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NA members hold nearly 76,000 meetings weekly in 143 countries. We offer recovery from the effects of addiction through working a twelve-step program, including regular attendance at group meetings. The group atmosphere provides help from peers and offers an ongoing support network for addicts who wish to pursue and maintain a drug-free lifestyle.
Our name, Narcotics Anonymous, is not meant to imply a focus on any particular drug; NA’s approach makes no distinction between legal and illegal drugs including alcohol. Membership is free, and we have no affiliation with any organizations outside of NA including governments, religions, law enforcement groups, or medical and psychiatric associations. Through all of our service efforts and our cooperation with others seeking to help addicts, we strive to reach a day when every addict in the world has an opportunity to experience our message of recovery in their own language and culture. This website is the contribution by members living in Ventura County towards that worldwide effort.
We are not alone, you are not alone.
The Narcotics Anonymous message is “that an addict, any addict, can stop using drugs, lose the desire to use and find a new way to live.”
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.
September 03, 2026 |
Humility expressed by anonymity |
| Page 257 |
| "Humility is a by-product that allows us to grow and develop in an atmosphere of freedom and removes the fear of becoming known by our employers, families, or friends as addicts. " |
| Basic Text, pp. 75-76 |
| Many of us may not have understood the idea that "anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions." We wondered how this could be. What does anonymity have to do with our spiritual life? The answer is, plenty! By guarding and cherishing our anonymity, we earn spiritual rewards beyond comprehension. There is great virtue in doing something nice for someone and not telling anyone about it. By the same token, resisting the impulse to proudly announce our membership in NA to the world--in effect, asking everyone to acknowledge how wonderful we are--makes us value our recovery all the more. Recovery is a gift that we've received from a Power greater than ourselves. Boasting about our recovery, as if it were our own doing, leads to prideful feelings and grandiosity. But keeping our anonymity leads to humility and feelings of gratitude. Recovery is its own reward; public acclaim can't make it any more valuable than it already is. |
| Just for Today: Recovery is its own reward; I don't need to have mine approved of publicly. I will maintain and cherish my anonymity. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
September 03, 2026 |
Free to Be Authentically Me |
| Page 255 |
| "We can be ourselves in the present moment without fear or apology, without the need for approval or justification." |
| Living Clean, Chapter 7, "Awakenings" |
| As we lived through active addiction, few of us felt free to be fully ourselves. We often needed to pretend to be someone we weren't to get what we wanted or needed, and it didn't take long before we were confused about who we really were--if we ever had any idea in the first place. We were so accustomed to wearing masks that we didn't know what our own faces looked like anymore. The atmosphere of acceptance and welcome we found in NA was a breath of fresh air for those of us who couldn't breathe freely for a long, long time. The Basic Text tells us, "The masks have to go," and we notice that when the metaphorical masks come off, it's so much easier to breathe. For some of us, NA might be the very first place we have been where we suspected that we might be able to show our true selves to others. We may not feel that way in every meeting or with everyone we know in NA, but little by little, we become much more comfortable showing who we really are. The freedom to be ourselves flows directly out of the sense of security we develop by being welcomed and accepted in NA. Admitting that we are addicts was the first of many admissions; each time we show a bit more of who we truly are to our fellow members, we increase our sense of security and become free to learn even more about ourselves. We accept who we are and lose the need for approval from others. We no longer feel the need to justify our existence. The insecurity that defined so much of who we were in active addiction fades away, and we become who we were meant to be all along. |
| I will take off my mask and breathe more easily, knowing that others in NA will accept me for who I am. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |