SMART Recovery® Podcast

By SMART Recovery

What's SMART Recovery® Podcast about?

SMART Recovery® Podcast, a library of talks on addiction from the leading self-empowering peer support recovery group in the world. Enjoy entertaining, thought-provoking discussion with experts in the field of science-based addiction treatment and recovery.

SMART Recovery provides services for those overcoming addictions of all types.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

SMART Recovery® Podcast episodes:

04.23.2024
Taking Back Our Power of Choice
Michael Marcum is a licensed professional counselor at the VA, and a former Army sniper. By his own admission he changed "countries, continents, and careers" to try and escape the reality of his substance misuse which plagued him for decades....
03.06.2024
Meeting People as Individuals
The Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness (USARA) is a statewide nonprofit agency that focuses on connection between people in recovery and the wider world. By sharing their lived experience, USARA staff educates, advocates, and inspires individuals and communities to...
02.19.2024
Because Recovery is Not One Size Fits All
The Minnesota Recovery Options Act has recently been introduced as a means to require courts to provide a secular alternative for individuals ordered to participate in substance use treatment and as a way to provide information and resources to counselors...
01.30.2024
Holding Hope For Your Wellness
Compassion fatigue is real. It refers to circumstances where caregivers, professional or volunteer, become mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted and start to wear down. It can produce a downward spiral and lead to individual caregivers leaving the work that...
01.04.2024
Peer Recovery Coaches in Action
Including lived experience in a recovery ecosystem often adds an effective dimension of support for those trying to make changes in their lives. The field of peer recovery coaching has been growing nationwide and many states now offer certification programs. In...
12.11.2023
Getting Treatment for Compulsive Gambling
Billy Hoffman works with compulsive gamblers as a certfied counselor. His lived experience and clinical skills combine to provide hope for those who have reached a critical point in their negative spiral of financial and emotional consequences. In this podcast...
11.17.2023
What is Mindfulness-Based Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy?
SMART Recovery is based on cognitive tools rooted in addressing how we think and react to life circumstances. For therapist Bruce Burleson, combining the cognitive aspects of behavior management with staying present in the moment is a recipe for...
11.07.2023
Making the Decision for Myself
Jan Folk was a high powered businesswoman for years, battling sexism in the male-dominated insurance industry. At the same time she was struggling with alcohol-use disorder and kept ending up in crisis. After a couple of attempts to stop drinking...
10.16.2023
Activate Happy
Keith Johnston is the Founder and Executive Director of Running2bwell, a nonprofit organization that helps those struggling with mental health and/or addiction issues become more physically and socially active. He decided to start the effort after a friend lost his...
09.28.2023
Figuring Out My Relationship To Alcohol
Jonathan Hunt-Glassman struggled with drinking too much for years, and tried many ways of changing his relationship to alcohol. But it wasn't until a doctor suggested he try medication that things got better. Based on his experience, he decided to...
09.18.2023
Sober Not Boring
Courtney Anderson insists on having plenty of fun in life. After she quit drinking, she wasn't quite sure what that really meant or how to make it happen. Now 11 years later, Courtney not only continues to have fun in...
09.05.2023
Hope is Real: National Recovery Month 2023
September is National Recovery Month and we welcome Keegan Wicks to the podcast. Keegan is the National Advocacy and Outreach Manager for Faces & Voices of Recovery (FAVOR) a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington D.C. Keegan has worked in...
08.28.2023
SMART's Family & Friends Program: Navigating Life with Compassion
Besides being SRUSA's Executive Director, Pete Rubinas is a SMART Family & Friends meeting facilitator. He says he reaps many benefits by joining with others to share experiences and work on developing positive responses to challenging circumstances. SMART Family and...
07.26.2023
Contingency Management Works!
Dr. Steven Proctor is the founder and principal consultant of PRO Health Group and a Senior Program Director for Thriving Mind South Florida. He is also a Licensed Clinical Psychologist who has studied and written about Contingency Management programs, most notably...
07.03.2023
Healing From The Skies
Tammah Watts is a licensed therapist, certified outdoor guide, and SMART Recovery facilitator in San Diego. Her active lifestyle came to a screeching halt after an unexpected health condition left her homebound. Discouraged and in despair, one day she was...
06.13.2023
Stay Curious
Dr. Allison Beck is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist based in the School of Psychology, University of Wollongong in Australia. Her recent work includes research on the effects of online SMART Recovery meetings during the pandemic in...
06.01.2023
A Reddit Community for SMARTies
Carolyn Straub moderates a thriving online community for those interested in SMART on the social media platform Reddit. She enjoys helping others engage around how much SMART's tools and resources help those seeking recovery from addiction. In this podcast, Carolyn...
05.22.2023
Inform, Educate, Advocate...Repeat!
The Greater Cleveland Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI GC) has spent years providing education and advocacy on behalf of individuals and families affected by mental health conditions. Increasingly, substance use disorders co-occur in many persons, making...
05.11.2023
We're All Recovering From Something
Killian Noe and Dr. Ruby Takushi co-founded the first Recovery Cafe in Seattle in 2004, envisioning a healing space for people who have experienced trauma like homelessness, substance use disorder, addiction and other mental health challenges. Today there are more...
04.07.2023
Selling Hope To The Hopeless
Michael Werner is a chemist by background and a philosopher by disposition. He was also the President of the American Humanist Association at the time they were looking for a secular recovery alternative to highlight, and that was how he...
04.05.2023
The Magic is in the Tools
Dave Howard is a SMART Facilitator in Poway California. He spent years going to 12-Step recovery meetings before finding SMART. Now he is convinced that what SMART offers can help anyone seeking recovery no matter what perspective they bring to...
03.20.2023
When You Know, You Know
Nonie Sims has facilitated SMART meetings for 14 years in Tucson Arizona. Nonie knew that SMART Recovery was the right fit for her in the first 10 minutes of her first meeting. Now she spends her time making sure others...
03.03.2023
Planting Community, Growing Recovery
Jay Phillips is the Executive Director and Board President of Seed Sower, Inc., a provider of housing and other support services for women recovering from substance use disorders in West Virginia. In this podcast Jay talks about his awakening to...
02.23.2023
Sticking Together Means We Grow
Newly minted SMART Recovery facilitator Tracy Gryp and her mentor Rick Kuplinski share their personal SMART journey and how they created better lives for themselves through the program. In the spirit of paying it forward, they now work together to...
02.15.2023
Making My Story Useful
Mary Beth O'Connor went from running from the law as a methamphetamine abuser to handing down the law as a judge. Now twenty nine years in recovery, Mary Beth chronicles her incredible story in her new memoir, From Junkie to...
01.27.2023
It's All About Comfort and Confidence
As SMART's Director of Meetings and Volunteers, Melina Gilbert often gets to experience a volunteer meeting facilitator's passion for what they do, and that makes her feel very fortunate. To keep that energy moving, Melina and her team are currently...
01.23.2023
Is Addiction a Choice?
The question of an individual's ability to control a substance or behavioral addiction has been long-debated. More than 20 years ago Dr. Jeffrey Schaler made his stance clear in his book Addiction is a Choice. Dr. Schaler remains steadfast in...
01.06.2023
What Was Once Hidden is Now Exposed
Gee Matamoros' journey to recovery included some very dark passages. Now he travels a brighter road, and insists on enjoying life as much as possible. Fortunately for us, one of the things he enjoys most is spreading the word about...
11.21.2022
I’m Not the Go Along Guy; I’m the Self-Efficacy Guy
Dr. Stanton Peele is a lawyer, professor, psychologist, psychotherapist, and author. Of all of these titles, he’s probably best known as an advocate and pioneer in the addiction and treatment world. His new memoir, A Scientific Life on the Edge:...
10.31.2022
Becoming a Shadow of Myself
Johnny Allison’s substance use started as a way to cope with the trauma of war and chaos of military life. His recovery started as a way to become the soldier and person he knew he was and could be. Today,...
10.17.2022
Coming to Your Own Conclusions About Alcohol
Years ago, Brett Macdonald and his friends had the time of their lives backpacking across Australia. After many conversations, they realized that heavy alcohol use had become a staple in their lives. This led them to creating a “sober competition”...
10.03.2022
Is There a Magic Pill for Alcohol Addiction?
Katie Lain is the co-founder of Thrive Alcohol Recovery, an organization that uses the Sinclair Method to help treat alcohol use disorder (AUD). Katie struggled a decade trying to get her drinking under control, but no programs...
09.26.2022
Providing Insights Others Couldn't See
September is National Recovery Month, but many advocates point out we can certainly recognize recovery year-round, including Keegan Wicks. He is the National Advocacy and Outreach Manager for Faces & Voices of Recovery. He works to ensure that the recovery spectrum of services...
09.08.2022
SMART Recovery & Government
David Koss, JD, is a member of the SMART Recovery Board of Directors and the Director of Government Relations. In his role as director, David monitors what the federal government is doing in terms of addiction and recovery legislation,...
08.18.2022
Subtracting the Complications
SMART participant wellnessandhope( her screen name) says her “destruction of choice” started in her freshman year and continued throughout college. While her friends were graduating, she was in rehab. This was not how she thought her life was supposed to...
08.04.2022
You Don't Have to Eat Carrot Sticks Every Day
Mercy Bell’s relationship with alcohol started in college as a way to thwart the uneasiness she felt inside. It led her to a “recovery or else” situation. She used multiple paths and experiences along her journey to recovery. Today, Mercy...
07.18.2022
Pulling the Me's Into the Conversation
Alex Colyer realized she really didn’t know about addiction and recovery after losing her best friend Reed McGregor to an overdose in January 2021. To honor Reed’s memory and legacy, Alex started the Albertus Project, a nonprofit organization that is transforming the way the...
07.05.2022
Waiting for Someone to Show Up
Steve Kind of Mankato, Minnesota, is a SMART Facilitator and new SMART employee. His alcohol struggles began in high school and continued into adulthood. After his second DUI, he was about to lose everything, including his wife. Then an...
06.14.2022
Secular Alternatives to 12-Step are Now the Law
Courts everywhere have mandated that secular, evidence-based addiction treatments, like SMART Recovery, must be offered to individuals as alternatives to 12-Step and other faith-based programs, if they so choose. Much of this is largely thanks to the tireless work of individuals like...
06.14.2022
Dr. Tom Horvath Reviews Dr. Nora Volkow’s Article
Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), recently published an article in Health Affairs Magazine that many in the recovery community consider “a game changer” in how it challenged received wisdom and old assumptions in the...
06.14.2022
Video Game Addiction is REAL
Alex received his first video game station at the age of two. His love and eventual addiction to video gaming continued throughout his life. It wasn’t until recently that Alex found SMART Recovery, and has made positive changes to his...
06.02.2022
The Journey to Becoming Yourself
Alicia Renegar is a Certified Addiction Peer Recovery Coach and SMART Facilitator in Columbus, Indiana. As a gay woman, she faced much adversity and discrimination throughout her life. She shares how she has turned this negativity into strength and is...
05.18.2022
Could it be Time to Decriminalize Drugs?
Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning, best-selling author and opinion writer, whose focus is on changing the narrative of addiction and recovery. Two of her books Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction and...
04.25.2022
Bridging the Gap Between Treatment and Recovery
Dr. Nora Volkow recently spoke to the SMART Recovery community about the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) holistic approach to helping those with substance use issues. As a follow up to that conversation, we talked with Dr. Wilson Compton, Deputy...
03.23.2022
A Trip to Psychedelic Summer Camp
Ted Perkins, aka the “Tips & Tools Guy” is a SMART facilitator and producer of our popular SMART Recovery video series including Tips & Tools for Recovery That Works, Life Beyond Addiction, Facilitator Spotlights, and more. A natural skeptic and...
03.21.2022
Finding the Woman Connection
Loretta Billingsley has been working in the media industry since the 1980’s and still loves what she does to this day. Another thing she loves is facilitating the SMART Women’s meeting on Saturday mornings. Loretta knows the personal growth and...
02.14.2022
Creating a Sex Positive Environment
Dr. Ashley Grinonneau-Denton is the founder and co-owner of Ohio Center for Relationship and Sexual Health in Cleveland, Ohio. She has a doctorate in marriage and family therapy and is a certified sex therapist. In this podcast, Dr. Ashley...
02.11.2022
Personality: The Factor That Trumps All Others
Paul Tieger is the Founder and CEO of Speed Reading People, LLC. He is also a principal of IConnect Health, an international expert on personality psychology, and the author of five bestselling books. Paul’s current project is the lead researcher...
01.12.2022
You Don't Need the Lollipop Right Now
Dr. Joe Gerstein is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and Founder of SMART Recovery. He is also a retired Harvard University professor and lectures at addiction symposiums. Joe introduced SMART to the world and has facilitated over...
12.06.2021
Caring About the Ones No One Else Does
Dave Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of the Fletcher Group, based in London, Kentucky. His background in social work, healthcare, and academia led him to starting Fletcher Group with the help of Ernie Fletcher, the former Governor of Kentucky. A...

What's SMART Recovery® Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

SMART Recovery® Podcast episodes:

Taking Back Our Power of Choice

Meeting People as Individuals

Because Recovery is Not One Size Fits All

Holding Hope For Your Wellness

Peer Recovery Coaches in Action

Getting Treatment for Compulsive Gambling

What is Mindfulness-Based Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy?

Making the Decision for Myself

Activate Happy

Figuring Out My Relationship To Alcohol

Sober Not Boring

Hope is Real: National Recovery Month 2023

SMART's Family & Friends Program: Navigating Life with Compassion

Contingency Management Works!

Healing From The Skies

Stay Curious

A Reddit Community for SMARTies

Inform, Educate, Advocate...Repeat!

We're All Recovering From Something

Selling Hope To The Hopeless

The Magic is in the Tools

When You Know, You Know

Planting Community, Growing Recovery

Sticking Together Means We Grow

Making My Story Useful

It's All About Comfort and Confidence

Is Addiction a Choice?

What Was Once Hidden is Now Exposed

I’m Not the Go Along Guy; I’m the Self-Efficacy Guy

Becoming a Shadow of Myself

Coming to Your Own Conclusions About Alcohol

Is There a Magic Pill for Alcohol Addiction?

Providing Insights Others Couldn't See

SMART Recovery & Government

Subtracting the Complications

You Don't Have to Eat Carrot Sticks Every Day

Pulling the Me's Into the Conversation

Waiting for Someone to Show Up

Secular Alternatives to 12-Step are Now the Law

Dr. Tom Horvath Reviews Dr. Nora Volkow’s Article

Video Game Addiction is REAL

The Journey to Becoming Yourself

Could it be Time to Decriminalize Drugs?

Bridging the Gap Between Treatment and Recovery

A Trip to Psychedelic Summer Camp

Finding the Woman Connection

Creating a Sex Positive Environment

Personality: The Factor That Trumps All Others

You Don't Need the Lollipop Right Now

Caring About the Ones No One Else Does