Author: Richard

When meetings went online back in 2020, we started publishing links on this site so participants could easily join meetings. We added a block of buttons to our home page allowing you to join a meeting with a single click.

SMART Recovery USA requested that we stop doing that as Zoom complained that the security of meetings was compromised. Accordingly we have removed all the Zoom meeting links, numbers, passwords, etc. and replaced them with links to the meetings on the SMART Recovery meeting finder.

To join an online meeting you now need to click on the link or button to go to the meeting finder, and then click the “Join Now” button.

Several locations for SMART Recovery meetings have closed temporarily or stopped hosting outside meetings, so we recommend you contact the facilitator before going to a meeting.

You can join an online meeting at SMART Recovery Online (SROL). There are over 40 meetings per week.

We have moved the Saturday morning meeting online temporarily and may move other meetings online too.

Don’t come to a meeting if you have cough or cold symptoms.

SMART Recovery USA’s statement on Covid-19 can be found here.

We will try to keep the meeting locator on the SMART Recovery USA web site up to date with changes, along with our own meeting list on this site.

Recent changes:

• No Sunday evening 6:15 PM meeting on 3/15/2020 as the SCSU campus is closed for cleaning. The campus is now closed to the public until after 4/5/2020
• The Wilson Library, along with the other branches of the New Haven Free Public Library, will not be hosting outside meetings until after 4/12/2020, so the Saturday morning 10:15 AM meeting will not be held on 3/14/2020
• The Southbury UCC is closed through 3/27/2020, so there will be no Friday evening 7:00 PM meeting for three weeks
• The VA Hospital in West Haven is closed for outside meetings until further notice

The Wilson Library will be closed on Saturday, April 20, 2019, and the attendees at the preceding Saturday meeting decided not to move the meeting to a different location. So, there will be no Saturday morning meeting on 4/20.

The same thing happened with the Sunday evening meeting at Southern Connecticut State University, so there will be no meeting there on 4/21.

The Friday, 4/19 meeting is Southbury is still due to run.

The public meeting at Southern Connecticut State University will be moving to Sundays, starting March 24, 2019. The meeting will be held in Room A113 of Engleman Hall from 6:15 to 7:15 PM on Sunday evenings.

This meeting is open to the public. You do not have to be an SCSU student, faculty member or employee to attend.

Engleman Hall is the low building facing the P2 parking lot at the junction of Fitch Street and Pine Rock Ave.

It’s always sad to see a meeting come to an end. Due to a couple of our facilitators cutting back on the time they were volunteering to SMART Recovery, we can no longer run the Tuesday evening meeting at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven and the Sunday evening meeting at Quinnipiac University (QU) in Hamden.

We are grateful to SCSU and QU for their support and for providing space for the meetings. We hope that we will be able to restart meetings at those locations in the near future when we have more facilitators.

Update: SCSU persuaded us to move the Tuesday meeting to Sunday at 6:15 PM.

Holidays can be a difficult time for people recovering from substance abuse.  Drugs and alcohol are readily available at parties.  Family tensions can increase temptation to use.  It’s a great time to go to a meeting, but a hard time to find a meeting due to facilitators taking time off and the venues being closed for the holidays.

These are a few changes to the SMART Recovery meeting schedule in the New Haven area over the holidays:

• The Saturday morning meeting at the Wilson Library will move to the Children’s Center of Hamden, 1400 Whitney Avenue, Hamden, for December 22 and 29 as the library will be closed.

• The Monday night meetings on December 24 and December 31 are cancelled.  The affected meetings are the Family & Friends meeting at the Children’s Center of Hamden, and the evening meeting at the American Legion in West Haven.

• There will be no Tuesday meetings on December 25 and January 1.  The affected meetings are the Teen & Youth meeting at Agora (formerly the Grove), 760 Chapel Street; the evening meetings at SCSU and at the VA Healthcare System on Campbell Avenue.

In the Hartford area:

• The Tuesday 1:30 PM meeting will be held on Wednesday instead, so the December 25 meeting will be held on December 26, and the January 1 meeting moves to January 2.

If you’re uncertain whether a meeting is happening, contact the facilitator using the contact information on the SMART Recovery web site.  You can look this up at https://smartrecovery.org/local and searching by town, or look at our meetings page.

If there’s no meeting happening and you need support, please visit the SMART Recovery online community at https://smartrecovery.org/community. This includes a 24 hour chat line.

Need a drink after getting together with your family over Thanksgiving? Having trouble avoiding retail therapy on Black Friday? Although several meetings will not be held on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day itself (check the main SMART Recovery meeting locator for notes about cancellations), most of the meetings over the rest of the 4-day weekend will be held. The Friday meeting at the UCC in Southbury and the Saturday morning meeting in New Haven are happening as usual. Come and talk about your successes and challenges!

Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) will offer a new weekly SMART Recovery meeting to the public and its own community starting on Tuesday, September 11. The meeting will run from 7:45 PM to 8:45 PM and will be held in Room A113 of Engleman Hall. SCSU recruited an experienced facilitator from the existing SMART Recovery meetings in the New Haven area to lead the new meeting.