Hungry Ghosts No More: Buddhist Addiction Recovery Movements in the United States

In this paper, I investigate the intersection of two important modes of self-transformation in the United States: Buddhism and addiction recovery. The contemporary addiction recovery landscape in the United States is dominated by Twelve-Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, which offers a "spiritual program of action" for recovery (Alcoholics Anonymous 1939/2001: 85). Twelve-Step defines this spiritual program in deliberately non-religious terms, so that it can be compatible with any or no religious tradition. However, some critics argue that the program covertly imports Christian assumptions, and offers religion in the guise of treatment. Against the background of these controversies about Twelve-Step, in the past thirty years, a wide range of Buddhist recovery programs have emerged. These programs, which include Refuge Recovery, Recovery Dharma, Hungry Ghosts United, and many others, use Buddhist ideas and practices to support recovery. 

Buddhist recovery pathways are only rarely discussed in literature on Buddhism in America, possibly because stigmas attached to addiction make members of these communities less visible to researchers. Even in the broader addiction literature, Buddhist recovery communities have only begun to attract scholarly attention, and the few existing studies involve interviews with recovery leaders (Dossett 2020), recovery literature (Hartmann 2024), surveys of a single community (LaBelle 2022), or philosophical overviews (Groves, 2014; Marlatt, 2002). 

A large gap in this emerging literature are ethnographic interviews with members of Buddhist recovery communities themselves. As such, I will ask how Buddhism shapes their experience of recovery, how they came to specifically Buddhist recovery, how they view different recovery modalities, what practices support their recovery, and how the recovery process has reshaped their understanding of Buddhism.

Sources and Approach

The main sources for this paper are semi-structured interviews with members of Buddhist recovery communities. To ensure participant well-being, all interviews will be conducted with adult Buddhist converts who have at least one year of recovery. This project has been approved by my university's Institutional Review Board in support of this work. 

In these interviews, I will ask participants about their experiences and understandings of key idea, such as religion, spirituality, Buddhism, meditation, et cetera. This will allow me to avoid imposing pre-existing scholarly definitions on their accounts, and instead to allow participants own language and understandings to emerge. It also helps the me to avoid reifying any one position as "the" Buddhist position, and instead allows me to appreciate the ongoing and internally diverse conversations about Buddhism and recovery.

These interviews will be supplemented by research into popular Buddhist recovery groups' websites and published materials. 

Structure and Argument

This paper will lay out some of the important themes that emerge from interviews. Based on my preliminary research and ongoing contact with people in Buddhist recovery communities, I anticipate focusing on three areas.

Negotiating Traditional Twelve-Step. People in Buddhist recovery groups may struggle with aspects of Twelve-Step, including powerlessness, Higher Power, perceived Christianity, or abstinence requirements. Some people in Buddhist recovery groups may feel initial discomfort but then find creative ways to stay in Twelve-Step, while others may have come to Buddhist recovery because these aspects alienated them from Twelve-Step. 

Adapting Buddhist Ideas and Practices. Buddhist recovery communities often creatively draw from existing Buddhist repetoires in understanding and overcoming their own addictions. This may include practices such as meditation or mindfulness, doctrines of karma or attachment, or stock narrative characters such as hungry ghosts. Many participants draw fluidly on eclectic Buddhist traditions (e.g. both Zen and Theravada), or mix and match Buddhism with non-Buddhist traditions (e.g. Daoism), or adapt historically Buddhist practices (e.g. mindfulness) while not personally identifying as Buddhist. 

Spiritual experiences. Traditional Twelve-Step thematizes spiritual experiences as important to the recovery process. Buddhist recovery communities may seek such experiences in different ways, such as through meditation. However, an interesting  feature of Buddhist recovery communities is their relative openness (there are many exceptions, of course) to psychedelics as helpful to recovery. While traditional Buddhist precepts prohibit intoxication, Buddhist communities differ in how they interpret this precept. Given American Buddhism's historical associations with 1960s counterculture, these communities often have complex attitudes towards substances. As such, one distinctive feature about Buddhist recovery as opposed to Twelve-Step recovery is that many people in Buddhist recovery communties are more comfortable exploring psychedelics as an aid in recovery. 

Based on this discussion, I will argue that Buddhist recovery communities represent a creative and internally diverse renegotiation of traditional Buddhist doctrine, Twelve-Step recovery, and counter-culture values. 

Contribution

By investigating the intersections of Buddhism and addiction recovery in the United States, this paper aims to shed light on emerging forms of religiosity in the United States, and understand how they affect the important social issue of addiction recovery. 

This contributes to scholarly conversations about the ongoing cultural development of Buddhism in the west. Existing scholarship on American Buddhism only rarely mentions Buddhist addiction recovery, but my early explorations of Buddhist recovery communities suggest that it is an important but often invisible reason why people become Buddhists in the US.

This paper also contributes to scholarly conversations about religion and drugs. Beyond documenting a relatively new recovery modality involving religion, it also explores a key tension within American Buddhist communities with regard to psychedelics. 

References:

Anonymous. (1939/2001). Alcoholics Anonymous. 4th ed. New York: AA World Services.

Dossett, W. (2020). Kleśas and Pretas: Therapy and Liberation in Buddhist Recovery from Addiction. Implicit Religion 2(22). 

Groves, P. (2014). Buddhist Approaches to Addiction Recovery. Religions, 5(4), 985–1000. 

Hartmann, C. (2024). The Twelve-Step Path? Mindfulness and Ethics in Buddhist Addiction Recovery Literature. Mindfulness 15, 2093–2113.

LaBelle, O., Meeks, M., Vest, N., Hastings, M., & Harding, T. (2022). Recovery Dharma: Exploration of a Buddhist-based mutual help organization for the treatment of addiction. Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, 22(3), 175–187. 

Marlatt, G. A. (2002). Buddhist philosophy and the treatment of addictive behavior. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 9(1), 44–50.