Cape Cod, Massachusetts is a difficult place to stay sober.

In this “summer” community, the population hovers around 750,000 from late May to early September, and can spike to 1 million on the 4th of July.

Post-Labor Day, however, only 250,000 residents call Cape Cod home, and it becomes one of the country’s most addicted stretches of coastline. Amid a national opioid epidemic, Massachusetts is designated as one of the top 10 states in the US with the highest rate of opiate addiction.

Like Cape Cod’s economy, addiction can be seasonal.

In the summer, the temptation, for some, to get high in a vacant beach parking lot or a rest stop bathroom can be easier to resist with the influx of jobs and tourists to keep addicts busy or unnoticed.

But during the long winter months, the desire to stay sober or to seek treatment wanes, particularly for women who, unlike men, have fewer recovery resources available to them.

Instead, women are often forced into sobriety when serving time in prison for being convicted of drug-related crimes.

Upon their release, especially during the winter, many struggle to stay clean.

Melissa Peace, though, has weathered the pressures that many who struggle with addiction here face.

Peace came to Cape Cod in January 2010, newly sober and on parole. She secured a bed in an unmarked house, hidden behind pine trees and sand. This house is one of the only residential treatment programs for women in the area.

And Peace has not left Cape Cod since.

“I’ll never forget that day. It was 10 January 2010,” says Peace. She has a tiny dog named Prince who jumps into her lap whenever she sits down.

“We got to the house and had a little bit of a meltdown. I was trying to hold onto the car door because I kept thinking, I can’t leave and walk home. This is so far away. We had to come over a bridge to get here.”

Melissa Peace: ‘I’m terrified of getting high, and that’s what keeps me. I am terrified of not making it back’ Photograph: Melissa Peace

Peace grew up in Tiverton, Rhode Island but was born in the neighboring town of Fall River, Massachusetts, which is as riddled with drug addiction as Cape Cod. She dropped out of high school when she was a junior but only did drugs occasionally. She preferred to drink.

“When I was younger I met a guy who sold a lot of drugs,” says Peace. “At first, we were doing ecstasy and just doing coke and prescription pills to come down but then it changed to that we would do coke and pills all the time.”

This transition would evolve into almost 12 years of addiction, during which Peace gave birth to two children.

“My mom ended up adopting [them],” says Peace.

“She had custody of them but it got to a point where no one could get hold of me so it was just like I signed my rights over. I think that was more of a reason why I didn’t bother getting clean because I knew they were safe and I didn’t even know how to approach it or how to stay clean once I got clean in prison.”

In the summer, Cape Cod’s population can spike to 1 million on the 4th of July. Post-Labor Day, however, only 250,000 call it home. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Prior to coming to Cape Cod, Peace had only been placed in a recovery program one other time, and it was to serve her parole. She says she left after two days when she saw a pregnant woman shoot heroin.

A few years after that experience, Peace was out of options and sought a treatment program to serve her parole for what she describes as “every subsequent charge related to cocaine”. She had never been to Cape Cod but the decision to venture over the bridge would change the course of her life.

“I had no plans to stay on Cape Cod after I graduated from the program. But my family said I should stay out here. I had a job because you had to get a job in the program to get a cell phone and then I ended up getting a house through something Obama passed. I never left.”

Peace hasn’t relapsed since moving to Cape Cod despite being routinely tempted by the addiction that surrounds her. She has a front seat to the opioid epidemic.

“I didn’t think anyone did drugs on the Cape. I thought the Kennedys lived here!” says Peace.

“But there are so many deaths on the Cape. It’s unbelievable. It’s just not published in the papers the amount of homelessness and addiction here, and how it’s a bigger problem in the wintertime. Even so, I’m terrified of getting high, and that’s what keeps me. I am terrified of not making it back.”