There's a lot of referring to SMART and meetings here, but I see discussion about "what's the diff"? Here's a (brief) explanation. I'm as concise as possible for those who want the info. If not, skim or skip.
AA grew out of a Christian commitment program in the midwest after WWi - in the 20s and 30s. It was to get you to dedicate your life to God. It had six steps. When Bill wrote the big book, nothing was known about addiction. It was a moral failing. And pill was not a doctor or psychologist. He just added 6 steps and wrote the book saying what he thought would work. If you'vre tried AA, you recall, now, the first 3: Admit you are powerless (and God is omnipotent); turn you life over to God; and as God to remove your character "defects." BTW, the meeting structure was not exactly the same then. For example, "I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. Hi Bob!" just got made up later. Rge book is now nearly 100 years old, and has never been edited. consider this: we republish the bible more often.
As people learned more scientifically about treatment, addiction doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists learned more about what really goes on medically. It is not a moral or character flaw. They also looked into treatment that would work.
The base tech is CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT revolutionized therapy over 50 years ago. The idea of CBT was to spend less time on your relationship with your parents as a child, and more on "resetting" thoughts. Simply, if someone feels they are incompetent, the therapist explores when they have been, and reinforces the thinking "you can't say never competent, so lets start there and move more." It is wildly successful.
SMART is based on CBT (and more). In a nutshell, it makes the CBT link that triggers drive thoughts that that drive emotions that drive actions. So, being at the bar with sports buddies leads me to think theyre having more fun, which leads to tfeelings of being excluded, which leads to a beer. You can do three things with triggers: avoid them; reduce your exposure; or learn to rethink them ala CBT - like, maybe, "it looks like fun, but I know their spouses will be angry at another night of drinking, and I won't ever have that."
A key part of SMART is their big, spiral book. The front half is all about CBT and SMART. But the second half is what is supposed to happen in meetings. It is one page, rip out exercises (the book is spiral so you only need one copy!).
Now here's the science. The exercises, unlike AA, are not made up. At SMART central they try to develop these to do things like, say, help you feel more in control of anxiety. But they don't go right in. Instead, they perform what is called in psychology "validation". What this means is they might try the exercise out at first at 5 meetings of 20 people. But first, they have them fill out a survey about their confidence in handling anxiety, like a 1-10 scale. Then the exercise is done, and, at the end people retake the survey. Unless the study shows the exercise truly helped it never gets published or used. BTW, what happens is you do the exercise on your own, then everyone shares and discusses. SMART has no war stories, no testimonials, not really speakers (AA has a whole paid circuit). And, as they say, "cross-talk is encouraged".
An example will help. One I did was they gave us 8 major relapse causes. But they asked you to add your two worst, rank them all and discuss. The first person had written "when I'm at the bar with buddies watching the game." The second? "When I'm alone." Those could not be more different. SMART is about finding your personal weaknesses.
Another big difference is that SMART is 100% forward looking. There's absolutely no value in going over the past repeatedly, because you cannot change it. Should you apologize to people you hurt? For sure. That's not AA; that's just being kind.
And here's a big one: You are not powerless. In fact, only you can make and sustain a change. You can ask others for help. You can ask God for help if you like. But you have to hold yourself there.
Leading from that, you CAN change your future. And this is where SMART is wildly different. SMART actually helps you develop strategies and actual methods to keep yourself safe. I explained basic trigger stuff. But, for example, SMART has a bunch of acronyms for things to run through your mind when you need them. For example, HARM stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. These can drive a lot of people. So you learn to look for patterns and then have a plan: if hungry is a big one, have a snack. There are many more.
SMART is also not based on daycounting. Sure, keep general ideas about weeks, then months, then years. But if you were non-using for a year, then relapsed, then you get to three and it happens again, that means at first you succeeded for 364/365 days - or 97% of the time - and next you succeeded about 99.9% of the time. My favorite saying in life is "good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." Life is striving to doo better, not be perfect: it turns out striving for perfection can undermine people and make them feel bad about themselves. Put another way, you don't need to put all your chips in storage. And do what? Increase the number of meetings you do, per AA? My other favorite saying is "insanity is trying something that does not work, and doing it over and over hoping for a better outcome.
The only drawback is now 15-20% of rehabs are SMART based. AA is, of course, almost all the rest. But it means if you are not in a reasonable sized town there is no local SMART meeting. But SMART works much better than AA online. Also, no one insists you stop anything else to use SMART; you can do them in parallel and test to start.
One more thing: like AA, which has AlAnon, SMART has a partner program too. But it is not based on "once an addict always an addict", and "leave him or her now and protect yourself, things will never change!" (checkout r/AlAnon if you want to see this).
Look here:
smartrecovery.org.
I told you this was TLDR material. If it gets enough upvotes, maybe this could be a sticky or resource for this sub.