Narcotics Anonymous
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Wikipedia-Article "Narcotics Anonymous"
- Narcotics Anonymous is not to be confused with Narconon, an unrelated organization.
Narcotics Anonymous (NA) is "a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem". NA is a twelve-step program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. The only requirement for membership is "a desire to stop using." (White Booklet). Members "meet regularly to help each other stay clean." (White Booklet) Clean time is defined as complete abstinence from all mood and mind altering substances (including alcohol).
NA "has no opinion on outside issues," including those of politics, science or medicine. Membership in Narcotics Anonymous is free, there are no dues or fees. NA does have expenses, however, and therefore relies solely on member donations for its operations.
NA defines addiction as a progressive disease with no known cure. Addiction affects every area of the addict's life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. NA suggests that the disease of addiction can be arrested, and recovery is possible through the NA twelve-step program. The steps never mention drugs or drug use, rather they refer only to addiction, to indicate that addicts have a disease of which drug use is one symptom. Other symptoms include obsession, compulsion and self-centered fear Addicts often first enter NA after reaching a "bottom" in their life, a point at which life feels completely unmanageable. The unmanageable life of a using addict is characterized by "unemployability, dereliction and destruction," with the bitter ends of jails, institutions, and death. Every NA member reaches a different bottom, which can be wherever the addict chose to stop digging deeper in addiction. (NA Basic Text)
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Meetings and Home Groups
Regular meetings, hosted by NA groups are the basic unit of the NA Fellowship. Anyone is welcome at an "open" meeting, while "closed" meetings are limited to addicts and to people who think they may have a problem with drugs. Meetings are held in a variety of places such as church meeting rooms, community centers, parks, or any place that can accommodate a meeting.
"Home Group" members attend the same meeting on a regular basis to establish a recovery network and reliable routine. Group members are able to participate in the group business and play an important role in deciding how the group's meetings should be conducted. Groups also make decisions about issues that affect Narcotics Anonymous as a whole and are able to send their concerns to the service bodies that support them--Areas, Regions, Zones, and World Services.
Meeting formats vary, but in general tend to include time devoted to reading of NA literature--literature that was written by and for members of NA regarding the issues involved in living a clean life. Meetings also tend to include open sharing. Some groups choose to host a single speaker (such meetings are usually denoted "speaker meetings"). Many discussion meetings are open to anyone to share.
Other meeting formats include round robin (sharing goes around a circle or each speaker picks the next person to share). Some meetings focus on a particular piece of literature, such as "Just For Today" or the "Step Working Guides." Some meetings are common needs (special interest) meetings and support a particular group of people based on gender, sexual identity, age, language or other characteristic to identify and recover.
During the meeting, time is often given to NA-related announcements, and many meetings set aside time to recognize "anniversaries" of clean time. Individuals who have reached certain lengths of continuous clean time (30, 60, 90 days, 6 months, one or more years) are encouraged to announce their clean time to the group. In some meetings, and for certain anniversaries, keytags, medallions, or "chips" which denote the amount of clean time are distributed to those who announce their clean time.
The primary purpose of every NA group is "to carry the message to the addict who still suffers" (Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text). Therefore, the newcomer is the most important person in any meeting. The message of Narcotics Anonymous is hope, and the promise is freedom. The one promise of NA is that any addict can get clean, stay clean, and lose the desire to use drugs. According to Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text, the "Twelve Steps" are the source of this hope and freedom when worked to the best of one's ability.
Service
NA members are stronly suggested to get involved with service. There are many service positions at the group level such as meeting chairperson (opens and closes the meeting), secretary (makes announcements, distributes literature), treasurer (collects donations, pays expenses), and coffeemaker. Some groups have a greeter who hugs people as they enter the meeting. Group Service Representatives (GSRs) carry the group conscience to other levels of service.
In addition to service on the group level, Narcotics Anonymous has a service structure that typically operates at area, regional and world levels. These levels of service are below the groups and are directly responsible to the groups they serve. They do not govern the groups. World services is accountable to its member regions, who are in turn responsible to member areas. Area Service Committees serve the needs of groups and often put on special events, such as dances and picnics.
The Steps
The Twelve Steps are the foundation of the NA program. The Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous are:
1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Spirituality
Narcotics Anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious program. The literature suggests that members formulate their own personal understanding of a higher power. The only suggested guidelines are that this power be "loving, caring, and greater than one's self." Members are given complete freedom in coming to an understanding of a higher power that works for them. Individuals from countless spiritual and religious backgrounds, as well as many atheists and agnostics, have developed a working relationship with a higher power in Narcotics Anonymous. Some members who have difficulty with the term "God" substitute "higher power" or read it as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction."
The twelve steps of the NA program are based upon indispensible spiritual principles, three of which are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, embodied in the first three steps. These principles, when followed to the best of one's ability, allows for a new way of life.
NA is not a sect, cult, or religion. It is a spiritual program of recovery from the disease of addiction.
Sponsorship
It is highly recommended that members of Narcotics Anonymous find a sponsor. A sponsor is a member of NA who helps another member of the fellowship by sharing their personal experience with recovery and guiding them through the twelve steps.
It is often suggested that members find sponsors of the same sex with at least one year clean time.
Anonymity
"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalites." (Basic Text)
NA members identify themselves in meetings by their first name only. The spirit of anonymity is about placing "principles before personalities" and recognizing that no individual addict is superior to another.
The Twelve Traditions state that NA members "must always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films."
Development
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.
For many years, NA grew very slowly, spreading from Los Angeles to other major North American cities and Australia in the early 1970s. Within a few years, groups had formed in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, the Irish Republic, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Today, Narcotics Anonymous holds regular meetings in 116 countries with translations of literature available in 47 different languages. There are currently 119 translation projects underway.
See also
- Jimmy Kinnon (Jimmy K)
- Twelve Steps
- Twelve Traditions
- Addiction
External links
- Official Narcotics Anonymous Website
- NA Recovery Literature in English
- Who, What, How, and Why
- Am I an addict?
- Greater New York Region of N.A. (Largest Regional Service in the World)
- Santa Barbara, CA Area of N.A.
References
"Little White Booklet," World Service Office. "Narcotics Anonymous," 5th ed., 1988. World Service Office. ISBN: 0-912075-02-3. Also known as "Basic Text."