• Phone610-374-5944
  • AddressP.O. Box 6483, Wyomissing, Pa 19610
  • Open Hours24 /7
  • Phone610-374-5944
  • AddressP.O. Box 6483, Wyomissing, Pa 19610
  • Open Hours24 /7

Reading Area of Narcotics Anonymous

Is NA for me ?

This is a question every potential member must answer for themselves. It may help to read some of our informational pamphlets, starting with  “Am I an addict?”  and “Welcome to NA”.

If you’re an addict, NA can help. “Narcotics Anonymous offers recovery to addicts around the world. We focus on the disease of addiction rather than any particular drug.  Our message is broad enough to attract addicts from any social class or nationality. When new members come to meetings, our sole interest is in their desire for freedom from active addiction and how we can be of help.” (It Works: How and Why, “Third Tradition”)

           If you’re planning to attend your first meeting, you may also be interested in IP #29,                    “An Introduction to NA Meetings.”

Our Message

"Our simple message of hope & freedom: that an addict, can stop using drugs, lose the desire to sue, & find a new way of life."
Guiding Principles
PG. 81

One Promise

"NA offers only one promise & that is freedom from active addiction, the solution that eluded us for so long."
Basic Text
PG. 106

About NA

Most of us do not have to think twice about this question. We know! Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another—the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. This is a program of complete abstinence from all drugs. There is only one requirement for membership, the desire to stop using. We suggest that you keep an open mind and give yourself a break. Our program is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work. 

There are no strings attached to NA. We are not affiliated with any other organizations. We have no initiation fees or dues, no pledges to sign, no promises to make to anyone. We are not connected with any political, religious, or law enforcement groups, and are under no surveillance at any time. Anyone may join us regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion, or lack of religion. 

We are not interested in what or how much you used or who your connections were, what you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help. The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away. We have learned from our group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly stay clean.

Before coming to the Fellowship of NA, we could not manage our own lives. We could not live and enjoy life as other people do. We had to have something different and we thought we had found it in drugs. We placed their use ahead of the welfare of our families, our wives, husbands, and our children. We had to have drugs at all costs. We did many people great harm but most of all we harmed ourselves. Through our inability to accept personal responsibilities we were actually creating our own problems. We seemed to be incapable of facing life on its own terms. Most of us realized that in our addiction we were slowly committing suicide, but addiction is such a cunning enemy of life that we had lost the power to do anything about it. Many of us ended up in jail or sought help through medicine, religion, and psychiatry. None of these methods was sufficient for us. Our disease always resurfaced or continued to progress until in desperation we sought help from each other in Narcotics Anonymous. After coming to NA, we realized we were sick people. We suffered from a disease from which there is no known cure. It can, however, be arrested at some point and recovery is then possible.

Informational Pamphlets

Am i an Addict ?

Welcome to NA

For the newcomer

June 01, 2023

Keep coming back

Page 159

"We don't have to be clean when we get here but, after the first meeting, we suggest that newcomers keep coming back and come back clean. We don't have to wait for an overdose or jail sentence to get help from Narcotics Anonymous."

Basic Text, pp. 10-11

Very few of us arrive in NA brimming with willingness. Some of us are here because we are court-ordered to attend. Some have come to save our families. Some come in an effort to salvage a career teetering on the brink of ruin. It doesn't matter why we are here. It only matters that we are.

We have heard it said that "if we bring the body, the mind will follow." We may come to meetings with a chip on our shoulders. We may be one of those who sits in the back of the rooms with our arms folded across our chest, glaring threateningly at anyone who approaches us. Perhaps we leave before the final prayer.

But if we keep coming back, we find that our minds begin to open up. We start to drop our guards, and begin to really listen when others share. We may even hear someone talking with whom we can relate. We begin the process of change.

After some time in NA, we find that more than our minds have arrived in our meeting rooms. More importantly, our hearts have arrived, too. After that happens, the miracles really begin!

Just for Today: I will strive to listen with an open mind to what I hear shared.

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