The book is free to download and use for group study on their website recoverydharma.org Recovery Dharma: How to Use Buddhist Practices and Principles to Heal the Suffering of Addiction version 1.0, August 2019 copyright © 2019 Recovery Dharma
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Once we make a decision to recover from addiction—to substances, habits, people, whatever—it can be scary. The feeling is often one of loss and loneliness, because recovery can shake our sense of identity, our idea of who we are. Who will I be if I let my addiction go? Change can be hard to face, even if we know we’re letting go of something that’s a danger to us. For many of us, the first and most significant challenge was finding a safe and stable place to begin healing.
This is a book about using Buddhist practices and principles to recover from addiction, but you don’t need to become a Buddhist to benefit from this program. One of the most revolutionary things the Buddha taught was that the mind is not only the source of great suffering—due to craving, greed, anger, and confusion—but the cure for that suffering as well. So what we’re doing is using an ancient, proven way to literally change our minds. And we’re choosing to trust in our own potential for wisdom and compassion for others and ourselves.
What you have in your hands is a collaboration from many members of our community. It’s intended to be a friendly guide for those new to this path as well as long-term practitioners. It’s structured around what are sometimes called the “three jewels of Buddhism:” the Buddha (the potential for our own awakening and the goal of the path), the Dharma (how we get there), and the Sangha (who we travel with). We’ll share how we have used this program to recover from addiction and the ways we’ve made it our own: not as a one-size-fits-all approach, but as a dynamic set of tools and techniques that anyone can use to find relief from the suffering of addiction.