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
Perhaps one of the most difficult truths we must face in our recovery is that we are as powerless over another's addiction as we are over our own. We may think that because we've had a spiritual awakening in our own lives we should be able to persuade another addict to find recovery. But there are limits to what we can do to help another addict.
We cannot force them to stop using. We cannot give them the results of the steps or grow for them. We cannot take away their loneliness or their pain. There is nothing we can say to convince a scared addict to surrender the familiar misery of addiction for the frightening uncertainty of recovery. We cannot jump inside other peoples' skins, shift their goals, or decide for them what is best for them.
However, if we refuse to try to exert this power over another's addiction, we may help them. They may grow if we allow them to face reality, painful though it may be. They may become more productive, by their own definition, as long as we don't try and do it for them. They can become the authority on their own lives, provided we are only authorities on our own. If we can accept all this, we can become what we were meant to be--carriers of the message, not the addict.
A Spiritual principle a day
Of all the spiritual principles in this book, service may be the most directly related to action. Sure, service has a place in our hearts, minds, and souls, but we aren't practicing this principle unless we are doing something.
Our primary purpose in Narcotics Anonymous is service. Essentially, that means carrying the message of recovery to the still-suffering addict who can be any of us at any moment. Participating in service to other addicts, both on an individual level and within the Fellowship, helps us to keep each other and NA alive and thriving.
We often say there are no "musts" in NA, but the Basic Text says otherwise in one of its earliest passages. Depending on who we are, where we are in our recovery, or even what we ate for breakfast that morning, we may find this direction--that all of NA service must be motivated by our primary purpose--either inspirational or distressing. Some of us may be more driven than ever to carry the message. Others may start to second-guess our motivations for service. We may get defensive at the absoluteness of the statement that "everything" we're doing "must" be motivated by the purest, most fundamental "desire" to help another. Really? All the time?
Truthfully, the framework of NA--the Steps, Traditions, Concepts, and principles--are indeed oriented toward our singular purpose. Because of the simplicity of service as a principle and its reliance on action to practice it, showing up is all we have to do, really: go to a meeting and share what's going on, answer the phone when our sponsee calls, pitch in for the Seventh Tradition, fill the teakettle. We come early and stay late.
Our purely motivated desire to carry the message won't always be there, but we take the action anyway. That's service in a nutshell.
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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