0%
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 29, 2026 |
Just for today |
| Page 283 |
| "When we stop living in the here and now, our problems become magnified unreasonably." |
| Basic Text, p. 99 |
| "Just for today"--it's a comforting thought. If we try to live in the past, we may find ourselves torn by painful, disquieting memories. The lessons of our using are not the teachers we seek for recovery. Living in tomorrow means moving in with fear. We cannot see the shape of the secret future, and uncertainty brings worry. Our lives look overwhelming when we lose the focus of today. Living in the moment offers freedom. In this moment, we know that we are safe. We are not using, and we have everything we need. What's more, life is happening in the here and now. The past is gone and the future has yet to arrive; our worrying won't change any of it. Today, we can enjoy our recovery, this very minute. |
| Just for Today: I will stay in the here and now. Today-- this moment--I am free. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
September 29, 2026 |
Goodwill and Our Relationships |
| Page 281 |
| "In fact, the pyramid that is in our symbol is made up of relationships: with self, society, service, and God. Rooted in a base of goodwill, these are the relationships that bring us to a point of freedom." |
| Living Clean, Chapter 5, "Conscious Contact" |
| "A pyramid? I thought the NA symbol was just a square inside a circle." There are certainly many of us who are well acquainted with our symbol, who understand its meaning and its potential application to our recovery. We make sure that sponsees and other newer members are just as familiar with it as we are. There are probably far more of us in the Fellowship who are far less familiar. We see the depiction of the symbol and read the accompanying explanation when we first crack open the Basic Text. It looks like something from geometry class, so we glaze over it. But it's important, right? Our predecessors placed it right after the Table of Contents, and it's emblazoned on T-shirts and other NA memorabilia all over the world. Yet, for many of us, the symbol remains two-dimensional, just as it appears in print and also in the sense that we haven't given it much thought. On closer inspection, we can see that the diagram depicts something three-dimensional: a pyramid. While a pyramid's sides are vital to its strength and endurance, its weight and stability rise from the base. In our NA paradigm, that stability comes from goodwill. As the NA symbol depicts, goodwill is the foundation of all the relationships in our lives. Ideally, the Steps help us build a relationship with ourselves. The Traditions strengthen our involvement with society--other NA members, our loved ones, our work lives, and so on. The spiritual principles bring us closer to a Higher Power, and NA's Twelve Concepts ignite and support our relationship to service. The circle that wraps around the base, the "Universal Program," shows that there is room for all recovering addicts. Goodwill reinforces all this interconnectedness, and freedom is the resulting gift. Freedom is where the reinforcements have paid off, and the weight has been lifted. We cannot have healthy relationships without the support of goodwill. And we cannot have freedom without the strength of our relationships. |
| How free am I today? If freedom seems too aspirational at the moment, are there any cracks in my pyramid's foundation of goodwill that I can repair? |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |