Who We Are
Roanoke Refuge is an outpatient addiction treatment center in Roanoke, Virginia, licensed by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS). We provide Partial Hospitalization (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) programs for adults navigating substance use disorder across the Roanoke Valley, with a clinical model grounded in evidence, compassion, and a deep commitment to this community.
We were founded on the conviction that every person struggling with addiction deserves access to high-quality, individualized care close to home. Whether you are reading this for yourself or for someone you love, you are already doing the hardest part, which is looking honestly at what is happening.
Not everyone can afford a thirty-day residential stay. Not everyone can leave a family, a job, or a community for weeks at a time. And for a meaningful share of people living with substance use disorder, structured outpatient treatment is not a compromise but the clinically appropriate first choice. Roanoke Refuge was built to be that choice for the Roanoke Valley, in the same neighborhoods, off the same exits along the I-81 and I-581 corridor, and within the same recovery ecosystem that families here already know.
Our Mission
Our Place in the Roanoke Valley
Roanoke is a city of resilience. Like every community across Appalachia and Southwest Virginia, it has been profoundly affected by the substance use crisis. The Virginia Department of Health has documented that the overdose death rate in Roanoke City and Salem more than doubled between 2019 and 2022, and the region’s emergency department visit rate for nonfatal overdoses ran two times higher than the rest of Virginia for more than a decade (VDH, 2024).
The 2023 numbers were the first sign of meaningful relief, with overdose deaths in the Roanoke region dropping 20 to 35 percent in a single yearthe statewide decline continuing into 2024.
Roanoke Refuge was built in direct response to this reality. We are not a national chain. We are locally rooted, locally focused, and built to serve this valley specifically.
Our clinical team understands the substance use landscape that families in Cave Spring, Hollins, Daleville, and Bedford have been living inside. We know the difference between what a family in Northwest Roanoke needs from us and what a family arriving from the I-81 corridor north of Troutville needs from us. We have seen both outcomes enough to know which one we want to build for.
What We Believe About Addiction
Addiction is a chronic, primary, biopsychosocial disease of the brain, defined as such by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (clinical), the American Medical Association, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA, 2024). The brain changes that occur with chronic substance use are real, measurable, and significant. They affect reward processing, impulse control, emotional regulation, decision-making, and stress response. They are not a character flaw. They respond to treatment.
One paradigm explains why outpatient treatment is the clinically appropriate level of care for many of the people we serve. Inpatient and residential programs stabilize the physical foundation, including the body in acute withdrawal and the medical picture during the first days off a substance, inside a controlled environment removed from the people, places, and pressures that drove the using. That is the hardware of recovery.
PHP and IOP work differently. PHP and IOP are where the coping software of recovery gets written and tested: the recurrence-prevention skills, the family communication patterns, the work and recovery integration, all built and rehearsed against the actual triggers of life in the Roanoke Valley. That is not rehab lite. That is where recovery becomes durable.
Family Involvement as a Clinical Component
Loving someone through addiction is one of the hardest things a family can face, and when the search brings a family member to Roanoke Refuge, our clinical team treats that arrival as part of the work, not a sidebar to it. Addiction consumes the entire family, and recovery heals the entire family, which is why family involvement is a core clinical component of our model rather than an optional add-on.
We offer family therapy, family education, and direct support for parents, spouses, adult children, and siblings navigating the complicated terrain of a loved one’s addiction and recovery.
The structure of family involvement is set during the admissions conversation and adjusted across the course of treatment. Some families need education about the neurobiology of addiction so they can stop interpreting a return to use as a personal betrayal. Most families ask the same question next: how do we help without making it worse. Our Family Program covers the specific clinical work we do alongside the family.
Local, regional, and accessible.
Roanoke Refuge serves adults across the Roanoke Valley — Roanoke City, Salem, Vinton, and the surrounding counties of Roanoke, Botetourt, and Bedford — from a facility at 1630 Braeburn Drive in Salem, just off I-81. Most clients are within a 30-minute drive of the program.
The path forward is a conversation, not a commitment. A short call with the Roanoke Refuge admissions team covers fit, level of care, and insurance — at no cost, with full confidentiality, before any clinical decisions are made. Insurance verification runs during the same call. Call (540) 900-0353 when you are ready.