December 11

Misery is optional

No one is forcing us to give up our misery.

Basic Text, p. 29

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Its funny to remember how reluctant we once were to surrender to recovery.  We seemed to think we had wonderful, fulfilling lives as using addicts and that giving up our drugs would be worse than serving a life sentence at hard labor.  In rea…[Read more]

November 4

Exchanging love

…we give love because it was given so freely to us. New frontiers are open to us as we learn how to love. Love can be the flow of life energy from one person to another.

Basic Text, p. 105

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Love given, and love received, is the essence of life itself. It is the universal common denominator, connecting us…[Read more]

November 3

No matter what

We eventually have to stand on our own feet and face life on its own terms, so why not from the start?

Basic Text, p. 85

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Some of us feel that we should protect newcomers by telling them that, while everything used to be horrible, now that were in recovery its all wonderful. We feel that we might scare someone…[Read more]

October 31

Our relationship with a Higher Power

Ongoing recovery is dependent on our relationship with a loving God who cares for us and will do for us what we find impossible to do for ourselves.

Basic Text, p. 99

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Working the Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous gives us a fresh start in life and some guidance for living in the world.…[Read more]

October 27

Living in the present

We want to look our past in the face, see it for what it really was, and release it so we can live today.

Basic Text, p. 29

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For many of us, the past is like a bad dream. Our lives arent the same any more, but we still have fleeting, highly charged emotional memories of a really uncomfortable past. The…[Read more]

October 17

The Truth

Everything we know is subject to revision, especially what we know about the truth.

Basic Text, p. 94

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Many of us thought we could recognize The Truth. We believed the truth was one thing, certain and unchanging, which we could grasp easily and without question. The real truth, however, was that we often couldnt…[Read more]

October 16

The simplest prayer

 …praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step Eleven

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How do we pray?  With little experience, many of us dont even know how to begin.  The process, however, is neither difficult nor complicated.

We came to Narcotics Anonymous because of our drug addict…[Read more]

October 15

Choices

 We did not choose to become addicts.

Basic Text, p. 3

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When we were growing up, all of us had dreams.  Every child has heard a relative or neighbor ask, What do you want to be when you grow up?  Even if some of us didnt have elaborate dreams of success, most of us dreamed of work, families, and a future of dignity…[Read more]

October 14

The end of loneliness

With the love that I am shown in Narcotics Anonymous, I have no excuse for loneliness.

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Addiction is a lonely disease. We may be surrounded by people but, sooner or later, our addiction drives a wedge between us and even our closest loved ones. Many of us are driven to Narcotics Anonymous by a…[Read more]

October 13

Making a difference

Words cannot describe the sense of spiritual awareness that we receive when we have given something, no matter how small, to another person.

Basic Text, p. 104

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Sometimes it seems as though there is so much wrong with the world that we might as well forget trying to make a difference. After all, we think,…[Read more]

October 12

Being right

When we admit that our lives have become unmanageable, we dont have to argue our point of view…. We no longer have to be right all the time.

Basic Text, p. 58

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Nothing isolates us more quickly from the warmth and camaraderie of our fellow NA members than having to be right. Insecure, we pretend to be some…[Read more]

October 11

Eyeglasses and attitudes

Our best thinking got us into trouble…. Recovery is an active change in our ideas and attitudes.

Basic Text, p. 55

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In active addiction, the world probably looked like a horrible place. Using helped us tolerate the world we saw. Today, however, we understand that the worlds condition wasnt…[Read more]

October 10

Consequences

Before we got clean, most of our actions were guided by impulse. Today, we are not locked into this type of thinking.

Basic Text, p. 90

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Ever been tempted to do something even when you knew the results would be disastrous? Ever thought about how much it was going to hurt to do what you were tempted to do, then…[Read more]

October 8

A new pattern of living

We suspect that if we do not use what we have, we will lose what we have.

Basic Text, p. 78

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Addiction gave a pattern to our lives, and with it a meaninga dark, diseased meaning, to be sure, but a meaning nonetheless.  The Narcotics Anonymous recovery program gives us a new pattern of living to rep…[Read more]

October 5
Ask for mercy, not justice
Many of us have difficulty admitting that we caused harm for others… We cut away our justifications and our ideas of being a victim.
Basic Text, p. 38
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Our lives are progressing nicely. Things are going good, and each year in recovery brings more material and spiritual gifts. We may have a little money in…[Read more]

October 4

Thirty-day wonder

When we first begin to enjoy relief from our addiction, we run the risk of assuming control of our lives again. We forget the agony and pain that we have known.

Basic Text, p. 50

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Many of us have been thirty-day wonders. We were desperate and dying when we showed up at our first NA meeting. We identified…[Read more]

October 3

Losing self-will

Our egos, once so large and dominant, now take a back seat because we are in harmony with a loving God. We find that we lead richer, happier, and much fuller lives when we lose self-will.

Basic Text, p. 105

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Addiction and self-will go hand in hand. The unmanageability that we admitted to in Step One was as…[Read more]