Tonight was SMART Recovery instead of AA, and while those meetings can vary widely in terms of quality depending on the facilitator, there are parts of I like quite a bit. AA is very rule-bound, no crosstalk or advice is allowed, and its very much an all-or-nothing program where slips are an automatic smack back to Day 1 no matter how much time you had. SMART focuses on DBT skills and is more of an open forum for anyone to come and air their opinions on addiction and recovery.
If that sounds like I'm more of an advocate for SMART then yes, in some ways I am. However for sheer volume, AA definitely wins, especially in Manhattan. If you need to be with people at 2am on a Monday, AA is your program. No other recovery program has reached more people or, ironically, gained national attention in the same way, so even with the above flaws, there are thousands of alcoholics with 20, 30, or more years of sobriety who are living testament to the fact that it does work in spite of, and maybe because of, those rules. This is the major reason I keep going back to it since I am aspiring one day to be one of those oldtimers.
SMART can be more helpful to me in another way though. It welcomes addicts of any type, gambling, sex, food, so-called hard drugs, as well as alcohol, so you hear more varied and dire stories. I sympathize more and have more in common with those since I'm dealing with a life and death situation myself whereas in AA you find more people who quit when the "progressive and fatal disease" hadn't turned quite so immediately fatal. I'm a cautionary tale there, even though I'm the one looking for support and help. I also appreciate that as an open forum, I can both give and receive direct advice from anyone attending instead of simply having to raise my hand, hope I get called on, and then not be able to talk on any topic, only saying an "I related to...in your story..." instead of a true response.
One of the best gifts I was given in rehab, though, was time to truly commit to recovery in all of its forms. As a result, I left there with a fully open and willing mind, I haven't excluded anything as a possibility, and that is still in force now. I don't want or feel that I need to pigeonhole my recovery to follow only one path, and each program has their pluses and minuses. I'll still go to both and the IOP, get everything I can use, and know it will have to be enough. For now though, off to bed.
If that sounds like I'm more of an advocate for SMART then yes, in some ways I am. However for sheer volume, AA definitely wins, especially in Manhattan. If you need to be with people at 2am on a Monday, AA is your program. No other recovery program has reached more people or, ironically, gained national attention in the same way, so even with the above flaws, there are thousands of alcoholics with 20, 30, or more years of sobriety who are living testament to the fact that it does work in spite of, and maybe because of, those rules. This is the major reason I keep going back to it since I am aspiring one day to be one of those oldtimers.
SMART can be more helpful to me in another way though. It welcomes addicts of any type, gambling, sex, food, so-called hard drugs, as well as alcohol, so you hear more varied and dire stories. I sympathize more and have more in common with those since I'm dealing with a life and death situation myself whereas in AA you find more people who quit when the "progressive and fatal disease" hadn't turned quite so immediately fatal. I'm a cautionary tale there, even though I'm the one looking for support and help. I also appreciate that as an open forum, I can both give and receive direct advice from anyone attending instead of simply having to raise my hand, hope I get called on, and then not be able to talk on any topic, only saying an "I related to...in your story..." instead of a true response.
One of the best gifts I was given in rehab, though, was time to truly commit to recovery in all of its forms. As a result, I left there with a fully open and willing mind, I haven't excluded anything as a possibility, and that is still in force now. I don't want or feel that I need to pigeonhole my recovery to follow only one path, and each program has their pluses and minuses. I'll still go to both and the IOP, get everything I can use, and know it will have to be enough. For now though, off to bed.
posted by AnonymousX at 10:17 PM
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