About this Sober House
Alyssa's House is a recovery residence for women in Camden, Maine, a quaint coastal town near Penobscot Bay. The house is in Knox County, on the mid-coast, and it is certified through the Maine Association of Recovery Residences at Level 2.
Who Alyssa's House Serves
Alyssa's House is a recovery residence for women. Intake is by application, and staff are available to residents alongside the other women living in the house. It is one of two recovery residences run by Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition, and the only one of the two for women.
The house is openly oriented toward mothers. Its operator writes that it is sensitive to the fact that many women in recovery are mothers, that reunifying with children and families is an important part of the recovery process, and that it is supportive of reunification and offers help when and where it can. For a woman trying to hold a recovery and a family together at the same time, that is not a small detail: it is often the difference between housing that fits her life and housing that asks her to put it on hold.
The House and Its Setting in Camden
Alyssa's House is located in Camden, Maine, a quaint town near Penobscot Bay. The house is spacious and sits in a quiet neighborhood with ample living space indoors and outdoor space around it, including a front porch, a large yard and a community garden.
Those things sound ordinary and they are the point. A porch is where people sit and talk without it being a meeting. A garden gives structure to a morning. For someone coming out of treatment or out of a chaotic living situation, a quiet street and a yard are part of what makes a house feel survivable rather than institutional.
A House Named for a Former Resident
The house opened as the coalition's women's recovery residence in 2019 and was originally known by its street address, as 63 Washington. The board of directors later chose to rename 63 Washington to Alyssa's House, after a former resident of the house, in order to personalise the organization's name with its mission.
It is a small piece of history worth knowing before you arrive. The name on the door belonged to a woman who lived there, which tells you something about how the house sees the people who pass through it. Houses that name themselves after residents tend to be houses where residents are not treated as a caseload.
Certification at Level 2
Alyssa's House is certified through the Maine Association of Recovery Residences, and the MARR certified-residence directory lists it at Level 2, in Camden, under Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition. Certification means the house has been listed publicly against a state standard rather than simply describing itself as sober housing, and it gives a prospective resident, or a family member helping her look, something independent to check.
Sober Living in Camden and Knox County
Camden sits on the Knox County coast near Penobscot Bay, in a part of Maine where the year-round population is small and recovery services are correspondingly thin. Women's recovery housing is scarcer still, and a woman searching the mid-coast for a substance-free place to live can find that the nearest option is a long way from the people she knows.
Alyssa's House is one of two recovery residences operated by Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition, the other being The Friends House for men in nearby Rockland. For anyone searching for a women's sober house in Camden, recovery housing in Knox County, or a certified recovery residence on the mid-coast, this is one of the certified options in the area.
