Welcome to the Central Coast Area of Narcotics Anonymous
Serving: Paso Robles, Cambria, Atascadero, San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande, Santa Maria, Lompoc
Just for today daily meditation
Learning in recovery is hard work. The things we most need to know are often the hardest to learn. We study recovery to prepare ourselves for the experiences life will give us. As we listen to others share in meetings, we take mental notes we can refer to later. To be prepared, we study our notes and literature between "lessons." Just as students have the opportunity to apply their knowledge during tests, so do we have the opportunity to apply our recovery during times of crisis.
As always, we have a choice in how we will approach life's challenges. We can dread and avoid them as threats to our serenity, or we can gratefully accept them as opportunities for growth. By confirming the principles we've learned in recovery, life's challenges give us increased strength. Without such challenges, however, we could forget what we've learned and begin to stagnate. These are the opportunities that prod us to new spiritual awakenings.
We will find that there is often a period of rest after each crisis, giving us time to get accustomed to our new skills. Once we've reflected on our experience, we are called on to share our knowledge with someone who is studying what we've just learned. In the school of recovery, all of us are teachers as well as students.
A Spiritual principle a day
Let's start with an uncomfortable truth: We are judgmental because we are human. Human beings assess one another; we compare ourselves. We can be territorial and take sides. We come by this honestly; our survival once depended on it! Add the self-centered nature of addiction to our humanness, and then throw in something we care passionately about (such as the Fellowship of NA)--and our judgment can become a weapon to control outcomes about NA-related issues that other members also care about.
We can, however, turn down the volume on our judgments. With the volume adjusted, we learn that we can approach people and situations without engaging our fight-or-flight instincts. Our first thoughts may still be judgmental, but recovery gives us options about our behavior. It's our actions that matter most.
When we have some cleantime and service experience, it's tempting to tell members, groups, and service committees what's what. But having knowledge and wisdom doesn't give us authority. Group conscience is always more powerful than individual conscience. Sometimes--to our great surprise--newer members don't defer to those of us who have been around for a while, offering insights or suggestions the group had been missing before.
Practicing the principle of goodwill with members doesn't mean we stay silent. Our opinions matter. Exercising goodwill assures those opinions don't matter more or less than anyone else's. We listen to others, don't force the outcome to meet our desires, allow others to make mistakes (yes, even the ones we have already made), and acknowledge that our fellow members want the same things as we do: to stay clean and to carry the message in the most effective way possible.
Goodwill invokes our primary purpose. It serves the greater good of NA, not our egos.
WHAT IS THE NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS PROGRAM?
NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. This is a program of complete abstinence from all drugs. There is only one requirement for membership, the desire to stop using. We suggest that you keep an open mind and give yourself a break. Our program is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work.
For more information on Narcotics Anonymous,
please go to the:
Narcotics Anonymous World Services Website,
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