Here's how I found myself with SMART Recovery.
I spent a long time in a different program. I liked the social support available in that program, but as time went on, I found myself more and more in the position of having to twist myself into an intellectual pretzel trying to integrate its philosophy into my own worldview. I increasingly felt I didn't fit in and began to contemplate leaving, but was stymied by fear, because I'd been told that if I left this program, I was signing my own death warrant. I spent a few years whirling around in this manner, not really knowing what to do and feeling stuck. But eventually I became unable to overlook my sense of discomfort and to ignore some of the in-group behavior and the way it was handled, so I took the leap and walked away.
After I did that, I joined the SMART Recovery online forum, but found that SMART was very different from the program I'd been in before. Unlike that program, SMART is not geared toward lifelong membership. It is founded on the stages of change model of recovery, and recognizes that a person who quit an addictive behavior three days ago is in a very different place than someone who has been clean for nearly a decade, as I had been at that time. So the attitude on the forum was: "You know perfectly well how to stay sober, you've been doing it for years and you're doing fine!" I found this so refreshing! I realized that at last I could let go of my fear and cognitive dissonance and just enjoy my life. And I thought: my God, if ONLY I had known that there was a different way! It wasn't that I thought the original program I was in was bad, so much as I realized that it hadn't really been necessary for me to force a square peg into a round hole all those years. And I became quite passionate about working toward a world where that experience doesn't happen to others. Recovery is not a one-size-fits-all thing and should not be approached that way.
SMART Recovery is not only a wonderful recovery program--for those who find that its philosophy resonates with them--but is similarly committed, as an organization, to working toward choice in recovery. So, I am very happy to have found SMART. It is not for everyone, but I love it.