Crystal Quigley Was Two Years Sober Before Fentanyl Got Her Back. Treatment Has to Plan for That.

Crystal Quigley had been sober for two years when she relapsed on illicit fentanyl. She says so herself, in a letter dated March 9 that CNN published in March 2025 as part of its “Fentanyl in America: A Way Out” series. She is a mother of five. She told the network she has overdosed “probably two dozen times” on fentanyl, that her mother once found her in a bathroom and had to call 911, and, as of the 2023 account CNN cites, that her two sons weren’t speaking to her.

Two sober years is not a finish line, and any program that plans as if it is has already written the next chapter for you.

A system built around admission and discharge treats time like a bar graph: the longer the sober streak, the safer the person. Quigley’s story is the argument against that. Her use started with meth and heroin more than a decade before the letter. Fentanyl then changed what a slip could cost. If you have ever counted days, you know what that number does to you when it resets. Shame arrives before the craving does, and shame is a very effective reason to stop calling anyone.

The research is not on the side of vague optimism. A 2026 umbrella review (a review of other reviews) in CNS Drugs, by Danovitch and colleagues, found that methadone kept people in opioid treatment longer than buprenorphine, with buprenorphine’s retention about 24% lower. Retention is not the same as recovery, and the review itself cautions against reading gaps as failures. But it points at the thing Quigley’s timeline points at: staying connected is the treatment. Dr. Mark Gold puts the biology plainly: “The brain learns what it repeats. Treatment must give it something better to learn.” Two years of learning something better does not erase a decade of the other lesson.

Most people never get the chance to be tested this way. According to SAMHSA’s latest national survey, as summarized by Acuity News, 47.2 million Americans needed substance use treatment and 7.6 million received it.

If you run a program, here is a move for this week: at every client’s 12-month mark, write a relapse-response plan into the chart. Who they call, which medication restarts the same day without a new intake, and where the naloxone is. Make it routine, so that asking for it is not an admission of anything.

And here is what is still yours: medication for opioid addiction is still being funded: SAMHSA’s September awards included $69.4 million for medication-assisted treatment of opioid addiction. A relapse doesn’t cancel the two years. It tells you where the next plan starts.

Quigley survived two dozen overdoses and still wrote the letter. Build the program around the person who writes the letter.