Recovery Ramblings

It is approaching a year since I left SMART Recovery here in the UK. The four years I spent with the organisation were some of the most exciting and rewarding of the 25+ years I have worked in the field of addictions and the thousands of people involved with the organisation achieved something very special. SMART Recovery is now a firmly established part of the recovery infrastructure in the UK, having gone from 40 weekly meetings to 500 meetings in just four years. It seems likely that most people going through addictions treatment in the UK will now be exposed to the option of getting involved with peer led SMART Recovery meetings and everyone who contributed to this success should be very proud..

Because of the governance difficulties within the organisation there was not a proper handover from the old to the new team - with the risk that some of the key lessons of our success would be lost. I wrote a paper exploring some of the lessons of the UK experience for several intertwined reasons. It is part handover, to help people who follow later; part therapy to work through my own process of moving on; and part a record of history.

Having written the piece and discussing it with a few people I have decided to circulate this outside the organisation. The lessons we learned may have broader applicability, to other organisations and in other countries. Some of the things that worked for us might work for other organisations or in other countries. Of course they may not - ‘your millage may vary’!

The full paper ‘Growing SMART - Lessons from SMART Recovery UK’ is here.

Please feel free to circulate the article or post elsewhere if you find it helpful.