Dr Kaustubh Sharma is Inspector General of Police in the Fardkot Range, Punjab, India. Over the past 12 months Dr Sharma and his team of psychiatrists have been implementing SMART Recovery meetings into their treatment facilities. He recently spent some time reflecting on the process and the cultural translation of SMART Recovery.

We have only two trained SMART Facilitators in Indonesia but increasingly we have seen a growing interest in the SMART program from Indonesian rehabilitation and addiction treatment providers. SMART Facilitators Sam & Denis capitalized on this interest by organizing a one-day SMART Recovery workshop in Jakarta last week.

Video | Interview with Dr Carlo DiClemente, co-creator of the Stages of Change

Sam Nugraha runs a rehabilitation centre in Indonesia. He has recently completed his SMART Facilitator training with SMART Recovery Australia and plans on integrating SMART into his centre. We spent some time with Sam learning about addiction in Indonesia and his impressions of SMART. To understand his approach to working with people with addictive behaviours, he says it is important to know something about his country.

Malaysia is a multi-racial country, so when we talk about the concept of a ‘higher power’, that means vastly different things to different ethnic communities. That was a main driver behind my wanting to bring the SMART Program to Malaysia; it removes the issue of ‘higher power’.

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, SMART Recovery Member Countries around the globe suspended their face to face meetings and faced the challenge of increasing or creating online offerings that were both appropriate and would replicate what could be expected at a face to face meeting.

The scholarship for Facilitator Training provided by SMART Recovery USA allowed me to start studying at a time when I did not have a job and was struggling to make ends meet.

When Dennis Rosenfeld, of LaGrangeville, New York, realized he needed help, he found it through SMART Recovery.