Owensboro women's recovery facility sees rare availability
OWENSBORO, Ky. (WEHT) — A recovery program in Owensboro says they have more than half of their women's facility available right now. Staff at Friends of Sinners say the vacancies are something they've never seen before.Officials say when it comes to substance abuse recovery waiting lists are the norm.
Owensboro's Friends of Sinners women's recovery program staff say for the first time since they can remember their waiting list and two-thirds of their facility's client spots are empty and have remained that way since the beginning of June.'If one person goes or completes [the program], we're able to fill that bed immediately. So, the fact that we have seven open is a very rare occasion. After COVID, the overdose deaths [were] hitting over 100,000 in the United States. I believe that those numbers have dropped a little bit, but my goodness, we still see it everywhere,' says Jordan Wilson
How would phasing out FEMA impact Kentucky?
Statistics show a 30 percent decrease in Kentucky overdose deaths from 2023 to 2024, dropping to a little over 1,400 annually.
Wilson says the recent decline highlights that investments in recovery efforts are working, but says the work is far from over. Whether it be opioids, methamphetamine or alcohol addiction, Wilson says its hard to find someone unaffected by the epidemic. Angel Harper, a current client, says she knows firsthand.'I lost everything. I lost my family. I almost lost my life. I got narcaned 16 times in 30 days…that's 16 times I died in 30 days. I just realized that, I had to try something different. It's scary when you're like that, and there is no way out,' says Angel Harper, a client at FOS.
Harper traveled all the way from Georgia hoping for a second chance and is a little over a month into the year-long program. After a month of being enrolled, clients work to get a job, learn life skills like budgeting and pay a little over $100 each week for rent.
Being admitted requires a 3-step process. Requirements include writing a letter explaining why you feel God wants you to come to the program, answering application questions and scheduling an interview with staff who were once in their shoes years prior.
'My son said to me, 'mom, give God a year, and see where you're at. You dedicated a lot of your life to doing drugs. Give him a year.' That's what I did, and that's the advice that I give to these girls,' says Elizabeth Cockrell, a staff member at the facility and FOS alumna.
Cockrell is three and a half years into her sobriety journey and says she tries to serve as what she needed when she walked through the front door of the center. She says she pushes for the ladies to understand that God makes all the difference.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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