Kimberly Graham sat on the couch, a sheet of paper in hand, surrounded by women who saw her as a mirror of what was possible.
“Tell me one success and one challenge you’ve had,” she asked them.
One woman said that she was inching closer to finally getting her driver’s license. Another admitted she struggled to still a mind that wouldn’t stop talking to itself when she meditated.
This is the rhythm of recovery at Dismas Home in Manchester, and Graham knows it inside and out. She’s on her own journey there, working through years of substance abuse while mentoring others in similar situations.
Before last August, when she entered the recovery home for women, Concord’s streets had been her address for more than ten years.
During that time, fentanyl possession landed her in jail more than once.
Now, Graham has a modest room with a twin bed and a small window that lets in light.
“I feel like I’m half a human again,” Graham said, her eyes drifting around her room. “I feel like I have peace of mind. I feel like I have another chance.”
She paused, then said quietly: “I guess it’s never too late to start again.”
Second chances
For many at the Manchester recovery home, the path forward began through the state’s drug court system, which offers people involved in the criminal justice system an alternative to incarceration while addressing substance use through treatment and supervision.
Graham’s path to Dismas Home ran through that same drug court system. To enter the drug court program, participants must first plead guilty to their offense. Then, they are placed on probation or parole.
Graham pleaded guilty to fentanyl possession in Merrimack County Superior Court in August 2025, then was screened for eligibility by the county prosecutor’s office.
“I was just sick, and sick of being tired,” she said.
GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monitor Credit: GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monit
But not everyone qualifies after pleading guilty.
A statewide policy governs who can enter the drug court program. Offenders with mental health issues too severe to be stabilized within the drug court’s resources, or those charged with drug trafficking, for example, are disqualified.
Alex Casale, the statewide treatment court coordinator, acknowledged that the program doesn’t always play out uniformly across the state. He said eligibility can shift depending on jurisdiction and the volume of cases a prosecutor’s office typically sees.
Prosecutors who regularly handle the same types of crimes in a given jurisdiction tend to develop a different frame of reference for evaluating them, said Casale, so a person may not be viewed as a “hardened criminal” and might have a better chance of getting into the program there.
“There is some leeway with the prosecutors to decide whether or not somebody is appropriate,” he said. “There might be some other mitigating factors that the team is not aware of. There might be other pending charges or investigations, and that person might not be able to get in, even though the charges look pretty standard.”
New Hampshire’s ten drug courts bring together judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, case managers and treatment providers, all working collaboratively to track each participant’s progress and support their recovery.
Depending on a participant’s circumstances, the court team may refer them to a recovery home, while mandating treatment, counseling, drug testing, court appearances and community supervision.
According to state data, in 2025, 116 people entered the drug court program, 49 of whom entered through Hillsborough Superior Court. Since 2022, the statewide graduation rate has remained around 60%.
Throughout the program, participants must comply with drug tests and meet with their judge and care team to remain in the program. If they test positive for drugs or fail to meet the program requirements, a formal hearing before the judge is scheduled to decide if the participant should be terminated from the program.
Termination means a participant could have a suspended or deferred sentence reimposed.
Graduating from drug court, Casale said, is far from easy.
For Graham, before getting to the Dismas Home, that path first ran through a detox program, a stretch she remembers as foggy and disorienting, when it was hard to feel steady on her feet and she needed medication to manage her mental health.
Some participants struggle in the drug court program, get terminated and end up incarcerated, only to find a different path after their release, one that might look like entering rehab, achieving sobriety and building a stable life later on.
“We could just be either the final stop in their active use to get them on their recovery journey, or we could just be one of the stops along that path,” Casale said.
Pain that lingers
Graham had her daughter at 22, left home and spent more than a decade, from 2013 to 2025, homeless on the streets of Concord, cycling through run-ins with the law, failed attempts at recovery and a stint in jail before she finally found her way to Dismas Home.
Even now, Concord carries a lot of weight for her. Just hearing the city’s name changes her expression — a reflex built from everything she experienced, which she still struggles to talk about.
Many mothers lose custody when addiction takes over, or they just don’t have family who can step in.
But Graham said she got lucky. Her mother, who has been sober for 16 years now, has been raising Graham’s teenage daughter and remains her biggest supporter.
“We are rekindling our relationship right now. My daughter hasn’t really seen the addictive side of me or anything,” Graham said. “However, she’s gonna be able to see the side that gets better.”
The hardest part for Graham hasn’t been the daily medication passes, learning to navigate relationships with the other women in the house or keeping up with appointments.
It was learning to trust again.
Not just the people around her, but herself, after years of breaking promises she’d made to no one but the person in the mirror.
“I’ve been able to just learn how to love myself again, inside and out, which is probably one of the biggest things that I think I needed to work on for myself,” Graham said, placing her palm on her chest. “If I can’t love myself, I don’t have room to love somebody else.”
Physical trauma, experimentation and mental health struggles are all common paths into drug addiction. But Wyndi Cashman, the clinical director at Dismas Home who is in her 17th year of sobriety, said something she has heard and seen time and again is the effect of childhood trauma on drug use.
“We put a lot of money into prevention at the school level,” Cashman said. “But what are we doing to identify and decrease trauma in these children? It doesn’t start with drug use. It starts with adverse childhood experiences.”
Cashman said the common misconception is that people struggling with addiction are beyond hope — that they can’t be rehabilitated. The reality is case by case, she said, and some people lose a great deal before they manage to turn their lives around.
“We’ve all lost friends,” Cashman said, her eyes welling with tears. “There’s not a single one of us that hasn’t stepped over a few bodies to sit in these seats.”
GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monitor Credit: GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monit
Cashman remembers being in middle school when she first started drinking, a response, she said, to the alcoholism and violence she witnessed at home.
Years later, intoxicated after an argument with her then-partner, Cashman’s turning point came when she stabbed him and set his motorcycle on fire.
To this day, Cashman, who struggled mainly with alcoholism, said she’ll always be capable of being triggered, and that using drugs and alcohol will always be part of her “default setting.”
Even something like an Irish cream–flavored coffee, which contains no alcohol, can set off a craving, she said, simply because it’s associated with a popular alcoholic drink. So, she avoids it.
If she ever gave in and went back to her old ways, Cashman said, she knows the outcome would only be loss.
“So, I remind myself of where it led last time,” she said. “Those neurological pathways also exist. I remember the pain of the consequences of my behavior.”
Rebuilding
When many of those in recovery homes complete their program, their next battle is finding housing. Some struggle to maintain stability. For those who relapse and return to drug use, drug court remains an option, even for individuals who have already gone through the program once and continue to face legal trouble.
Graham is coming up on the end of her stay at Dismas Home, and she’s already started making calls and filling out applications, hunting for something stable of her own.
Beyond that, she said she wants to give back in the recovery space herself, to be, one day, on the other side of a conversation like the ones she leads on the couch each week.
For now, she’s taking it one step at a time.
“I don’t have cravings today,” Graham said. “I can walk down the street today, and I can feel comfortable with myself, and maybe I could walk by something that might have triggered me at one point, but today it doesn’t affect me right now.”
