Health workers who support people recovering from substance use disorder (or SUD) have long known that one major barrier to getting help is reliable transportation. People in recovery who don’t own a car or can’t drive often struggle to access consistent rides. As social determinants of health show, those barriers are even greater for people of color, rural residents, low-paid workers, formerly incarcerated people, those with disabilities, and people at the intersections of these identities.
“The way I’ve even learned about [this problem] is exactly from all of the people that I interact with regularly. Other providers, the ones that are on the ground, helping, doing the case management, doing the recovery work, those counseling and providing the outpatient therapy—treatment and all that—they’re the ones finding these huge barriers that their clients are facing,” said Nancy Knoebel, founder of Danny’s Ride, a Pennsylvania nonprofit that provides free rides to recovery services for people living with substance use disorder. “I think it’s important for people to recognize this is a medical condition. It’s not a moral failure. People shouldn’t be punished for being addicts, and if they’re seeking help, then, I think it behooves us to do what we can to help, especially something that’s just so basic.”
PGN sat down with Knoebel to learn how communities across the country are finding creative ways to close transportation gaps for people in recovery. She shared more about her organization’s work and what they’re learning as they expand into other states.
[Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]
PGN: What inspired you to start Danny’s Ride?
Nancy Knoebel: So once upon a time, I had a lovely little boy named Danny. Danny Teichman. He was born in 1988. He’d be going on 37 now. As he grew into young adulthood, he became addicted to drugs. He then went through a lot of rehab, and did extremely well. He was very motivated to recover.
After college, he relapsed and ended up getting addicted to opioids. Heroin, specifically, which was obviously quite a disaster for everyone involved, especially him. He really wanted to beat this thing and went to rehab again, and just took so much personal responsibility for his own recovery. He went on a medication called Suboxone to combat opioid addiction symptoms, and he got sober.
Things were going very well for him; he had friends. He was active in his community. He went back to school and was getting a graduate degree in data analytics. He had a lovely girlfriend.
But, there’s stigma in [some recovery groups] about taking medication for addiction. Danny really bought into that. And he was like, ‘I don’t want to take anything. I don’t feel like I want to be on Suboxone. I want to go off of it.’
He met with his physician, and together they decided he could go off of it. So he did. And he experienced a significant withdrawal, which is not uncommon. He wasn’t sleeping.
He discovered kratom, a legal but unregulated substance, which he took to help him sleep at night. One night, he took kratom and he died in his sleep. He was a week shy of 28.
The tragedy, not only in losing Danny, was that he actually thought he was taking care of himself.
As his mother, obviously, I can’t overstate what kind of grief that generates. I, fortunately, had a wonderful grief therapist who made me aware of a concept called post-traumatic growth, where an individual can grow in a new and positive way from a tragic experience.
After Danny died, I heard so many stories about Danny through his friends and other family members and people he met in recovery that he had given rides to, like, everyone had an unrelated ride story. This kid was just a ride giver.
Working in the health care field, I knew transportation was a major barrier to accessing care.
I did a lot of research and I came up with this idea of Danny’s Ride, where he could keep giving rides to people that needed them, focused on people in recovery with substance use disorder.
PGN: Why is transportation important to people in recovery?
N.K.: One of the things that sticks out to me is that I keep hearing that there are three main barriers for people in recovery, especially early recovery—housing, jobs, and transportation.
I hear from riders in our surveys, and I hear that people get custody back of their child, people get out of jail, or stay out of jail, people find jobs. People build a community at NA or AA, because they can get there. People can get their children to the doctor’s appointments if they know, sometimes they can get a ride there.
I mean, the kind of rides people are getting are quite broad, and the way they speak about how it helped them, and the impact on their life is so far and above, you know, what you would just think a transactional ride would cost.
In the most recent survey, we asked them to check off the top five benefits of getting a ride with Danny’s Ride. And the number one benefit that 94 percent selected was ‘it helped me achieve it and or maintain my sobriety,’ and 93 percent said ‘it helped with my mental health and overall sense of well being.’
PGN: What is most important for health workers to know when supporting people in recovery?
N.K.: People can and do recover from SUD. But if you can’t get where you need to go, the likelihood of success is a lot lower.
So all things being equal, if someone’s ready to get into recovery, work on it. They really want to get and stay sober, like they’re there, mentally, emotionally, whatever, but they can’t get where they need to go. I can’t even imagine how incredibly soul crushing that must feel, you know.
And I want to point out that I’m not naive. I understand that for a lot of people, it might take them several times to finally kick what they’re trying to kick, and so getting that ride isn’t going to be a panacea. But if you don’t have a ride, recovery is just that much more impossible.
A correction was made on Nov. 7, 2025: An earlier version of this article published Danny as going on 36 instead of 37. We also updated a sentence for clarity and grammar.