beverly Aikins was standing alone on a modest wooden platform in this rural southern Ohio village in the Appalachian foothills.
Mic in hand, she was sharing her story of recovering from addiction at an Aug. 30 event where people from all walks of life spoke about overcoming similar battles.
Aikins, who celebrated her 10th year of sobriety this year and turned 64 on Trump’s inauguration day, recalled the first time she got high on drugs.
“I was working as a registered nurse at a hospital. I had a headache, and one of my coworkers suggested that I take a Vicodin,” she told a crowd of around 50.
“I took it from the medication room and felt like I never have before. I thought it was the answer to my problems with the energy it gave me.”
Aikins noted that her addiction went from Vicodin to Percocet, and eventually spiraled to morphine and heroin.
“I stole the morphine, the hospital found out, and I lost my job, my nursing license, and my family,“ she said. ”Addiction cost me the most important things in my life, and it almost cost me my life.”
As her addiction escalated, Aikins said she was living out of her car. She was estranged from her children, JD and Lindsay. Her parents had died. She felt alone, uncertain about the future.
“I remember telling someone there that I’m going to die if I don’t stop using drugs, and I wanted to die,” she said.
“I also remember the last time I got high. I woke up on a bathroom floor, naked and covered in my own sweat and vomit. That was far from the feeling of euphoria I had the first time I got high.”
Aikins married Donald Bowman in 1983. The couple divorced in 1984, not long after Vance was born.
She focused on raising her two young children alone and worked long hours.
