Mary Harris
speaker
236 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Sep 2023
last heard 25 May
Mary Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
She didn't bring anything with her when she left Massachusetts, where she OD'd two years back. There aren't any family pictures on the wall, not many mementos. Kimber's growing plants, though. Nature's always been her thing. As a kid, she was the one who was always bringing creatures home.
In her new apartment, there's a little sunroom off the kitchen. Kimber wanted to make it into a greenhouse, but the radiator started leaking there and the floor got soft. Still, this is a fresh start. Do you keep Narcan around still?
On that first day she called the line, the day Jesse answered and Stephen revived her, Kimber remembers waking up to a cold shiver rolling down her spine. She was looking down the hallway to the bathroom where she last remembered being, a bathroom now filled with cops. There was the suitcase she'd just lugged home from rehab. And then she got really, really sick.
After Stephen forced her to go to the hospital, she checked herself out within an hour and walked home, puking along the side of the road. She picked up more drugs pretty much right away. The whole idea of Never Use Alone's approach is that, as Jessie puts it, you give the callers time. One more day to fight their demons. And Kimber had a lot of demons. She says her parents both used drugs.
When she was 17, her brother was killed by a drug dealer. The whole family kind of crumbled after that, Kimber included. Kimber went to rehab on and off for years. She'd use a ton of drugs, realize things were getting a little out of control, and check in for a couple of weeks to spin dry, as she put it.
She'd get clean enough to go back to work and pay her rent, and then the cycle would start back up again. So the call with Jesse was not the moment things changed. That moment came over a year later. Things had gotten bad. She says the sheriff had kicked her out of her apartment, the one where Stephen had revived her. Her car had been stolen and totaled.
She was carrying around a backpack with her passport and birth certificate in it. But then it disappeared. Her cell phone was gone, too. She had a friend who had let her crash, but the friend had a condition. Kimber had to call detox every day and try to get a bed. Which eventually she did. The hotline is called Never Use Alone. But walking into rehab, Kimber was utterly and completely alone.
Maybe for this part, you have to be. When she arrived, the nurse asked if she wanted medication. Methadone? To make getting straight a little easier? For the first time, she said no.
Kimber remembers all the details because she's really proud of what she did. Four days after she checked in, she sent Jesse that text from a new phone. I feel like I'm in a stable enough place right now to reach out and let you know I'm back, Kimber wrote tentatively. Jesse said, everything that you've been through has prepared you for today. You haven't been wasting time.
You've been getting ready. I'll support you however you need me to, every step of the way. For Kimber, it's been a year of big changes. She's in a new town, but she still doesn't really trust herself around her old crowd. It's interesting how this one call brought these three people together. Stephen told me when he first met Jessie, they didn't really like each other. Too similar, maybe.
But the call bonded them somehow. And Kimber, right after that call, she avoided Stephen, even though he kept reaching out. She was embarrassed. He lived in her town, knew all the police. She said she got to this point where she knew other people were sick of her bullshit because she was sick of her bullshit. That passed eventually.
Kimber took a trip with Stephen's family to the beach this summer. There are these photos of them, hanging out in the sand. Jesse, to this day, hasn't met Kimber in person. But they text all the time. On Mother's Day, Kimber sent Jesse a card. There was a picture inside of it. An ultrasound. Kimber's pregnant.
Kimber's got a partner, Mikey. She met him in AA. They moved in together. This pregnancy was a surprise, but a happy one.
Kimber still dreams about using drugs. These are absurd dreams, vivid dreams, dreams about smoking dope that turns into vanilla frosting. And most of the people she went to rehab with, they've gone back to using. These days, Jessie's still taking calls, sometimes 10 calls a day. She doesn't hear from her daughter Kaylin very much, but I did reach Kaylin. She told me she's trying to use less.
Mostly, she said, she's sticking with weed. As for Stephen, he says reviving Kimber changed his life. He'd been having nightmares about all the people he failed to save. After Kimber survived, he realized he didn't have to be the one pumping oxygen into someone's lungs to keep them alive. He could work more on the hotline instead. So he's doing that. He's even started taking calls.
Stephen and Jessie wanted Kimber to come work on the hotline, too. So she went through the training and just took her very first call. Now she's one of the voices on the other side of the phone, saying, put me on speakerphone. Lay out your Narcan. Unlock your door.
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