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 of 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:

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.

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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

Daily Meditations

Just for Today

August 05, 2025

The shape of our thoughts

Page 227

“By shaping our thoughts with spiritual ideals, we are freed to become who we want to be.“

Basic Text, p. 105

Addiction shaped our thoughts in its own way. Whatever their shape may once have been, they became misshapen once our disease took full sway over our lives. Our obsession with drugs and self molded our moods, our actions, and the very shape of our lives.

Each of the spiritual ideals of our program serves to straighten out one or another of the kinks in our thinking that developed in our active addiction. Denial is counteracted by admission, secretiveness by honesty, isolation by fellowship, and despair by faith in a loving Higher Power. The spiritual ideals we find in recovery are restoring the shape of our thoughts and our lives to their natural condition.

And what is that “natural condition”? It is the condition we truly seek for ourselves, a reflection of our highest dreams. How do we know this? Because our thoughts are being shaped in recovery by the spiritual ideals we find in our developing relationship with the God we've come to understand in NA.

No longer does addiction shape our thoughts. Today, our lives are being shaped by our recovery and our Higher Power.

Just for Today: I will allow spiritual ideals to shape my thoughts. In that design, I will find the shape of my own Higher Power.

A Spiritual Principle a Day

August 05, 2025

Finding Purpose in One Another

Page 225

“Helping others is perhaps the highest aspiration of the human heart and something we have been entrusted with as a result of a Higher Power working in our lives.“

It Works, Step Twelve

Many of us wanted to help others before getting clean, but once we started using, doing so became difficult. One member described it this way: “My heart aspired to help people, but my brain never got the memo!” At some point in early recovery, many of us have the experience of sharing and then seeing another member relate. Maybe they nod in agreement, or they shake their head in shared amusement or disgust at the insidiousness and insanity of our disease. Maybe they vocalize–“That's right!”–or shed a tear. However they do it, they let us know that they know that we know–we share in the knowledge of the disease, and we share our experience with recovery, too.

This is how we get clean and stay clean–the therapeutic value of one addict helping another. We share experience, strength, and hope; we share tea and coffee; we share the joy of staying clean and the pain of losing fellow addicts. We do it together. At many points along the way, we are reminded of our purpose for being here and being together. Maybe it's when a nonmember asks, “Why do you still go to those meetings?” We might even wonder, Yeah, why do I? Then we remember–we are uniquely qualified to help other addicts, and helping addicts gives us purpose and keeps us clean.

When we go through something clean–an unintended pregnancy, parents with dementia, falling in or out of love–we are rarely the first ones in the room to do so. We share what we're going through so others can help us. Then we share what we went through so we can help others. Yes, we're each other's eyes and ears; sometimes we are also each other's trailblazers, coaches, older siblings. We have a reason for being here. And that reason is one another.

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A sense of purpose can fill that void I tried to fill with drugs. I will find purpose by sharing with and helping another addict.

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…”

Welcome to Narcotics Anonymous

Read NA Literature

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It Works: How and Why, “Third Tradition”

Is NA for me?

Need help for family or a friend?

Subscribe to NAWS Emails

Basic Text, “We Do Recover”

Recovery Quicklinks:

Service Quicklinks:

Information About NA

Daily Meditations

Just for Today

August 05, 2025

The shape of our thoughts

A Spiritual Principle a Day

August 05, 2025

Finding Purpose in One Another

Do you need help with a drug problem?

Subscribe to NAWS Emails