Refuge Recovery

Sunday nights
7:00pm - 8:15pm
A variable format meeting, each week will begin with a 20-minute silent meditation which will be followed by speaker discussions, random topic discussions, or book studies (depending on the week of the month).

For more information on Refuge Recovery, feel free to email [email protected] or visit www.refugerecovery.org.

If you are interested in Refuge Recovery but cannot attend a Sunday night meeting, there ARE other meetings in the area. Those meetings may be located at the Refuge Recovery website.
Refuge Recovery is a practice, a process, a set of tools, a treatment, and a path to healing addiction and the suffering caused by addiction. The main inspiration and guiding philosophy for the Refuge Recovery program are the teachings of Siddhartha (Sid) Gautama, a man who lived in India twenty-five hundred years ago. Sid was a radical psychologist and a spiritual revolutionary. Through his own efforts and practices he came to understand why human beings experience and cause so much suffering. He referred to the root cause of suffering as “uncontrollable thirst or repetitive craving.” This “thirst” tends to arise in relation to pleasure, but it may also arise as a craving for unpleasant experiences to go away, or as an addiction to people, places, things, or experiences. This is the same thirst of the alcoholic, the same craving as the addict, and the same attachment as the codependent.
Eventually, Sid came to understand and experience a way of living that ended all forms of suffering. He did this through a practice and process that includes meditation, wise actions, and compassion. After freeing himself from the suffering caused by craving, he spent the rest of his life teaching others how to live a life of well-being and freedom, a life free from suffering.

Sid became known as the Buddha, and his teachings became known as Buddhism. The Refuge Recovery program has adapted the core teachings of the Buddha as a treatment of addiction.Buddhism recognizes a nontheistic approach to spiritual practice. The Refuge Recovery program of recovery does not ask anyone to believe anything, only to trust the process and do the hard work of recovery.

This book contains a systematic approach to treating and recovering from all forms of addictions. Using the traditional formulation, the program of recovery consists of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. When sincerely practiced, the program will ensure a full recovery from addiction and a lifelong sense of well-being and happiness.

Of course, like every path, you can only get to your destination by moving forward, one foot in front of the other. The path is gradual and comprehensive, a map of the inner terrain that must be traversed in the process of recovery. The path includes daily meditation practices, written investigations of the causes and conditions of your addictions, and how to find or create the community you will need in order to heal and awaken. We have also included stories of people who have successfully recovered with the help of Buddhist practices.
Although I am credited with writing the book, the large community at Refuge Recovery is the inspirational and creative force behind it. This community has helped shape, inform, and enhance the program with their direct experience of practicing these principles. This book, then, should be viewed as a collaborative effort, a book written for the plural rather than the singular—the “we” instead of the “I,” since it speaks for Buddhists and addicts everywhere.

Lastly, we are aware that more will be revealed. It is our hope that we have offered here a substantial and useful foundation to the Buddhist recovery movement. We have every intention to learn and grow and revise as we go. This is just the first edition. Enjoy!

— From the introduction to the book Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction by Noah Levine.