Stay for a week or more to strengthen recovery and restore your spiritual fitness.

An intensive, instructive, back-to-basics Big Book experience

What it is
The Lodge Program is a Twelve Step immersion experience designed to help you integrate the simple directions of the Big Book into your daily recovery. An intensive, instructive back-to-basics Big Book experience, the Lodge Program is named after the lakeside "lodge" that served as the original Hazelden treatment center in 1949.

Every enduring structure needs a strong foundation. The Big Book refers to the spiritual structure we're building as an arch through which we walk to freedom. The foundation of this arch is Step One. In the Lodge Program, we revisit this foundation to make sure it was built well and is still in good shape. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have a body that can't take alcohol or other drugs, a mind that can't leave them alone, and a spiritual malady that means on our own we can't do anything about it then points us in the direction of what we can do. The Lodge Program describes in the simplest of terms those directions that provide you the opportunity for an educational variety of spiritual awakening. Add the richness of the fellowship created in this environment and the healing atmosphere of the Hazelden campus--and the results are life-changing.

Who it's for
The Lodge Program is an ideal opportunity for you if:

• you have established a stable recovery and you seek further enrichment and growth
• you have grown complacent in your recovery
• you have fallen away from your daily recovery work and need to re-establish your spiritual fitness

How it works
Designed as an open-ended residential experience, the Lodge Program focuses on how Twelve Step principles and practices can be applied to life problems. The daily schedule features:

• practicing selected directions from the Big Book
• listening to presentations by Renewal Center staff
• participating in staff-guided literature discussion groups
• morning and evening meditation
• free time for self-assessment, study, and use of fi tness facilities
• opportunities to attend Twelve Step groups
• opportunities for simple acts of service
• individual guidance and support from staff

Note: This program is not a substitute for addiction treatment and is not appropriate for anyone with a primary treatment need. The minimum age for participants is 19 years.

Typical Lodge topics

• recognizing the early roots of our spiritual malady
• sponsorship and how it grew the original fellowship
• understanding the spiritual lapse that precedes all chemical lapses
• the Big Book Fourth Step instructions explained
• what it means to live sober each day through following certain simple directions

A typical day at the Lodge Program

Download The Lodge brochure 

Off-site Lodge Workshop calendar

*Special Needs -- If you have special needs in connection with a planned stay at the Renewal Center, please be sure to discuss them with our staff at the time you call to reserve a room in order to be certain that the lodging accommodations are able to meet your specific needs.

For more information, call us toll-free any day, any time at 800-257-7810 (outside US, call 651-213-4200). Or you may email your questions to info@hazelden.org.

search terms: retreat, 12 step retreat, spiritual retreat, the lodge, twelve steps, big book, addiction, alcoholism, spiritual condition, 12 steps, AA