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.

PSA Overlay

“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:

Need help for family or a friend?

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. 

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”

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.

Daily Meditations

Just for Today

January 16, 2025

Make that call!

Page 16

We feared that if we ever revealed ourselves as we were, we would surely be rejected…. [But] our fellow members do understand us.

Basic Text, p. 32

We need our fellow NA members–their experience, their friendship, their laughter, their guidance, and much, much more. Yet many of us hesitate to call our sponsor or visit our NA friends. We don't want to impose on them. We think about phoning someone, but we don't feel worthy of their time. We fear that if they ever got to know us–really know us–they'd surely reject us.

We forget that our fellow NA members are just like us. There's nothing we've done, no place we've been, no feeling we've felt that other recovering addicts won't be able to identify with. The more we let others get to know us, the more we'll hear, “You're in the right place. You're among friends. You belong. Welcome!”

We also forget that, just as we need others, they need us. We're not the only ones who want to feel like we belong, who want to experience the warmth of friendship, who want someone to share with. If we isolate ourselves from our fellow members, we deprive them of something they need, something only we can give them: our time, our company, our true selves.

In Narcotics Anonymous, recovering addicts care for one another. What waits at the other end of the telephone is not rejection, but the love, warmth, and identification of the NA Fellowship. Make that call!

Just for Today: In NA, I am among friends. I will reach out to others, giving and receiving in fellowship.

A Spiritual Principle a Day

January 16, 2025

Finding Our Passion and Purpose

Page 16

Something different happens as we move into recovery motivated by passion, hope, and excitement. We are released into our own lives.

Living Clean, Chapter 1, “Why We Stay”

Some of us spend our early days of recovery in NA more focused on what we were trapped in and what we are escaping–compulsion, isolation, alienation, desperation–than aware of what we want in our lives. We see right away that people in NA have gained some freedom from the consequences of addiction, and hope keeps us coming back. It didn't take long to realize that many recovering addicts get much more than freedom from the cage of addiction–they gain freedom to explore the world outside that cage.

“When I was using, every other interest took a backseat to my disease,” one member wrote. “In one of my earliest meetings, I heard an addict share about going into the wilderness to get back into rock climbing after 15 years away from it. I had no interest in climbing rocks, but the idea of being released into the wild was so exciting to me. I decided to find a passion of my own.”

That's how it goes in recovery: We regain the ability to pursue our interests. Rock climbing, songwriting, restoring old cars–our lives become our own to live. For many of us, the drive and excitement to follow our own interests grows out of our passion for recovery and carrying the message. Another member wrote, “I was so stoked about life without drugs in early recovery. As soon as I had enough cleantime, people invited me to share on H&I panels left and right, and I felt like I had a purpose. After years of thinking the world was full of threats, I started seeing opportunities everywhere.”

———     ———     ———     ———     ———

Where addiction limits us and makes our world smaller, recovery opens us up to the world. What opportunities are on my horizon today?

Do you need help with a drug problem?

“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…” 

Subscribe to NAWS Emails

Sign up to receive NAWS Updates and NAWS News emails as well as Just for Today and SPAD daily emails.