After decades of fighting with addiction, JD Vance’s mother has marked an important milestone.
On Monday, April 7, Vice President Vance directed a celebration at the White House for Beverly Aikins, 64, who has achieved a decade of sobriety.
“This year marks the tenth year of sobriety of my mother, and I am grateful that we have been able to celebrate at the White House with our family,” Vance wrote in an X post, sharing several photos of the celebration.
“Mom, I’m very proud of you.”
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Several friends and family attended the celebration in the Roosevelt room.
Vance talked about her pride in her mother’s achievement and pointed out that she was the type of person in which people could trust, as reported by the Washington examiner.
“That is what addiction took away. But that is what the recovery has returned, is that you are a person in which others can trust,” he said, according to the same source.
“And I know that you are an inspiration for many people in the community of recovery and addiction. Then, from the bottom of my heart and speaking for the whole family, we love you.”
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The vice president presented to his mother one of the “challenge coins” of the president to mark the occasion.
Vance, who grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and the city of Jackson of the Apalaches, Kentucky, spoke on the path of the presidential campaign on the impact of Aikins’s addiction in his life, pointing out that his grandmother, “Mamaw”, intervened to fill the void.
JD Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, observes during an inauguration ceremony at the United States Capitol Rotunda in January 2025. On Monday, April 7, Vice President Vance directed a celebration of the Aikins’ nephew. (Reuters)
“She raised me in part because my own mother fought with addiction for a large part of my early life,” he said during the vice presidential debate in October.
Aikins addiction began with a legitimate recipe for medicines, but led her to steal medications from her patients, as detailed in her book Super Surves, “Hillbilly Elegy”.
Finally, he became addicted to heroin.
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Throughout his childhood, Vance witnessed many cycles of his mother’s drug abuse, volatile behavior and failed periods in rehabilitation, he wrote.
Even so, she was still committed to helping her best skill.
“He knew that a mother could love her son despite the control of addiction.”
“It was eternal hope, what I couldn’t say,” Vance wrote in his book.
“That hope led me to voluntarily attend those many na meetings, consume books on addiction and participate in Mom’s treatment to the greatest extent I could.”
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“He knew that a mother could love her son despite the control of addiction,” he also wrote. “I knew that my family loved me, even when they fought to take care of themselves.”
Today, Aikins works at the Seacrest recovery center, a substance abuse treatment center in Cincinnati, Ohio, which lists it as a nurse on its website.
“He knew that a mother could love her son despite the control of addiction,” Vance wrote in her best -selling book. “I knew that my family loved me, even when they fought to take care of themselves.” (Reuters)
Last October, he spoke with Washington’s examiner about overcoming his struggles with substance abuse.
“I want people who fight with addiction or who have relatives fighting with addiction to know that recovery is possible, and that they get much more than the recovery of what you think you can return,” he said.
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According to Vance’s office, the Aikins Council for those who fight with the problems of substance abuse is to “communicate, try to get help, and that recovery is difficult, but it is worth it.”
The most recent statistics of the United States National Survey on Drug and Health Use (NSDUH) show that 48.5 million (16.7%) of Americans 12 years or more fought against a substance use disorder in the last year.
Diana Stancy of Fox News Digital contributed reports.
