Subject: News & Views: December 2022

Showing Support for Everyone in Recovery

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On a Recovery Journey of
Learning, Growing, & Healing

When Loretta Billingsley found SMART Recovery, she says she wasn’t fully committed to addressing her troublesome alcohol use, but wanted to understand more about it. Perhaps her long career as an editor in the media industry led to her practice of breaking down issues with a keen eye for component parts. In this case, Loretta says she was drawn in initially by the behavioral science part of SMART, and saw how that related to her circumstances. Soon after learning more, Loretta was all in as a participant. Then she chose to dive in even deeper.

Loretta says she realized early on that she wanted to give back to SMART. She decided to take the training to be facilitator and start a meeting, but not of the general variety, “I made the decision to make it a women’s meeting. It was important to me; I saw the need for it.” Further, she saw a women’s meeting as important for SMART itself as part of an organizational evolution to greater inclusiveness...

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The Ripple Effect of Recovery

As Gerardo (Gee) Matamoros understands it today, his descent into substance use disorder (SUD) was the result of not knowing how to believe in himself. Gee says this resulted in his developing an identity based on what others thought he should do and be, instead of trying to figure it out on his own. “The identity I had was placed upon me…most of my life I did what I was told to do.”

This extended into his professional life in the high-stress advertising industry as well. Gee says abusing substances was common, even encouraged, and that he bought into the unhealthy aspects of his environment and made bad choices. Years of repeating negative behaviors eventually led to his crisis admission to a psychiatric hospital. From there Gee went to rehab, and that’s where he discovered SMART, “The wonderful thing about the place I went is they allowed you to explore different pathways [to recovery], and one of the options was SMART.” This turned Gee’s life in an entirely different direction...

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Creating a Successful Recovery Pathway

As SMART Recovery meeting facilitator Jeffry Muhleman sees it, the journey to a full-blown substance use disorder is never intentional. “The crazy thing is that when you take your first drink or first hit, nobody tries anything and says, wow, that’s so good I’m going to become addicted to that.”

For Jeffry, it began in 2008 at a New Year’s Eve party where he tried crystal meth for the first time. From there he tumbled down a twelve-year rabbit hole of substance use, bad choices, and legal trouble. Once he found SMART, his journey turned in a whole new direction...

In Other SMART News

New US Shop

Check Out the New Changes

As part of our continued dedication to improving user experience for participants and volunteers, our IT department has been working hard to transition our US and Canada bookshops to a new e-commerce platform. The Canada Shop moved over to the new platform in September, and the US Shop moved over at the beginning of December.

The new platform, Shopify, is much faster than our old one, with better search tools and modern checkout options including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay. Another advantage is that making purchases through our shops will be much easier, as there is no longer a login requirement.

Check Out the New US Shop!

Tomorrow's the Day

New Year's Eve Around the World

This special event is a celebration of community by observing together the arriving new year in each time zone. It starts December 31^st at 5:30 a.m. ET and ends on January 1^st at 3:30 a.m. ET with volunteers hosting hourly timeslots. This can be a challenging holiday, so we love being able to offer an alternative way to celebrate entering the New Year in recovery!

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Amazon Smile

Did you know you can donate to worthy causes like SMART Recovery while you shop using AmazonSmile?

AmazonSmile is a website operated by Amazon with the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon.com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile, you can elect to donate 0.5% of your purchase to the charity of your choice - at no cost to you. This includes SMART Recovery!

If you already shop on Amazon, or if you’re looking for the perfect holiday gift for your loved one, we invite you to shop at smile.amazon.com and select SMART Recovery as your charity of choice.

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