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
One Promise
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
FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
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.”
“If you’re new to NA or planning to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting for the first time, it might be nice to know a little bit about what happens in our meetings. The information here is meant to give you an understanding of what we do when we come together to share recovery. The words we use and the way we act might be unfamiliar to you at first, but hopefully this information can help you get the most out of your first NA meeting or help you feel more comfortable as you keep coming back. Showing up early, staying late, and asking lots of questions before and after meetings will help you get the most out of every meeting you attend….
…People have all sorts of reasons for attending NA meetings, but the purpose of each meeting is to give NA members a place to share recovery with other addicts. If you are not an addict, look for an open meeting, which welcomes non-addicts. If you’re an addict or think you might have a drug problem, we suggest a meeting every day for at least 90 days to get to know NA members and our program….”
(excerpts from IP #29, “An Introduction to NA Meetings”)
NA literature is also a great source of information about our program. Our Basic Text, Narcotics Anonymous, or our information pamphlets (IPs) are a good place to start. Most meetings offer IPs for free, while books are generally sold at the group’s cost. Most of our literature is also available to read on this website.
To begin, we invite you to read IP #22, “Welcome to NA”. Please come to our meetings and “Keep Coming Back!”
An NA meeting is where two or more addicts gather for the purpose of recovery from the disease of addiction. Members offer each other peer support by sharing experiences about how they manage life situations without returning to using drugs. Some meetings have speakers who share their experience with getting and staying clean, while others have structured formats that focus on NA literature (our Basic Text, informational pamphlets, or our Just for Today daily meditation book). All meetings focus on recovery and supporting each other in recovery.
Here are some other things that can occur at an NA meeting:
- During the course of a meeting, a basket is passed for our members to contribute money to support the cost of the meeting facility and other NA services such as literature distribution. One of our traditions speaks to our self-support through our own contributions.
- Meetings often open and close with the Serenity Prayer or some other NA
prayer.
- Some meetings also provide keytags to recognize days, months, and years of
continuous abstinence from drugs.
Starting an NA meeting can be relatively easy. NA meetings may vary greatly in structure and format, however, there is always one constant: They are started so that the NA message of recovery can be carried to the still-suffering addict in the most effective way – addict to addict. If you are an addict, thinking about or planning to start a meeting, please review the Group QuickStart Guide:
** Attend our next Area Service Meeting, Which are held the 1st Sunday of every month **
As explained in our book and informational pamphlet, Sponsorship, this is a relationship between two members of NA—a more experienced member helping a newer member learn how to live life without the use of drugs and how to incorporate the principles of the Twelve Steps.
Yes, they are more than welcome to attend meetings. Many of our members actually came to meetings while still using drugs and are now drug-free and recovering today. Often, if a member is still using, he or she will be asked to refrain from speaking during a meeting. Instead, these addicts are encouraged to speak with members during break or before or after the meeting.
- Open Meeting: all are welcome. Addicts & non-addicts may attend.
- Closed Meeting: addicts only. Closed to the public.
November 13, 2024 |
Not perfect |
| Page 331 |
| "We are not going to be perfect. If we were perfect, we would not be human." |
| Basic Text, p. 31 |
| All of us had expectations about life in recovery. Some of us thought recovery would suddenly make us employable or able to do anything in the world we wanted to do. Or maybe we imagined perfect ease in our interactions with others. When we stop and think, we realize that we expected recovery would make us perfect. We didn't expect to continue making many mistakes. But we do. That's not the addict side of us showing through; that's being human. In Narcotics Anonymous we strive for recovery, not perfection. The only promise we are given is freedom from active addiction. Perfection is not an attainable state for human beings; it's not a realistic goal. What we often seek in perfection is freedom from the discomfort of making mistakes. In return for that freedom from discomfort, we trade our curiosity, our flexibility, and the room to grow. We can consider the trade: Do we want to live the rest of our lives in our well-defined little world, safe but perhaps stifled? Or do we wish to venture out into the unknown, take a risk, and reach for everything life has to offer? |
| Just for Today: I want all that life has to offer me and all that recovery can provide. Today, I will take a risk, try something new, and grow. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2023, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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