"SMART Recovery" (Self Management And Recovery Training)

http://www.smartrecovery.org/

SMART Recovery® (Self Management And Recovery Training) helps individuals gain independence from addictive behaviors (substances or activities). Our efforts are based on scientific knowledge and evolve as scientific knowledge evolves.
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Introduction to SMART Recovery®
http://www.smartrecovery.org/intro/

Welcome,
"Get Free for Free with Evidence-Based SMART Recovery"

SMART offers free face-to-face and online mutual help groups.

SMART (Self-Management And Recovery Training) helps people recover from all types of addictive behaviors, including: alcoholism, drug abuse, substance abuse, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, gambling addiction, cocaine addiction, and addiction to other substances and activities.

SMART is an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

SMART sponsors more than 300+ face-to-face meetings around the world, and 16+ online meetings per week.
In addition, our online message board is an excellent forum in which to learn about SMART and seek support.

Our Purpose
To support individuals who have chosen to abstain, or are considering abstinence from any type of addictive behaviors (substances or activities), by teaching how to change self-defeating thinking, emotions, and actions; and to work towards long-term satisfactions and quality of life.


Our Approach

* Teaches self-empowerment and self-reliance.
* Works on addictions/compulsions as complex maladaptive behaviors with possible physiological factors.
* Teaches tools and techniques for self-directed change.
* Encourages individuals to recover and live satisfying lives.
* Meetings are educational and include open discussions.
* Advocates the appropriate use of prescribed medications and psychological treatments.
* Evolves as scientific knowledge evolves.
* Differs from Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and traditional 12-step programs.


SMART Recovery® 4-Point ProgramSM

SMART Recovery® (Self Management And Recovery Training) helps individuals gain independence from addictive behaviors (substances or activities).
Our efforts are based on scientific knowledge and evolve as scientific knowledge evolves.
The program offers specific tools and techniques for each of the program points:

Point 1: Enhancing and Maintaining Motivation to Abstain

Point 2: Coping with Urges

Point 3: Problem Solving (Managing thoughts, feelings and behaviors)

Point 4: Lifestyle Balance (Balancing momentary and enduring satisfactions)


SMART Recovery® Tools & Techniques

The SMART Recovery® 4-Point ProgramSM employs a variety of tools and techniques to help individuals gain independence from addictive behaviors. Participants are encouraged to learn how to use each tool and to practice the tools and techniques as they progress toward Point 4 of the program -- achieving lifestyle balance and leading a fulfilling and healthy life.
These tools include:

- Stages of Change
- Change Plan Worksheet
- Cost/Benefit Analysis (Decision Making Worksheet)
- ABCs of REBT for Urge Coping
- ABCs of REBT for Emotional Upsets
- DISARM (Destructive Irrational Self-talk Awareness & Refusal Method)
- Brainstorming
- Role-playing and Rehearsing


From the SMART Recovery®
Purposes and Methods Statement

1. We assume that addictive behavior can arise from both substance use (e.g., psycho-active substances of all kinds, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, food, illicit drugs, and prescribed medications), and involvement in activities (e.g., gambling, sexual behavior, eating, spending, relationships, exercise, etc.).
We assume that there are degrees of addictive behavior, and that all individuals to some degree experience it.

For some individuals the negative consequences of addictive behavior (which can involve several substances or activities) become so great that change becomes highly desirable.
To individuals who are, or think they may be, at this point, we offer our services.
Our groups are free of charge (although a donation is requested).
Our Internet list serve discussion group is free to those who can access it. There is a nominal charge for our publications.

2. Gaining independence from addictive behavior can involve changes that affect an individuals entire life, not just changes directly related to the addictive behavior itself.
Consequently there appear to be as many roads to gaining independence from addictive behavior as there are individuals.
For many the road will lead somewhere other than using our services.
We recommend they follow the direction they have chosen, and we wish them well.
They are always welcome to return.

Individuals who have been successful in gaining independence from addictive behavior appear to have made changes in all four areas we teach about.
These four areas could also be described as maintaining motivation, coping with craving, thinking rationally, and leading a balanced lifestyle.
Although we teach important information in each of these areas, ultimately it is the individual's determination and persistence to keep moving forward that will determine how much success is achieved.

Our services are provided for those who desire, or think they may desire, to achieve abstinence.
Individuals unsure about whether to pursue abstinence may observe in our group discussions how abstinence can be achieved, and how it can help. Even those whose ultimate goal is moderated involvement with their substances or activities may benefit from participation in abstinence-oriented discussions.
Benefit could occur if the individual aims to engage in selected periods of abstinence, or frames the goal as abstaining from over- involvement (as opposed to all involvement).

Much of the information imparted by us is drawn from the field of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and particularly from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, as developed by Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
In general, CBT views addictive behavior more as a complex maladaptive behavior than as a disease.
Use of the CBT perspective allows us to use a rich and easily accessible body of ideas, techniques, and publications.
Some of these publications we are able to make available directly to our participants, and others are available through bookstores and other sources.

3. What we offer is consistent with the most effective methods yet discovered for resolving emotional and behavioral problems.
As scientific knowledge advances, our teachings will be modified accordingly. Individuals with religious beliefs are likely to find our program as compatible with their beliefs as other scientifically derived knowledge and applications.

4. The length of time an individual will derive help from our services is variable.
For many sincere participants there will come a time when attending our groups, or participating in our other services, is more in conflict with the pursuit of their life goals than enhancing them.
Although these participants will always be welcome back if they want to come, this conflict signals that the time for graduation has arrived.

One of the most enduring satisfactions in life is helping others.
The individuals who have nurtured SMART Recovery® thus far have reported intense satisfaction at witnessing the positive changes our participants have experienced, and at witnessing the influence we are having on professional addictive behavior treatment.
We offer to others, whether graduates of our efforts or not, the opportunity to join us in experiencing that satisfaction.

Frequently Asked Questions about SMART Recovery®
http://www.smartrecovery.org/resources/faq.htm

Treatment Choices Beyond the 12-Step Approach -- Current Listings
http://unhooked.com/treatment/listing.htm

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http://unhooked.com/site/welcome_to_lifering.htm
Welcome to Lifering...
Because People in Recovery Deserve a Choice
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Does LifeRing define alcoholism/addiction as a disease?

Like the "alcoholic" label, the "disease" model is a two-edged sword.
Many people find it tremendously helpful in staying clean and sober.
Others find it a wonderful rationale for chronic relapse.

By all means adopt the disease model if it helps you stay abstinent.
But if you find that the disease model mainly supplies your mind with rationalizations to slip and slide, then dump it and think of yourself instead as having made bad choices in the past, and making better choices today.
LifeRing is not held together by any particular theory of alcoholism/addiction, but by a common commitment to the behavior of abstinence.
Whatever theory works for you to get there and stay there is a good theory. You can always revisit the issue later.

The definition of alcoholism as a medical disease is the key to public and private funding of treatment.

There is a large and growing body of evidence that shows neurochemical, molecular changes in the brains of people under the influence and in the brains of addicts.
There is considerable evidence for a genetic predisposition in the most severe cases of alcoholism and in nicotine addiction.
Research with laboratory animals shows that they can readily be made addicted by sustained intravenous administration of the drug.
This and other evidence lends credence to the theory that addiction is a physiological disorder caused by excessive consumption of the substance, or genetic influence, or a combination of the two.

The evidence that addiction is also a uniform "psychological disease" is unimpressive by comparison.
Although many psychological and psychiatric disorders appear linked with substance addiction to some degree, fifty years of studies have failed to find a consistent personality profile that is common to alcoholics or addicts.
The notion of an "alcoholic personality" has been debunked.

The further notion that addiction is a "spiritual disease" is not a scientific proposition and its presence is a marker of the Twelve-Step religious influence.
The term "disease model" has widely divergent meanings depending on which of these and other elements is thought to be included.

Does LifeRing aim at anything more than helping people get clean and sober?

We do not. It's not necessary, and it's counterproductive.

Being an actively drinking or using addict is like carrying a big sack of stones. Your back gets bent over, your head faces down, and you don't go very far. When people finally put the sack down, most of them straighten up and look forward, and before long they're striding toward a life's goal. Some become spiritual seekers. Some try out for baseball teams. Some spend time with their grandchildren. Some go to work on the great American novel. They need no preaching from us to find their way. True, there's always a few who stay bent over with head down after the sack is gone. We may try to nudge them, but it's their life. We don't sit in judgment. Most people experience sobriety as liberation. To be a part of that is reward enough.

f we were to put sobriety in second place, behind some other goal such as uplifting the human character, we would soon get in a muddle.
Sobriety has little to do with character.
There are addict angels and sober scoundrels.
Methods that may work for uplifting the human character may give little traction toward sobriety, and may even work against it.

Our meetings discuss whatever comes up in the participants' lives: work, parents, children, relationships, feelings, sex, books, life, death, money, and much more. By being there and listening, and offering advice if asked for it, we help each other to deal in a sober way with all kinds of life issues, far beyond basic sobriety skills. But the only "official" advice that we dispense on all these problems is that you can face them better sober.

If we feel that the Sobriety Priority doesn't meet the full range of our spiritual needs, that's fine.
We can go to any number of churches, gurus, or other vendors of enlightenment.
We have a division of labor.
They don't do sobriety.
We don't do moral uplift.
By making sobriety our priority, imperfect as we are, we stay focused on what we do best.

http://unhooked.com/site/welcome_to_lifering.htm
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If this is Day One for you -- or if Day One is in your near future -- you may want to know what to expect if you choose to get clean and sober the LifeRing way.
http://unhooked.com/lsr/if_this_is_day_one.htm


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Alcoholics Anonymous
Profile - History - Beliefs - Issues and Controversies - Links - Bibliography
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/aa.html

As a side note my father was in A.A. for close to fifty years and attributed "the program" with saving his life...as did many of the other willing participants... IMB
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RECOVERY NATION:
Are 12 step programs threatening your freedom?
Source: disinfo.net) - October 18, 2000

The nightmare begins with a malicious workplace rumor.
A spiteful (and mendacious) co-worker fingers you as an excessive tippler leading management to give you a strict ultimatum: find another job or attend nightly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

With this brief administrative hearing, you abruptly enter the Kafkaesque world of 12-step coercion.
Despite your lack of a drinking problem, economic necessity compels you to join the growing number of addicts and non-addicts alike being conscripted in record numbers to submit to AA's crypto-biblical "Big Book."

According Chaz Bufe and Stanton Peele's book Resisting 12-Step Coercion (See Sharp Press, 2000), every year an estimated 1,000,000 Americans are compelled to attend AA, Narcotics Anonymous (NA) or some form of 12-step treatment under threat of jail time, loss of employment, or other social sanctions.
While you might consider yourself outside the purview of this powerful social force, think again.

"A young man working in a mail room tested positive for marijuana use in a random drug test.
He was suspended from his job until he completed a drug treatment program," recounts Peele.
The unfortunate youth who allegedly smoked the illicit herb "once a month" was in "constant conflict" with his counsellors, who demanded he admit he was "powerless" over his alleged addiction.
This obvious attempt to pressure a recreational pot smoker into believing he was a remorseless drug fiend underscores the involuntary 12-stepper's plight.

Nevertheless, since its 1935 inception, the abstinence-based program which involves admitting your powerlessness over addiction and turning your life over to a "higher power" continues to enjoy unqualified public acclaim as a panacea for a variety of addictions.
However, a growing number of outspoken critics are openly questioning the merits of 12-step orthodoxy.

In his seminal work Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? (See Sharp Press, 1998), Chaz Bufe employs a wealth of scientific data to dispute both the efficacy of AA and its adherents espoused "disease model" of addiction.
He specifically assails the organization's dogmatism, "chosen people" mentality, and the use of anti-intellectual "thought stopping language" to indoctrinate new members.
These behaviors, Bufe notes, aren't "in the same league with vicious, destructive religious cults such as the Moonies and the People's Temple" but do exhibit "an alarmingly high number of similarities to such groups."

This assessment borderlines on the subversive when considering the vast influence wielded by AA in government circles.
The federally-funded National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) which actively promotes 12-step treatment methods, has played a vital role in AA and NA's predominance in both Employee Assistance Programs (EAP's) and many lucrative public and private sector rehab facilities.

Yet to its detractors, this wealthy and influential organization constitutes an effective prohibition lobby propaganda voice.
"Together, the war on drugs and its flip side, the 12-step addiction treatment industry, have threatened to transform America from a land of the free into a therapeutic state," declares Jack Trimpey, founder of Rational Recovery, a program which uses non 12-step methods to conquer addiction.

This is not to say there is anything inherently wrong with the many communal, store-front AA and NA chapters which provide a viable (and low cost) resource for those seeking chemical dependency liberation.

However, when the state enters the picture, these seemingly benign 12-step programs quickly become re-education camps for drug war miscreants while providing an effective tool for social control.

Hopefully, the emergence of alternative treatment programs will offer greater choice to those seeking to end the vicious substance abuse cycle.
We may then end our long-standing reliance on this singular treatment method that seeks to indoctrinate addicts and non-addicts alike.

IMB
Live long, prosper and be happy.