Merrimac Street Sober Living Men's Sober House

About this Sober House

Merrimac Street Sober Living is a men's sober house on Merrimac Street in Laconia, New Hampshire, the seat of Belknap County. It is certified with the New Hampshire Partnership for Recovery Residences and runs on the principles and practices of the Twelve Steps.

A Twelve Step Sober House for Men

The house is explicit about its program, and that clarity is useful before anyone applies. This is a Twelve Step house, and the expectations follow from it. A resident is asked to get a sponsor within the first week and to stay involved in a Twelve Step program while living there. Anyone whose recovery runs through a different framework should weigh that honestly, since the house is built around one and does not pretend otherwise.

What the House Expects of Residents

Merrimac Street Sober Living publishes its expectations plainly:

• Complete abstinence from all mood or mind altering substances.
• A minimum age of eighteen.
• Work, school or volunteering of at least twenty hours a week during the first thirty days.
• Attendance at the weekly house meeting.
• Involvement in a Twelve Step program, with a sponsor within one week.
• Daily chores.
• An eleven o'clock curfew after the first month.

The twenty hour requirement tells a prospective resident what the house is for. Men move in with somewhere to be during the day or find somewhere within a month, and everything else in the schedule is built on that assumption. The curfew easing after the first month is the same idea from the other direction: structure is heaviest when a resident is newest.

What Certification Establishes for This Recovery Residence

New Hampshire designates one agency to certify recovery residences, and this house is on its certified list. Certification obliges a residence to publish a code of ethics, to hand an applicant fees and house rules in writing before move-in, to keep a written relapse and discharge policy, and to accept a complaint process outside the house. It also opens referral access, because only certified houses reach the state's Voluntary Recovery House Registry, and state and federally funded programs may refer only to registry houses. A single house operation that has done the work to certify has chosen to be checkable by people it will never meet.

Recovery Housing in Laconia and Belknap County

Laconia is the county seat and the only city of size in the Lakes Region, and it carries almost all of Belknap County's recovery housing. The Belknap County Superior Court and county complex sit here, along with Concord Hospital Laconia, Lakes Region Community College, and the retail, hospitality and seasonal employers along Route 3 and the Weirs corridor. Men arriving from Meredith, Tilton, Franklin or the towns north of Winnipesaukee are moving toward that concentration, because a court date, an appointment and a shift can all be handled inside one small city.