Addiction Support Groups

This guide sets out the fellowships and other groups a person can walk into, what each one asks of members, and where the evidence stands on whether they help. It compares 12-step and secular options side by side, covers online meetings and medication, and ends with the practical question of how to find a meeting that fits.

What Are Addiction Support Groups?

Addiction support groups, sometimes called mutual-help groups or peer support groups, gather people who have been through substance use so they can help one another in recovery. Members or trained volunteers lead most meetings rather than clinicians, and joining usually costs nothing.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) notes that talking with people who have already been through it can be a strong support system, and that many groups meet in person and online.

Mutual support groups can reinforce and extend the benefits of professional treatment.

What a meeting emphasizes varies, whether a set of steps, practical skills, meditation, a faith tradition, or a room of women only.

12-step fellowships

Skills-based and secular

Buddhist-inspired

Faith-based

Women-only

Family and friends

Members get connection with people who understand the situation without explanation, and accountability from faces that notice when someone stops showing up. Practical tips come with it too, the kind that comes from lived experience.

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12-Step Groups: AA, NA and Other Fellowships

The Twelve Steps were first written by Alcoholics Anonymous, and every fellowship that works them is member-led, charges no dues or fees, and welcomes anyone who wants to quit drinking or using drugs.

Alcoholics Anonymous started in 1935 and has activity in about 180 countries, according to A.A. at a Glance (2024).

Narcotics Anonymous (NA) got its start in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. As of May 2026 it reports more than 79,000 weekly meetings across 122 countries, calls itself a “non-religious program”, and charges nothing to attend. Cocaine Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous and Marijuana Anonymous apply the same steps to those drugs.

The Steps speak of God, or of a higher power that each member defines for themselves, and AA’s preamble describes a fellowship allied with no sect, denomination, political cause or institution. Someone who wants no higher power can pick a secular group.

A sponsor is a member further along who guides someone newer through the Steps, and the suggestion of 90 meetings in 90 days is a common way to fill the first months.

Non-12-Step and Secular Support Groups

The 12 Steps are not the only route. If that approach does not fit, several groups use other methods. The options include skills-based meetings through SMART Recovery, secular peer support at LifeRing Secular Recovery, a women-only program in Women for Sobriety, Buddhist-inspired practice in Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery, and the biblically based ministry of Celebrate Recovery.

SMART Recovery was established in 1994 and is grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), two approaches that focus on the thinking behind a behavior. Members work through its 4-Point Program to strengthen their reasons for change, ride out urges, watch how thinking drives action, and keep life in balance. Meetings are led by trained facilitators, and smartrecovery.org says, “Our meetings are completely free.”

LifeRing Secular Recovery traces its roots to 1997, when LifeRing Press began, and has carried the LifeRing name since 1999. Its philosophy rests on three S’s: Sobriety, Secularity, and Self-Empowerment. On the middle one the organization is precise: “Secularity means without religion, not anti-religion.” Meetings are funded by voluntary donations.

Women for Sobriety is an abstinence-based program for women. Jean Kirkpatrick, PhD, founded it in 1975, and its New Life Program is built on 13 Acceptance Statements. Its website, womenforsobriety.org, states simply, “Access is free.”

Recovery Dharma and Refuge Recovery both draw on Buddhist practice. Recovery Dharma started in 2019, the year the Refuge Recovery nonprofit restructured, and the groups which kept the Refuge Recovery name are backed by an organization of their own.

Celebrate Recovery is a biblically based recovery ministry that started at Saddleback Church in 1991.

Comparing Addiction Support Groups

They differ in method, cost, who the meeting is built for, and whether it meets in a room or online. Each row follows the organization’s own description, and a group that publishes no cost is marked not stated rather than guessed at.

Al-Anon, Alateen and Nar-Anon exist for relatives and friends, while the other rows are for the person who wants to stop drinking or using drugs.

Online Support Group Meetings

Most large fellowships also offer meetings online or by phone, which helps when the nearest meeting is far, someone works nights, or privacy matters. Each organization publishes an official finder, which is the list to trust.

Alcoholics Anonymous posts online and phone meetings through the Online Intergroup of A.A. at aa-intergroup.org and through the free Meeting Guide app. Narcotics Anonymous keeps virtual meetings at na.org/virtual, and SMART Recovery, LifeRing Secular Recovery and Women for Sobriety list theirs too. Recovery Dharma lists more than 200 online meetings, and In The Rooms hosts meetings from many groups while stating that it is “not associated with Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous.”

Online delivery formats positively affect retention. NA’s own 2024 membership survey points the same way: members average about 2.7 online meetings a week and 2.9 in person, a self-reported count, not research.

Test your camera and microphone first, and ask about camera-on norms if you would rather stay off camera.

Official meeting finders

Each group lists its own meetings.

Phone and video meetings

Join by video or phone.

Text chat meetings

Some groups run text rooms.

Check the time zone

Listings show the group’s time, not yours.

Do Support Groups Work?

For alcohol use disorder, the strongest evidence supports Alcoholics Anonymous and twelve-step facilitation, the clinical practice of guiding someone into AA’s program alongside treatment. Research on drug use and on smaller groups is newer, mostly observational, and generally positive.

The most rigorous test is the 2020 Cochrane review by Kelly, Humphreys and Ferri, which pooled 27 studies covering 10,565 people. Clinically delivered AA and twelve-step facilitation kept more people continuously abstinent than other established treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy: about 42% were abstinent a year later, compared with 35% of people in the other treatments. That covers alcohol use disorder only, not Narcotics Anonymous or drug use.

The alternatives have been studied less. Zemore and colleagues, writing in 2018, followed people with alcohol use disorder and concluded tentatively that Women for Sobriety, LifeRing and SMART Recovery were “as effective as 12-step groups.”

For drug use, Kepner and Humphreys reviewed 21 studies from 2019 to 2024 for Current Addiction Reports in 2025. Attendance and involvement in a mutual-help group predicted less drug use and lower addiction severity. SMART Recovery shows promise, they wrote, but research on it is limited, and selection bias remains a challenge.

Support Groups and Medication for Addiction

A person who takes medication for opioid use disorder can join a support group, though how a given group treats that prescription varies.

Narcotics Anonymous welcomes them outright: “Regardless of what you may be taking when you first come to NA, you are welcome”. The details stay local, since “Each group is free to make its own decision”, including whether a member on medication may share or serve.

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LifeRing’s own guidance for treatment professionals notes that some members take psychoactive medications that an informed physician has prescribed for medical reasons.

Kepner and Humphreys, in a 2025 review of mutual help groups for drug use, describe stigma toward opioid agonist medications such as methadone in some 12-step groups, and note it may push people to stop the medication against medical advice.

Ask a group’s secretary, or read the notes a meeting posts about its format. If a room pushes someone to stop a prescribed medication, that decision belongs with the prescriber.

Support Groups vs. Treatment and Group Therapy

Support meetings cost nothing, are peer-run and keep going. Treatment is different: licensed professionals provide it, and it is matched to what one person needs. Many people use both, and a group often stays part of the routine after treatment ends.

Group therapy sits on the treatment side of that line: a clinician leads the session and a treatment plan shapes it, so group therapy carries clinical responsibility that a peer meeting does not. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) suggests keeping “a connection with their treatment counselor” while attending meetings, and notes that “Some issues may require the help of a trained health professional.”

Three situations tend to call for professional care first: withdrawal risk, a co-occurring mental health condition, or repeated returns to use. Withdrawal is what medically supervised detox handles, and the other two usually come up in addiction treatment, where clinicians can work on both at once.

Support Groups for Families and Friends

Families and friends have their own groups, separate from the meetings the person they are worried about attends. Al-Anon and Alateen, Nar-Anon and Narateen, Families Anonymous and SMART Recovery Family & Friends all exist for the people around someone with a substance use disorder.

Al-Anon has offered support to families and friends since 1951, charges no dues or fees, and describes itself as “a spiritual fellowship, not a religious one”; Alateen is the version for teenagers. Nar-Anon and Narateen follow the 12 Steps, welcome the relatives and friends of anyone who uses drugs, and hold virtual meetings. Families Anonymous is another 12-step fellowship, started in California by parents in 1971. SMART Recovery Family & Friends is free and builds on SMART’s tools and on CRAFT, short for Community Reinforcement and Family Training, a therapy approach for families rather than a support group.

The guide to family support groups covers the options in more detail.

How to Find a Support Group Meeting

Start with the organization’s own meeting finder, then sit in on a few meetings before choosing one. If treatment is part of the picture too, a program or your doctor can point to local groups.

Each fellowship publishes official listings, in person and online; for A.A., the guide to finding an A.A. meeting covers the listing.

The listing also marks meetings open or closed, and that decides who can walk in: open meetings are for anyone, and closed ones for A.A. members and for anyone with a drinking problem who wants to stop.

Arrive a few minutes early, or sign in early online. Listening counts as attending, and nobody has to introduce themselves.

When treatment is needed too, FindTreatment.gov lists programs by location and the SAMHSA National Helpline can talk through options. In a crisis, call or text 988.

Pick an approach

A fellowship or another group, in person or online.

Use the official finder

Each group lists its own meetings.

Check open or closed

Open meetings admit anyone.

Try a few meetings

Groups differ, even inside one fellowship.

Listen first

Sharing is optional.

Frequently Asked Questions About Addiction Support Groups