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Welcome to Narcotics Anonymous

What is our message? The message is that an addict, any addict, can stop using drugs, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live. Our message is hope and the promise is freedom.

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“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”

Is NA for me?

This is a question every potential member must answer for themselves. Here are some recommended resources that may be helpful:

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NA meetings are run by and for addicts. If you’re looking for help for a loved one, you can contact Narcotics Anonymous near you. 

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Never before have so many clean addicts, of their own choice and in free society, been able to meet where they please, to maintain their recovery in complete creative freedom.

Basic Text, “We Do Recover”

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Narcotics Anonymous sprang from the Alcoholics Anonymous Program of the late 1940s, with meetings first emerging in the Los Angeles area of California, USA, in the early Fifties. The NA program started as a small US movement that has grown into one of the world’s oldest and largest organizations of its type.

Today, Narcotics Anonymous is well established throughout much of the Americas, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Newly formed groups and NA communities are now scattered throughout the Indian subcontinent, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Narcotics Anonymous books and information pamphlets are currently available in 49 languages.

Information About NA

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Daily Meditations

Just for Today

December 14, 2024

Addiction, drugs, and recovery
Page 364
“Addiction is a physical, mental, and spiritual disease that affects every area of our lives.“
Basic Text, p. 20
Before we started using, most of us had a stereotype, a mental image of what addicts were supposed to look like. Some of us pictured a junkie robbing convenience markets for drug money. Others imagined a paranoid recluse peering at life from behind perpetually drawn drapes and locked doors. As long as we didn’t fit any of the stereotypes, we thought, we couldn’t be addicts.

As our using progressed, we discarded those misconceptions about addiction, only to come up with another: the idea that addiction was about drugs. We may have thought addiction meant a physical habit, believing any drug that didn’t produce physical habituation was not “addictive.” Or we thought the drugs we took were causing all our problems. We thought that merely getting rid of the drugs would restore sanity to our lives.

One of the most important lessons we learn in Narcotics Anonymous is that addiction is much more than the drugs we used. Addiction is a part of us; it’s an illness that involves every area of our lives, with or without drugs. We can see its effects on our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior, even after we stop using. Because of this, we need a solution that works to repair every area of our lives: the Twelve Steps.

Just for Today: Addiction is not a simple disease, but it has a simple solution. Today, I will live in that solution: the Twelve Steps of recovery.

A Spiritual Principle a Day

December 14, 2024

Imperfection, Humanity, and Humility
Page 360
“Beyond our addiction, we are human beings: members of society who have gifts and flaws like everyone else.“
Living Clean, Chapter 5, “Friendship”
We are recovering addicts with the disease of addiction. This is not news.

We have pasts (do we ever!), the present (especially when we can be in it), and futures (hopefully). We have attractions, virtues, and abilities, and yet we have limitations, vices, and liabilities. We do good in the world–sometimes a lot of it. We also make mistakes– sometimes horrendous ones.

We’ve been shaped by our cultures, societies, and environments. We have religious beliefs or nonreligious ones. We have relationships, jobs, interests, causes, ailments. We have multiples of any and all of these. None of these elements completely defines us. Instead, they make us human.

As addicts, we tend to focus more on what’s wrong with us than what’s right. But we are no more flawed than other people, even nonaddicts. We are not pathological, nor are we deserving of stigma because of our addiction.

Being an addict is only one aspect of our humanity. Through working the Twelve Steps, we learn that the story of our drug use isn’t as important as the one we create in our recovery. We have the opportunity to identify our gifts as well as our flaws, and we come to understand that our flaws do not negate those gifts. This concept is the core of humility.

Some of us really grapple with perfectionism as one of our character defects. But we are all imperfect because we are human. Recovery won’t make us perfect because perfection doesn’t exist. It can, however, help us humbly embrace our humanity.
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Today I will honestly assess where I fall short and accept that I’m imperfect, like everybody else. My aim is to lead with my assets–with humility.

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“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…” 

An Introduction to NA Meetings

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