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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”

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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

November 21, 2024

Letting our defects go
Page 339
“If [character defects] contributed to our health and happiness, we would not have come to such a state of desperation.“
Basic Text, p. 35
Getting started on the Sixth and Seventh Steps isn’t always easy. We may feel as though we have so much wrong with us that we are totally defective. We might feel like hiding under a rock. Under no circumstance would we want our fellow addicts to know about our inadequacies.

We will probably go through a time of examining everything we say and do in order to identify our character defects and make sure we suppress them. We may look back at one particular day, cringing at what we’re certain is the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever said. We become determined to be rid of these horrible traits at all costs.

But nowhere in the Sixth or Seventh Steps does it say we can learn to control our defects of character. In fact, the more attention we focus on them, the more firmly entrenched they will become in our lives. It takes humility to recognize that we can’t control our defects any more than we can control our addiction. We can’t remove our own defects; we can only ask a loving God to remove them.

Letting go of something painful can be as difficult as letting go of something pleasant. But let’s face it–holding on is a lot of work. When we really think about what we’re holding onto, the effort just isn’t worthwhile. It’s time to let go of our character defects and ask God to remove them.

Just for Today: I’m ready to have my defects removed. I will let go and allow a loving Higher Power to care for me.

A Spiritual Principle a Day

November 21, 2024

Discernment and Group Conscience
Page 336
“We trust–and we use good sense. Living in fellowship with other addicts, we learn discernment.“
Guiding Principles, Tradition Two, Opening Reflection
The spiritual principle of discernment–exercising good judgment–is central to practicing Tradition Two. In our personal recovery, we work on developing a guiding conscience in our own decision making that helps us decipher what’s healthy for us and what isn’t. Many of us have described that conscience as a voice in our head that tells us right from wrong. Many others say it’s our loving Higher Power working in our lives.

We bring this awareness into our groups and try to practice it there, in fellowship with each other. Discernment is group conscience in action; using it requires some common sense, experience, and, hopefully, clarity about what’s our opinion, what’s factual, and what’s actually important. Some of our groups develop trust and a collective conscience over time, but we need to stay open-minded as our membership evolves. To sustain our practice of Tradition Two, we need unity, faith, goodwill, and even more trust.

Speaking of trust, discernment helps us choose our trusted servants and guides us in our efforts to be trustworthy as we serve. We create guidelines that outline preferred qualities for particular roles in our groups. These may aid the process but aren’t the whole of it. Other circumstances that aren’t on paper and still meet our need to serve the greater good may play a role in our decisions. We listen to our fellow members offer qualifications for a position, learn about each other’s capacity for effective leadership, and then use discernment, expressed through our group conscience, to match talent to task.

As trusted servants, we’re trusted to serve the needs of our group and NA as a whole, rather than our own egos, individual opinions, and desired outcomes. To keep our leaders in check, we are each other’s eyes and ears, shining light on one another’s blind spots and turning up the volume when we aren’t listening carefully.
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I am committed to serving the greater good. I aim to do so by exercising good judgment, inviting my own conscience to contribute to the group’s, and letting go of the outcome.

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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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