Thank you for taking an interest in revolutionizing the recovery movement with a science-based approach. By learning about SMART Recovery, and perhaps considering becoming a SMART Recovery Volunteer, you will be helping to spread the word and so make effective and empowering choices available to people with addictions. I hope that after reading this blog you will feel comfortably knowledgeable about SMART Recovery and confident that you can tell others and even facilitate meetings, or in some way share or promote SMART Recovery’s program.
On Volunteers
SMART Recovery is an organization of volunteers dedicated to helping people gain independence from harmful addictions through our friendly, safe, mutual support meetings, our science-based and secular 4-Point Program®, and principles and tools proven to help people conquer their addictions. Most volunteers help by setting up and facilitating SMART Recovery meetings in their locality. Some volunteers with more experience or professional training advise those who facilitate the meetings. The members of the Board of Directors (myself included) are also volunteers and we welcome those who feel most qualified and committed to apply to join the board – but perhaps that is not where you are at now. Maybe you just want to learn more before commiting to anything more than telling others.
I have found that interest, compassion, empathy, patience and commitment are more important than experience when it comes to helping. As a volunteer you will learn and gain experience. I've been involved with my local SMART Recovery meeting in Madison Wisconsin since I started it in 1991, and by sitting in on meetings and listening I've learned of the tremendous diversity of people with addictions and seen how their recoveries were empowered by the non-confrontational methods we use in the SMART Recovery program. I've worked in this field since the early 1970's when confrontation was all the rage, and seen the effectiveness of allowing people to help themselves without confrontation, hot-seats, and lectures.
To become a volunteer facilitator it is not necessary to have previously had an addiction or be a mental health professional. If you have recovered from an addiction it is not necessary that you recovered using SMART Recovery. All you need is to feel reasonably secure in your recovery. It might be helpful to have sat in on a SMART Recovery meeting or seen a video demonstration of a meeting, but these are not absolutely necessary. The main requirements are that you: 1. Desire to help others use the SMART Recovery approach during meetings; 2. Recognize the value of SMART Recovery’s approach and be committed to it; 3. Register as a volunteer with SMART Recovery Central. (The volunteer registration form is available at the SMART Recovery website.) Though there are no formal qualifications to serve as a SMART Recovery volunteer it is suggested that volunteer facilitators have at least some familiarity with the program and accept its basic philosophy which I cover in the rest of this introduction. (Note: A series of downloadable booklets, including a version of this "Introduction ...", and “Starting a SMART Recovery Meeting,” “Facilitating a SMART Recovery Meeting,” and “SMART Recovery Tools” are, or will soon be, avaiable to download from the SMART Recovery website.)
What is SMART Recovery®?
SMART Recovery is an organization:
SMART Recovery is a not-for-profit, 501(c)3 educational organization mainly supported by donations which are tax deductable and could not survive without the generosity of those who volunteer to host meetings, pass the hat, press the donate button on our web site and send in contributions from their meetings or a regular basis.. The organization is made up almost entirely of volunteers (including the Board of Directors who contributes both time and money). As a Volunteer Facilitator you form the backbone of this organization.
The organization offers our program in many forms worldwide, with over 500 face-to-face meetings around the world, thousands registered for the on-line meetings, and our handbook published in many languages.
SMART Recovery is meetings:
Mutual support: Meetings allow people to find and to give social support for changes to those in the group who wish to make, or are considering making changes in their lives. Meetings allow for discussion and the exchange of useful information, the dispelling of misinformation, the introduction of tools and techniques that have been proven to work. People love the opportunity to participate in open discussions and come back for more. Modeling and acceptance: Meetings allow people to meet both models of change and success and others who share their problems and concerns. Thus meetings subtly provide hope by example and the realization that they are not alone in their struggles with addictions.
SMART Recovery is a 4-Point program:
A program to help people abstain from harmful addictive behaviors related to substance use or other activities.
An evidence-based program drawn from addiction treatment outcome research and observational studies of “natural recovery”.
A secular program (entirely separate from the 12-Step or “Anonymous” programs) without any spiritual or religious requirements. We neither encourage nor discourage religious or spiritual beliefs, but religious or spiritual proselytizing has no place within our program.
A primary or supplemental program where all people are welcome. Whether our program and its meetings serve them as their only self-help and mutual-support group alternative, or as a supplement to professional treatment or other, possibly faith-based or 12-Step programs, is purely up to the individual. And I can report that our meetings are shared, with mutual respect between those who see it as their alternative to faith-based groups and those who use it as a useful supplement to their 12-Step attendance
SCIENCE - SMART Recovery’s program is based on science. It has adopted methods which have been found to work relatively better in rigorous research, and the entire program has been reviewed by an international panel of experts. And unlike traditionally based programs, it will continue to change along with ongoing research.
SECULARITY - The SMART Recovery program does not require acceptance of any religious or spiritual beliefs; nor does it require rejecting them. The program is secular and independent of religion and spirituality. Those areas are left up to the individual. They are not part of the SMART Recovery program so neither spiritual beliefs nor anti-theistic philosophies are proselytized within the program or meetings. Simply put, the SMART Recovery program combines the friendly mutual support of local meetings, online meetings and online chat, with the goals of its Four Point Program and the science-based tools for achieving them. SMART Recovery’s 4-Point Program® 1. Building and Maintaining Motivation 2. Coping with Cravings and Urges 3. Managing Beliefs, Emotions, and Behaviors to Solve Problems 4. Achieving a More Balanced Lifestyle SMART Recovery's Tools for Change The tools for change are best presented in The SMART Recovery Handbook (see click through side bar). The “SMART Recovery Tools” booklet and the tools in individual formats can be downloaded for free from the SMART Recovery website at http://www.smartrecovery.org/ .
SMART Recovery’s Guiding Principles
Recovery through Self-Empowerment: Our purpose is to help participants gain independence from any addictive behavior. We believe that individuals seeking recovery should be fully informed about the range of recovery options and free to choose among them. Our program encourages participants to take responsibility for their own recovery. Our meetings support their capacity to regulate their own behavior.
Mutual Help: As participants progress in recovery their focus can shift to enjoying the activities of a healthy, fulfilling and productive life, including the satisfaction of assisting new participants in SMART Recovery.
Volunteer Management: SMART Recovery is operated almost entirely by volunteers, including both the Board of Directors and the meeting facilitators. Facilitators may have recovered through SMART Recovery, or be qualified individuals who are not “in recovery.”
Acceptance: SMART Recovery participants are welcome to discuss addictive behavior with any substance or activity. SMART Recovery encourages participation by persons of any race, color, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. We do not tolerate harassment of any kind in our meetings.
Participant Support: Our meetings and online services are offered free of charge. Donations are requested. We are funded primarily through personal contributions and literature sales. We accept funding from other sources provided that receiving such funds does not interfere with our purpose.
Evidence-Based Practice: SMART Recovery uses evidence-based cognitive behavioral and non-confrontational motivational enhancement techniques. Our meetings focus on the application of these techniques, as guided by our 4-Point Program®: 1) Enhance and Maintain Motivation to Abstain, 2) Cope with Urges, 3) Problem Solve (manage thoughts, feelings and behaviors), and 4) Achieve a Balanced Lifestyle. The components of the SMART Recovery program will evolve as scientific knowledge evolves.
Collaboration: Some participants may choose to augment their SMART Recovery experience with professional therapy, medications, or other support groups. All of these options are supported by SMART Recovery. Treatment professionals may volunteer to facilitate meetings. An organization or institution may employ someone to facilitate a meeting and pay that individual. [Professionals are encouraged to incorporate SMART Recovery into their professional work, using the term SMART Recovery® Therapy (SRT). SRT, whether delivered in groups or individually, is solely the responsibility of the professional offering it.]
All About SMART Recovery Meetings
SMART Recovery meetings are confidential. We make it clear that what is said at the meeting that is of a personal nature (e.g. who was there, what they said) does not get repeated outside the meetings. It is also better not to discuss people who are not present.
SMART Recovery meetings are friendly. We can share SMART Recovery ideas, tools and so forth at meetings, but it is far better if the people attending share those ideas. Facilitators are there to move the meeting forward without anyone dominating the proceedings or taking the discussion away from addiction recovery, and NOT to teach or do therapy. That is, we are there to FACILITATE, to make the meeting run smoothly, usually following our suggested meeting outline.
How we cover our costs: There is no charge for the meetings, but donations are requested by passing the hat towards the end of each meeting. Donations are gratefully accepted because SMART Recovery cannot survive nor grow without those donations. Donations pay for the web listing of your meeting, our web presence, your training, materials both downloadable-free and items for sale, and they pay the rent for our office (nothing fancy – it’s in Ohio and a salary (without benefits) for our executive director. (An interesting contrast to AA's World Service with 110 paid employees and an entire building in New York City.) Even a bare bones operation like ours requires filings, fees, accounting and other business expenses. Further, volunteers only send what they can to the central office after they pay their group’s expenses for posters, fliers, handouts, and other local costs.
If you like what your are reading and think this is something you want to support, even if you might not which to volunteer, you too dear READERS are welcome and strongly encouraged to make a donation.
Some facilitators don’t feel comfortable passing the hat, so this is a great opportunity for you to model accepting discomfort and performing the correct behavior despite discomfort, just as people with addictions often have to tolerate some discomfort if they are going to recover.
(Dear Reader: If you are more interested in the scientific basis of the program than in the details of hosting a meeting, you may wish to skip to the next section "SMART Recovery's Basis in Science")
Meetings are usually 90 minutes and usually follow an standard outline (though there is a 60 minute version). Typically the meetings begin with a short welcome and introduction that may be read by the volunteer facilitator or anyone else. People then take turns briefly introducing themselves and telling the group briefly how they have been coping since their last meeting. Then there is a discussion and another brief go round so people can reflect on the meeting and commit to activities during the week. SMART Recovery meetings are a good place to meet and chat with people who share a common goal. You can make exercises and worksheets available for attendees to take home with them. We encourage people to share their emotional support and encouragement, new ways of dealing with addiction that they have gleaned from our materials, and how they have applied what they have learned. We may briefly offer some new information about SMART Recovery’s program and tools, but it is best when we don’t dominate but rather allow everyone who wishes to participate to do so.
As regards participation
People attending the meetings do not have to participate. They are welcome to just listen or to join in as they prefer. Snoring or being disruptive if it ever occurred would be a problem, but listening is very important and can be helpful. Take a moment and reflect on what can be learned by observing and listening in on a meeting. We encourage everyone to participate by making sure that everyone has several opportunities to speak, but we don’t demand participation.
People "mandate" (or coerced) to attend and the Attendance Verification Letter:
People who have been mandated to attend (by courts, probation, corrections or a spouse) are surprised to find that we don’t confront, don’t threaten and don’t argue. Because we are not forcing them to do something they don’t want to do, they are free to choose for themselves. After hearing from others who are working towards change, who have problems they can relate to, and have some successes to share, the passive observers often (though not always) may become active participants and regular attendees even after monitoring ends.
For those whose attendance is being monitored or who have legal problems where proof of attendance will be helpful, we provide an official verification of attendance letter on SMART Recovery stationary which the facilitator dates and signs, rather than an attendance card. Our letter provides space for the attendee to explain what they did and what they learned at the meeting, providing their monitor with information which may be helpful and helps project SMART Recovery’s program to society’s officials.
Handouts
Handouts allow new participants to take some of the SMART Recovery program home to read (assuming they are literate), and so they may learn about the program at home and not just at the meeting, and so allow more meeting time to be dedicated to discussion. This way the facilitator only needs to listen to the discussion, keep it loosely on topic and see that everyone gets a turn if they want it and no one dominates it, rather than spending meeting time teaching.
This also means that as a SMART Recovery facilitator you do not have to be an expert on addictions and recovery or even on SMART Recovery. Facilitators with expertise are encouraged to refrain from acting as experts, and rather focus on facilitating the discussion. For those who are not experts and new to facilitating a meeting – you are helping immensely by getting a meeting started (see the “Starting a SMART Recovery Meeting” booklet) and all of the mechanics that go with that and then hosting the a basic meeting – just following the outline and perhaps reading your lines from a suggested script.
(As a student–researcher, long before my involvement with SMART Recovery, I (HS) witnessed day long sensitivity training run by a “host-facilitator” whose main task was to turn on and turn off the tape-recorder that played the group instructions, and then just participate in the group. That person was perceived as a wonderful group facilitator and received universally high ratings from the group’s participants. I hope you will find this research reassuring.)
It is best if the volunteer facilitator can downloaded handouts from our web site and copy them, prepare and copy a local flyer, bring them along to meetings, provide information about other SMART meetings in the area (if any), and remind the group that materials and additional meetings are available online. You also may learn more in the “How to Facilitate a SMART Recovery Meeting” booklet.
SMART Recovery’s Basis in Science
The SMART in SMART Recovery stands for Self-Management And Recovery Training. We are not claiming that our way is “smarter” than other approaches to overcoming addictions, though we have the evidence to support the program goals and tools that we suggest.
Does it work? You bet it does!
When someone asks if the SMART Recovery program works, it is like asking a doctor “Does your medicine work?” We can’t say that everything we suggest works for every ‘person with an addiction’ who drops in; any more than a doctor can guarantee that ever medication and vaccine will work for every person with an illness. People who don’t take the prescribed medicine or who engage in unhealthy activities will do poorly in the doctor analogy.
What we can say is that our program (its suggested goals, tools, principles and methods) has been adapted from the best addiction treatment outcome research. Thus our methods and practice are evidence-based, having been demonstrated in research to be most likely to work for most people. Further, our program has been reviewed by a panel of world-renowned experts in the field of addictions – our International Advisory Council – and they have approved of our program.
(This is way better than the anecdotal reports of those self-selected people who benefited from a program, often used as "evidence" though clearly less than scientific or unbiased. But if anyone wants them, we do have very moving, salient, from the heart stories, at our website, from people who felt that SMART Recovery help them or even saved them.)
We also suggest that people had better work on their recovery and use the tools properly and consistently if they are to overcome their addictions, but our approach includes a personal weighing out process that most people who recover report using in some form which, without confrontation, helps people find their own motivation for change.
I refer the interested and the skeptical to a meta-analytic summary of alcohol treatment research by William R. Miller et. al. that rank-orders treatment modalities at: http://www.behaviortherapy.com/what%20works.htm
Empirically Supported or Evidence-based Practice is supported in some recent newspaper and magazine articles concerned with using better methods in the treatment of addictions. We can assure the public and treatment professionals that our methods are drawn from and congruent with the Evidence-Based Practices often cited in those articles: “Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy” (CBT) and “Motivational Interviewing.”
We adopted from Motivational Enhancement Therapy (Motivational Interviewing) the principle of taking a non-confrontational stance, encouraging personal exploration or ‘consciousness raising’ at meetings, and between meetings, and allowing people to draw their own conclusions.
Our ABC’s of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is an easily taught and applied form of CBT. These are based on the idea that our beliefs and assumptions powerfully influence our feelings and our behavior, so rather than focusing on A, Activating events, we first focus on B, our Beliefs about those events, which in turn strongly effect our C, Consequent emotions and behaviors. Change your assumptions and beliefs, and you can change your life. Once B and so C change, it's usually easier to change or accept the A.
And as most of these articles and the “What Works” summary cite above both include medications that can help people cope with cravings, it should be noted that SMART Recovery has a clear published position statement supporting the use of medications as prescribed by appropriate licensed professionals.
SMART Recovery – Diverse and International International Presence:
SMART Recovery is an international organization.
We support local volunteers so that our meetings can be available in every country. We support national health services and professionals so that SMART Recovery [and SMART Recovery Therapy] can be available in every country. SMART Recovery is currently available in some form on a number of continents, including North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Our vision is “Think SMART Worldwide” so we actively work with and support individuals desiring to bring SMART Recovery to their country.
Diversity:
SMART Recovery encourages participation by persons of without regard to race, color or ethnicity; level of ability-disability; gender, sexual orientation or gender identity; religion, spirituality or rejection of religion and spirituality. It should be noted that SMART Recovery neither promotes nor disparages religion or spirituality, but rather regards those as personal choices or beliefs. Yet because this area is sometimes contentious, it should be noted that we do not regard spirituality as an essential ingredient in recovery or any other health related problem, as is sometimes asserted despite growing research showing that it is not essential, and for some people it may be harmful or at least unnecessarily complicating.
Languages:
In support of our international and inclusive presence, we are thankful to the volunteers who have provided translations allowing us to offer some Spanish web pages. The SMART Recovery Handbook is available in full in: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Farsi. Additionally, English versions of the Handbook have been modified for English (British) and Australian vernaculars. Anyone interested in translating the Handbook into other languages is welcome to contact the SMART Recovery Central Office.
Rehabilitation centers and Prisons:
SMART Recovery was introduced into the Federal Prison System at Danbury Prison about 12 years ago and a similar program, based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, (though not acknowledging its debt to SMART Recovery) has since been introduced into all Federal prisons. Other prison systems using SMART Recovery’s program include those of Scotland, Sweden, Australia, and Vietnam. Additionally, SMART Recovery collaborated with Inflexxion to obtain a $1 million grant from NIDA which produced the InsideOut® program for use within correctional facilities. The program consists of Facilitator training manuals and videos, as well as male and female workbooks and videos.
Under a grant from Vanderbilt University serveral of our board members were able to travel to Vietnam as consultants. In 2006 I was invited to go and saw the rehabilitation center outside DaNang where a team of psychiatrists were leading a modified program called SMART Vietnam. I was pleased to meet with the inmates and their loved ones. I seemed to be the only one not surprised when some of the family members asked if they could start local support groups to follow up after release from the rehabilitation center. News stories I've read coming out of Vietnam indicate that the program has been an improvement and so a success in that country's attempt to curb Heroin addiction.
SMART Recovery – In the News
I'd appreciate it if you, dear reader, would please keep track of SMART Recovery and other news that supports SMART Recovery as you find it in all venues of the media. We on the Board of Directors welcome your input. Or better yet, leave your comments to this blog, and let's start the conversation. I'm looking forward to the discussion.
For more information go to the Web site: http://www.smartrecovery.org/ or contact SMART Central by Email: info@smartrecovery.org Phone: 440/951-5357Toll free: 866/951-5357 or write: SMART Recovery® 7304 Mentor Avenue, Suite F; Mentor, Ohio 44060
