noneever

I've finally realised that I need to access face to face support to help me stay sober and quit binge drinking. I've avoided AA as I'm not religious and many of the concepts don't sit well with me.

However, I've just discovered that there are SMART meetings in my local area and I'm actually quite excited as I think this is a much better fit for me.

Has anyone here used SMART? I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts.

uncorked

There is an online smart recovery forum. There are no SMART meetings in my area, unfortunately. But if there were, I would go. I don't like AA, either....I find it depressing and moralistic. If you're lucky enough to have a SMART meeting in your area, go for it!

greens

I've been to smart and got so much relief from it! I have a dual diagnosis and I felt like smart recovery has the most resources for those of us with outside issues.

The facilitator opens the meeting with some readings about smart, we all go around in a circle for our weekly "check in". Feel free to say pass if you do not want to share. People share about any ups or downs they had that week, things they've improved upon and things they can work on. There is usually a general topic that is chosen out of everyones check in - a common theme a lot of people are dealing with- some times we do an exercise (like the cost benefit analysis) off of the website or sometimes we just all share on the topic. At the very end we go back around the circle - we can state anything we want to focus on or set a goal for the week. There are usually about 10-15 people in my group and the meetings are 90 minutes long.

It's pretty great stuff for me as it focuses on how to deal with urges and uses cbt and cbd which really helped me get sober In the first place. I enjoy it a lot and am glad it's available in my area.

Sparks145

I have attended SMART recovery meetings and found them very useful and to my liking as a recovery program. There were anywhere from 8-15 of us and we set up in a round table discussion. I liked that they approached recovery from an empowerment standpoint. The tools were also approached in a structured manner which appealed to my engineering personality. Their website will outline the cost benefit analysis tool. We also had a lot of discussion on hitting the "pause" button when feeling like drinking/using and playing it forward to see where it would lead before we acted. At the end of the meeting, we did a mindfulness excercise which I also enjoyed. You should definitely give it a try if there is one local to you.

Soberwolf

I havnt no but sure many have

lein

Yes I have, and I follow the Smart programme now. The face to face meetings were good, but only fledgling in my city. And kept getting hijacked by others of a different discipline haha
But as Smart is self management, I get on well with using it online, have all the tools from the toolbox embedded in my mind, and they are becoming second nature.
And it's giving me the confidence start thinking about getting out and meeting people in settings other than recovery orinentated.
Actually, reading everything here, I might go back to my old face to face Smart meetings (theres only one with a time I can attend) and see if things have changed.

Zeroine

I've done a few online SMART meetings. I found them very practical, constructive and positive. Not all of it is for me, but there are quite a few helpful things I've got out of the SMART programme.

Finding SMART was a turning point for me in discovering that there are all sorts of ways to get sober, not just AA. It opened up my mind to other things that have helped me, in addition to some of the SMART tools themselves.

I don't have access to face to face SMART meetings, but if I did I would go.

I think it's really worth trying anything that seems like it might help. What's there to lose? And you might gain a great deal.

Good luck!

Jsbodhi

I'm going to try SMART too!

bandit112

I haven't done SMART because there isn't one in my area so I go to AA instead. I intend to try it out when I move out of the area in a couple months because they're available in my future location.

As someone told me at a meeting, take what you need, leave the rest. They're just suggestions. Hence why I think SMART, AA, Sober Recovery, counseling, etc. all have something to offer.