EP:210 Sobriety through SMART Recovery

When Alan Swanson speaks about his battle with alcohol addiction, it's not just a story—it's a roadmap for transformation and hope. Alan joins us to recount his journey to sobriety through SMART Recovery. His candid sharing on how he moved from the grip of addiction to a place of empowerment is not just inspiring; it's a testament to the power of self-help and the strength of community support.

This episode isn't just informative—it's an invitation to anyone seeking control over their life and a meaningful connection with others walking the same path.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Veterans for Recovery, a podcast that unpacks all things recovery within our extended military family. Join your host, retired Major John Donovan, a noted author, lecturer and person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder, as he and his guests will break down current trending topics and research, along with all things recovery related to increasing recovery resilience and recovery capital within our veteran and service member communities. Now here's your host, major John Donovan.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Good day everyone, and welcome to another episode of Veterans for Recovery. This is a podcast that looks at all things pertaining to our veterans, service members and their family members who are in recovery or seeking recovery. I'm your host, john Donovan, a retired Major of the US Army, and I'm a person in long-term recovery. With me today is my guest, alan Swanson. Today, alan and I will explore what recovery means and how it impacts our lives and the lives of our listeners. Alan, welcome to the show and thank you for being with us today.

Speaker 3: 1:14

Welcome. Thanks, john, I appreciate the invite.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Yeah, absolutely so. To kick this off, alan, first tell us a little bit about yourself your background, education, profession.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Sure well, I grew I was. I like to open this up whenever I get asked that question under a light note. I was born at a very young age and I was born in Minneapolis, minnesota. That's where I grew up and I went to the public school system and I was active in kind of the nerd activities of the day speech, debate, orchestra and computers and I found myself gravitating towards computer science. I did a project my senior year of high school, that in 1983, that allowed me to give the gift of speech to a young student who wasn't able to speak, using an Apple II computer hooked up to a voice synthesizer.

Speaker 3: 2:17

And I went on to go to a Mankato State, now Minnesota State. I got a computer science degree and started off working for a local telephone company and I've been gainfully employed in IT for 36 years a long time, and so that's a little bit about my professional background. I'm married February, this coming February, I'll be married 24 years. I have two children, I have three grandchildren. I currently live in Maple Grove and but I found myself kind of when I got to my late 40s I found myself in active addiction to my drug of choice, which is alcohol.

Speaker 2: 2:58

And let's explore that for a second. So you're a person in long term recovery Is that correct, correct and you have a recovery journey. That's really quite remarkable. Would you share a little bit about that with our listeners?

Speaker 3: 3:16

Yeah, absolutely. So I started putting alcohol as my focus and solution life to all my problems and I started having consequences. And the consequences of my addiction were they didn't get less, they got more. Right and around 2012, my wife decided that I had a problem and she said you have a problem. I said no, I don't. She said yes, you do, you need to go to treatment. So I went to an intensive outpatient treatment program and I didn't have any legal consequences at this time this is 2012.

Speaker 3: 3:56

And on the same time I went on to I did an internet search and I said I said, you know, maybe I could go to some self-help meetings, maybe that'll take the heat off me. And I said recovery meetings, not 12 steps. And what came up first was smart recovery in the search results. So I went out to their website. I looked up where the meetings were. I didn't pay attention if they had online meetings, but I saw they had a meeting going on in Chanhassen I think it was on Tuesday night. And so I went to my first self-help recovery meeting at smart recovery and I thought well, this is interesting, because they're telling me they're like I don't have to necessarily quit, I can also aim to moderate or do harm reduction and I thought, well, I can provide moderation and harm reduction sounds good. And I went to a few of their meetings and then I realized they had online meetings and I thought, wait a minute, I can do this without even leaving my home. And so at that time I bought an earlier version of this book, the smart recovery handbook and the third edition, and I would go in and I'd have a smart recovery online meeting on my laptop and I'd go around the house and I was showing my family look, I'm in recovery, I know the tools, I'm doing the deal right. And I thought that was enough. And eventually I basically declared myself well, I got out of that first treatment and I was trying to moderate and do harm reduction on my own.

Speaker 3: 5:33

I stopped going to the smart recovery meetings and things came off the rails eventually 2015. I got a DUI, a misdemeanor DUI, and I was in trouble and I went to my second treatment and during that second treatment, after being forced into not using my drug of choice, my DOC, I got introduced to this idea. John, you know what? I saw people in my group in treatment that were using the tools like breathing exercises, cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that. And I decided you know what? Two things Number one I can take the book and not only know the tools, but use the tools of smart recovery. And two, I can. What did I want to say? I can use the tools.

Speaker 3: 6:22

And I decided I wanted to abstain. And three, the last thing, I'll add one more back the first time around 2012, I would talk about becoming a facilitator In 2015, I said I'm going to do it, I'm going to become a facilitator. Four months into my absence, I signed up and I got accepted into. They have a training program. We can get more of this later, but I became a facilitator and I started facilitating a meeting on Sunday nights on January 10th 2016. And I'm happy to say I've been doing it weekly ever since and my life has gotten a lot better.

Speaker 2: 6:58

Alan, that is amazing and thank you for sharing that story. I'd like to arc back and just unpackage a couple of things. So, in a nutshell, how did the harm reduction work for you?

Speaker 3: 7:11

Well, for me it worked. For others apparently, but for me I kind of felt like I never got. I never, I never changed my mindset about my drug of choice. I always thought, you know what, since my drug of choice is my, I didn't think of it quite this way now, but I know, back, you know, looking back, I thought of it as my solution. I just felt like I had to live a double life, like I had a. I had to present the moderating side of myself to others, but there was always that part in me that wanted to binge and use the way I wanted to use and I just I started living a double.

Speaker 3: 7:51

I felt like I was living a lie in my life.

Speaker 3: 7:53

Because here's an example would be Thanksgiving, right, family comes over, I have one beer, okay, but I go down to my office and I slam three shots and Come back up and of course those closest to me, meaning me, my wife and my children, know what I was doing.

Speaker 3: 8:10

I thought I had them all snowed, but it the net, net. It didn't work for me and eventually I just said screw it. You know, as soon as I had the chance since this is Easter weekend of 15, I spent the whole. My wife was out of town, which is a trigger for me for drip, for using my drug of choice. I did it the way I wanted to and it completely came off the rails and I endangered a bunch of people's lives. Unfortunately, on a good Friday of 15 and I drove back home from the Mall of America with a about a point two oh blood alcohol level and, thank goodness, an officer of the Minnesota State Patrol pulled me over, kept everyone safe and and I later what I later went on to tell them you saved my life and explain to him why so.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Wow, that is incredible. So you tried cutting down, you tried cutting back. That didn't work for you, but you had done some research online and you would come across smart recovery. So can you tell our listeners a little bit of the tenants, a little bit of the Foundation of smart recovery, what it is, what it isn't, how it works?

Speaker 3: 9:18

Yeah, absolutely so. Smart recovery Is a relatively new. It's a self-help, secular recovery program, okay, and it was founded About 30 years ago as an offshoot of a for-profit recovery called rational, and it's a nonprofit. It's headquartered mentor Ohio, but the tenants of smart recovery it's. It's a simple program. It's a four-point program. So in smart recovery, people that are working a program recovery and smart do, for they work on four points in any order.

Speaker 3: 9:51

Okay, now, before I get into that, in smart recovery you don't have to have a higher power. You can if you want, but you don't have to. You don't have to have a sponsor. You can if you want, but you don't have to. And they prescribe also to this the stages of life. There's a, there's a stages. There's a stages of addiction, right, pre, contemplation, contemplation, planning, preparation, action, maintenance. And in smart recovery they have graduation. So they look at relapse or slipping not as a stage but a event. And In smart recovery a couple of big things.

Speaker 3: 10:34

Then I'll get into the four. Point. One is that we believe when you relapse you don't go back to the beginning. You get to keep the abstinence you have, okay, or the benefits. But more importantly, we don't use stigmatizing language. So in a smart recovery meeting. This has no place in smart. You can do it if you want, but you're gonna get strange looks. We don't call ourselves or stigmatize ourselves with the labels alcoholic or addict or dirty. We believe that goes against one of our tenants, which is unconditional self-acceptance. Right, we're, not our addictive behavior. So when I'm in a smart meeting, here's all I introduced myself John. Hi, my name is Alan. I have an addictive behavior tied to alcohol or something along those lines.

Speaker 3: 11:17

So the four tenants of smart recovery, the four points of smart recovery that we work on, one Building and maintaining motivation, either to abstain or to do harm reduction or moderate, to coping with urges. Three Managing thoughts, feelings and behaviors. And that breaks down to three areas managing thoughts, feelings and behaviors about ourselves, so that we look at ourselves as not being our addictive behavior about life. So you know, for instance, my mom passed away when I was a year and a half into my recovery, or others, and we look at that real. Simply, we use a child's toy to demonstrate that for ourselves.

Speaker 3: 11:55

We put a hula hoop or imagine a hula hoop around us and say what do we control? We only control what's inside the hula hoop, which is us right. And then the last point is smart recovery living a balanced life and and getting Reintroduced to the activities that we may have given up for our addictive behavior, drug of choice, that help us give up dopamine and serotonin Naturally in our brain action, instead of unnaturally throw our drug of choice or addictive behavior. So, in a nutshell, that's the program of smart recovery. I can go on the meeting formats and things if you want, but that's that's the the crux of it.

Speaker 2: 12:30

So you found these meetings online and then you discovered that you can attend online. How helpful was that. Describe that a little bit for us.

Speaker 3: 12:42

Well, it's been something that's changed over the years since I joined SMART. So I mean, this coming Sunday, we're going to be saying we've been doing the meeting in high facility for eight years. So eight years ago, on 16, when this started, the platform wasn't what we have now, which is we have what's called Zoom, a Zoom platform. We had some other platform, java based, and it wasn't very good. Not only that, but SMART Recovery at that time decided at online meetings, a facilitator on their own couldn't handle more than 35 participants, so we had to limit the number of people that could come in at 35. You know what I noticed After a meeting? I get all these emails In my SMART Recovery mailbox that I had at that time saying I couldn't get in, I couldn't get in, I couldn't get in. So, as a facilitator, they wanted us only to have 35, but they allowed us to increase it. So I thought I'll do this and I'll ask forgiveness later. I hate turning people away, john. So I'd increase it to 50 and we maxed that out, and then 75, we maxed that out and then 100.

Speaker 3: 13:53

Before I knew it, within a couple of years of facilitating these meetings around 2018, we were getting 200 people. So we found out in collective wisdom I needed help. I needed people volunteering as meeting helpers and co-facilitators to watch the chat. It's a management exercise because you have 200 people coming in or more Sometimes. I can't admit, when I showed up at SMART Recovery, I wasn't self-actualized and well-behaved, I was an emotionally wounded animal and I acted out a little bit. So there's something called facilitation that happens. So, anyway, the net of it is now we're on Zoom. We can have up to 300 people on the meeting. We actually one other thing I mentioned too we don't send facilitators in cold where there's actually structured training available through SMART Recovery and ongoing training as well. So we don't just put people in cold. You get the training. You get on the job training with another season facilitator before you're allowed to start your meeting and start doing that. I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 2: 15:03

Yeah, absolutely. And just to share a little bit with you and our listeners, I started bringing meetings into the St Cloud, va after my second tour to Iraq in 2010. And I would go in there and at first there was 100 to 140 guys in the meeting and I would share my recovery story. And I did this about oh, six times a year because their program would be about 60 days long. So every two months the audience would change over and I noticed after a period of time that the audiences were getting smaller and smaller and smaller. They went from 100 down to 80 and 60. And of course, I interpreted that you know that self-talk that we give ourselves oh, they hate me, they don't like my message, et cetera, et cetera. So I inquired of the staff. I'm like gosh, these meetings used to be so big and now they're getting smaller and smaller. Is it something I'm doing? And they said, oh, no, it's just that the guys really enjoy and I say guys sexistly, but the majority of the people going through the program were men. They said that the guys really enjoy this new program that we started here called Smart Recovery, and that's when I first got introduced to this idea of smart.

Speaker 2: 16:38

A couple of years later I ran into a retired Sergeant Major and I greeted him. He was a person I worked with, one that I greatly admired. I said, sergeant Major, how you doing? And he said I'm doing great, five years sober. I said wow, sergeant Major, I didn't even know you drank. He goes. Yep, I didn't drink while I was on active duty, but I retired, I got into Fort Living Room, I opened up a bottle and I stayed there for five years. I'm like, wow, that's awesome. Do you? Do you go to AA? No, I hate that program. Like really, sergeant Major, tell me more about that. He goes.

Speaker 2: 17:18

I went to one of those damn meetings and they told me to take the cot knot of my ears, put it in my mouth. And I said so what did you do for recovery support? I started going to Smart Recovery. Like really, he said, yep, I went to Smart Recovery and after a few meetings, somebody came up to me and said you know, with all your experience as a leader of men, have you ever thought of being a smart facilitator? He said I went through the training and now I lead a group of guys in Smart Recovery and I've been doing that and I've been sober ever since and he had five years of recovery time. So I've noticed with the military audience that Smart seems to be really popular. It really resonates with them. What would you attribute that to?

Speaker 3: 18:17

no-transcript. Well, I think it's the fact that, just doing this for eight years, I have common stories of people coming into the meetings that I facilitate saying I went to a 12-step meeting and I wasn't made to feel welcome. I got pinned into a box. And they come to smart recovery thinking they're doing something radically different and maybe they are, but there's not the stigmatizing language that's used. If you want to come in and moderate, that's fine. You don't have people coming in saying what we only talk about permanent abstinence. There's a flexibility there. The whole higher power God thing has taken off the table, the whole. You must have a sponsors taken off the table. But, that said, there's also. I've been doing this for a while, for eight years. I think there's more similarities than differences between 12-step and smart recovery. But if people want to come in and feel like they're doing something different, come on in.

Speaker 3: 19:32

I embrace all forms of recovery, but one of the things I do disayuno on your listeners, one of the things that I do in every facility, or does it a little differently. There's a couple of things that I do to try to keep a certain decorum. I ask people not to talk about their other recovery programs. We're not there to critique and change and evaluate. We just talk about smart. The other thing I do in my meetings, by the way, they're on Sunday. I'm going to put a quick little plug. It's Sunday night at seven o'clock. We can talk about how to find the meeting at facility and zoom, but one of the things I do is I don't allow. I ask people not to use foul language in the meeting Because I think it makes the meetings unattractive. But I'm getting off point.

Speaker 3: 20:16

I think with the military people it's not just a military thing about being attracted to smart recovery. I think it's a 12-step. I wasn't made to feel welcome. I'm made to feel welcome here and accepted the way I am. I'm allowed the time to figure out the recovery journey I want to take, following the options in a framework. That's why I'm here. That's what I think it is. One other thing too we do have military first responder specialty meetings in smart recovery. I'm sure some of your listeners who go to smart recovery are familiar with those. I obviously haven't been to one, but I've heard they're great.

Speaker 2: 20:54

One of the similarities that I find in your story and in the search major story that I just told was that at a relatively early stage of recovery you got into service and providing a service to other people in recovery, a service in the way of facilitating. Tell me about that, because so many other recovery programs have these milestones, these gates that you'd have to go through in order to be qualified or accepted into giving recovery. It sounds like in the smart program, if I've heard you correctly or I've interpreted this correctly, that some of those gates aren't necessarily there. Is that an accurate statement?

Speaker 3: 21:43

I think it's accurate. There is a framework that's been out there for a while that's remained on change, which is we like to see our volunteers have six months of continuous absence, but there's exceptions that can be made. It's like never. It's not a die hard. We also look at the quality of the recovery that's happened with a person. There's a bit of a. When someone signs up to be a volunteer, they're vetted and they're trained, they're observed. This has evolved a little bit over time and things have become a little more rigid now so we've got some standardized.

Speaker 3: 22:23

I can get into more details, but the online meetings there's really two flavors. In North America. There's local online meetings where there's a lot more latitude for the facilitators, as long as they're following smart recovery in their meeting. Then there's a national framework. The national framework is a little more rigid and the slides are a little more all-encompassing to make sure that everyone's safe and feels included. The national meetings, which get the 300 people they max out the license almost every time. Those are really meetings to allow people to come in and learn about smart recovery and then go off to their military first responders or a local meeting and then do the more deep dive instead of the narrow, broad dive. That makes sense.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Yeah, very much so. So answer me this, if you will, alan. We've been talking a lot about online, online facilitation, the meeting that you talked about that you facilitate. No, by the way, please give our listeners information about how they can join that or where they can find that, but is there an in-person component in-person component to smart recovery? Do they have face-to-face meetings, like some of the 12-step programs that we're more familiar with AA, na, al-anon, etc.

Speaker 3: 23:45

Yes, there is a face-to-face component. In fact, that's. The first smart recovery exposure I had was at a face-to-face meeting that was in Chen-S and in that meeting still exists and it's actually moved down, I believe, to Columbia Heights. But the numbers of face-to-face meetings, compared to, say, 12-step, are just not there yet. We're working on it. Depends on what area of the country, and you may have no face-to-face meetings available, which means online is the only game you have, and you could be down in San Diego and have multiple, multiple meetings to go to In Minnesota. I think our current number of face-to-face meetings I'm going to throw out a figure but it's somewhere more than 10 and less than 20. And so the numbers just aren't there. But in the Twin Cities we have a number of face-to-face smart recovery meetings that people can go to and they have a different flavor. They're going to be smaller than an online meeting, more personal, and I think that's something that's not unique to smart recovery. I think any recovery fellowship that's gone through the evolution of going face-to-face to online to hybrid may face that, and hybrid meetings, by the way, are something new to smart recovery. I think you'll see more of that happening. There are a few that are happening, that are like local meetings, that are online and have a face-to-face, and I think you'll see that evolve To each his own in smart recovery.

Speaker 3: 25:05

We don't judge the quality of someone's recovery whether they're going online or face-to-face or both. It's up to you. And if you don't have an on here's the beautiful part, though, john if you don't have an on face-to-face meeting in your community, you can start one by going through the training, and there's nothing that'll stop you. You can go on and get the training. It's not free. It costs a little bit of money, and they have scholarships available for people that are need financial support. But do the training, start your own meeting up, and it's all good. In fact, I've even contemplated starting one up here where I live in Maple Grove, in the library, because I can get a room there for free. That's something I've been kicking around for a little bit and maybe make that a hybrid online meeting. So the sky's the limit.

Speaker 2: 25:50

Fantastic. So, Alan, we've just got a couple of minutes left. I want you to tell our listeners how they can find your meeting or other smart recovery meetings online. Where do they go? What's the address?

Speaker 3: 26:03

So if they go to smart recovery dot org, there is a what's called the meeting finder option and they can go there and find our national and local meetings. If they look for the meeting meetings in Maple Grove, Minnesota, they'll see the meeting I facilitate. Come up, it's at 7pm but I'll give the direct address for the meeting and this has the zoom link to get into the meeting I facilitate. That's meetings dot smart recovery dot org. Back slash meetings, back slash six, eight, seven, three. So they can use that link or they can go to the meeting finder and look for Maple Grove, minnesota. Look for Sundays at 7pm.

Speaker 3: 26:43

The meeting lasts 90 minutes and all people are welcome. You don't have to be in the Twin Cities to join, you can be anywhere in the world and very likely the meeting that that I facilitate will be going national in the near future. There's some qualifications I have to. I have to get to train co facilitators to be with me in order to have permission to go national. I've been trained and ready to go, but it's been a bit of a recruitment process to find two other co facilitators co facilitators that meet the standards for the national meeting.

Speaker 2: 27:13

Fantastic, and that web address just for the generic smart recovery. Again, where can they go?

Speaker 3: 27:22

Smart recovery dot org smart recovery dot org.

Speaker 2: 27:25

To easy, all one word spelled just like it sounds smart recovery dot org. We've got about two minutes left, alan. What would you like to pass on to our listeners, to our veterans and service members who may be listening to this podcast? Any parting thoughts?

Speaker 3: 27:43

Well, first of all, I'm a big fan of our, of our military, and I want to thank all of your listeners for their service, and I want to thank you, john, for your passion around helping veterans and recovery. I'm passionate about helping veterans and recovery as well, and I would encourage people, just if you try, try a meeting and, and if you know, if you try a meeting, try it 4, 5, 6 times and if you don't like it, then move on and try another one. And if any of your listeners want help find a meeting that'll resonate with them, based on my experience, they can email me on my smart recovery email and I'll give you that it's Alan a l a and smart recovery at gmailcom. So it's Alan smart recovery at gmailcom. I'd be happy to help anyone find an in person or an online meeting that that meets their needs.

Speaker 2: 28:34

Alan fantastic, and I want to thank you so much for being with us and sharing with us today about smart recovery. It was a fascinating conversation To our listeners. Thank you for spending a little time with us to learn more about veterans for recovery. This has been a podcast of the coming home well network. Until next time, be well, think well, do well. This is Major John Donovan signing off.

Speaker 1: 29:03

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