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.

Click here to view a series of short videos that will showcase some of the valuable resources available on na.org.
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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. 

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

June 05, 2025

Honest prayer

Page 163

Although honesty is difficult to practice, it is most rewarding.

Basic Text, p. 96

How difficult we find it to be honest! Many of us come to NA as confused about what really happened in our lives that it sometimes takes months and years to sort it all out. The truth of our history is not always as we have told it. How can we begin to be more truthful?

Many of us find it the easiest to be honest in prayer. With our fellow addicts, we sometimes find that we have a hard time telling the whole truth. We feel certain that we won't be accepted if we let others know us as we really are. It's hard to live up to the “terminally hip and fatally cool” image so many of us portrayed! In prayer, we find an acceptance from our Higher Power that allows us to open our hearts with honesty.

As we practice this honesty with the God of our understanding, we often find that it has a ripple effect in our communications with others. We get in the habit of being honest. We begin to practice honesty when we share at meetings and work with others. In return, we find our lives enriched by deepening friendships. We even find that we can be more honest with ourselves, the most important person to be truthful with!

Honesty is a quality that is developed through practice. It isn't always easy to be totally truthful, but when we begin with our Higher Power, we find it easier to extend our honesty to others.

Just for Today: I will be honest with God, myself, and others.

A Spiritual Principle a Day

June 05, 2025

Valuing Self-Acceptance over Validation

Page 162

We no longer have to look for the approval of others because we are satisfied with being ourselves.

IP #19, Self-Acceptance, “The Twelve Steps are the solution”

For many of us, needing others' approval–or seeking validation–is perched near the top of our character defects list. We have lived in constant fear of making the wrong choices and others knowing our faults, weaknesses, and mistakes. We did everything we could to avoid being judged and actively, sometimes obsessively, sought others to tell us we were worthy, lovable, desirable, or cool. After a lifetime of self-deprecation, self-pity, and self-harm, how do we gain self-acceptance?

Self-awareness is key to self-acceptance. Working our Steps sparks that awareness. By sharing our inventories, assessing our defects, and struggling not to act on them, we gain a new perspective: We have been our own most vigorous judges and harshest punishers, not others. We harmed ourselves with the delusion that others' approval would make us satisfied with being ourselves. The emptiness we feel cannot be filled by validation from others. We have to find it within ourselves.

Understanding what doesn't work is a good place to start. And soon, we see that self-acceptance is an inside job that doesn't happen with a flip of a switch. We work hard to accept ourselves as we are now, so we can make the changes we want to see. We can lovingly reintegrate parts of ourselves we used to disown because they were of no use to us in active addiction. Recovery helps us revamp mistakes into learning experiences rather than excuses to rag on ourselves and quit trying. As we continue to take personal inventory, we discover how we want to live our lives, who we want to spend them with, and what makes our hearts sing.

Self-acceptance allows us to value someone's insight without living for their approval or, for that matter, bowing to their condemnation.

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I know my strengths and my liabilities today, and I'm working to accept both. Others have a role in my life, but it's not to determine my worth.

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…” 

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