SMART Recovery and AA: An Honest Look From an AA Guy

People ask me about SMART Recovery fairly often, usually because they want a program that does not involve God, sponsors, or the word powerless.

I am an AA guy. I got sober in AA on January 23, 1988, and I owe my life and most of my sanity to it. But I have never believed AA is the only door into a sober life, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

So here is the honest version.

SMART Recovery stands for Self-Management and Recovery Training. It is built on cognitive behavioral tools and motivational approaches. There are four points to its program: building and maintaining motivation, coping with urges, managing thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and living a balanced life. Meetings are typically facilitated by a trained volunteer, tend to feel more like a workshop than a sharing circle, and there are no sponsors, no steps, and no higher power. The goal is that eventually you graduate. Meetings are free and run both in person and online.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship built on twelve steps, sponsorship, and one alcoholic talking to another. There is a spiritual component, though it is deliberately open ended. You choose your own understanding of a higher power. There is no graduation. People stay for decades, and most of us stay because giving it away is how we keep it. Meetings are free and everywhere.

The real differences come down to three things.

The first is language. SMART talks about self-management. AA talks about surrender. If the word powerless makes you want to walk out of the room, SMART will feel easier to sit in.

The second is structure. SMART gives you specific tools and exercises. AA gives you steps, a sponsor, and a lot of other people's experience.

The third is duration. SMART is designed for you to complete it. AA is designed for you to stay.

What I will tell you is what actually mattered for me, and I suspect it matters no matter which room you are sitting in.

I got sober because I stopped arguing and started listening to people who had already walked the road I was on. I got sober because I picked up the phone every day. I got sober because I helped other people when I did not feel like it. I got sober because I kept showing up long after the crisis passed.

Every one of those things is available in either program.

You are also allowed to use both. Plenty of people do. Nobody is checking your paperwork.

The thing that kills alcoholics is isolation, not the wrong meeting format. If SMART is the room you will actually walk into, walk into it. If AA is, walk into that one.

Just do not sit at home alone deciding which program is philosophically superior while your drinking continues. I have watched people research their way right back into a hospital.

Pick one. Go this week. Talk to somebody.

You can refine the details once you are sober enough to think clearly.