In rural Maine, efforts to provide drug treatment often met with resistance, despite high demand [Video]

WHITEFIELD — The Holistic Sober Center in this rural town southeast of Augusta opened this month as the only drug treatment facility of its kind in Lincoln County.

It almost didn’t happen.

Owner Kristina Simpson, a real estate agent for most of her adult life, had no experience in drug treatment when she bought the former nursing home in 2022. She was prepared for the community to be skeptical about – if not openly hostile to – her plan to transform it into a coed sober house for up to 54 adults. But she also wasn’t going to be chased off.

“At the first town meeting about this, people were so angry with us,” she said at the center on a recent morning. “I think they were worried about us bringing people (with substance use disorder) to their town. But they’re here already.”

It took more than two years – and she endured plenty …