There is a lot of paperwork in SMART Recovery but I never see it at the meetings I have been to. There are worksheets. if you found the site for info, you have likely seen them. I bought the kindle version of the book and it is mostly common sense stuff, but it's a nice logical path through an inventory of your life circumstances, identifying the areas/items of concern and developing a plan to address them. i can get to 2 different meetings, one very near me and the other about 1/2 hour away and they are very different.

The nearby one is smaller and very free form. We go around once with a short status and people can say nothing or as much as they want within reason. If they go too long, the moderator interrupts to finish going around for short status from everyone. Then it is a pretty open discussion. About all the moderator does is contribute, make sure we stay on recovery related subjects and interjects a query about others needing to discuss anything if on discussion goes on more than a few minutes. I have been to this one a few times and will continue to attend when I can.

The further away one is much larger and more rigid. They don't always get around to everyone for status and the moderator "preaches" a bit (not religious in nature) about something to do or avoid in recovery and then manages a discussion on it, cutting off people who speak too long or that he disagrees with. I had the not so good fortune to mention something he disagreed with. He was pushing the idea that as long as you didn't use you would be rational and if you made rational decisions taking your history into account you wouldn't use. Simple. Except when I told him I cannot count on waking up rational every day. I had explained that I have bipolar disorder when I introduced myself and he said he understood that adds some challenges, but it seems he didn't completely understand. He went into a rant about not giving yourself permission to fail. I have not been back to that one.

So much like AA there are meetings with different character.

One downside to the free form one is there have been a couple of people there who are not very serious (IMO) about recovery. One hasn't quit at all but is working on slowly tapering and the other tries but not too hard; he slips every couple of weeks and always feels terrible about it. But during discussions they will take the floor and talk like experts offering others advice on how to do things they are failing to do. they would get shut down in the other meeting or most AA meetings I have been to. I went the AA route several years ago when I quit for about 18 months.