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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.
August 29, 2026 |
Don\'t look back |
| Page 251 |
| "The steps offer 'a big change from a life dominated by guilt and remorse. Our futures are changed because we don't have to avoid those who we have harmed. As a result... we receive a new freedom that can end isolation.'" |
| Basic Text, p. 39 |
| Many of us come to Narcotics Anonymous full of regrets about our past. Our steps help us begin to resolve those regrets. We examine our lives, admit our wrongs, make amends for them, and sincerely try to change our behavior. In doing so, we find a joyous sense of freedom. No longer must we deny or regret our past. Once we've made our amends, what's done is truly over and gone. From that point on, where we come from ceases to be the most important thing about us. It's where we are going that counts. In NA, we begin to look forward. True, we live and stay clean just for today. But we find that we can begin to set goals, dream dreams, and look ahead to the joys a life in recovery has to offer. Looking forward keeps us centered in where we are going, not remorseful or regretful about our past. After all, it is hard to move forward if we are looking back. |
| Just for Today: The steps have freed me from regrets over my past. Today, I look forward to my new life in recovery. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
August 29, 2026 |
Hope in Darkness and in Light |
| Page 249 |
| "We find [hope] again and again as our journey continues: In the dark moments when we realize we can go on anyway, and in our triumphs--it is possible." |
| Living Clean, Chapter 7, "Living Our Principles" |
| The first bit of hope we experienced in NA came from a place of defeat. Using drugs hadn't worked for us. Our grand experiment of solving our living problems with mind- and mood-altering substances was a profound failure. In that dark place, though, a ray of light shone through: We could find a way out of addiction and into recovery. Once we have been clean for a while, many of our hopes come from more positive places. We think about how much more we can accomplish with our career goals, our creative endeavors, our loving relationships. Maybe we want to sponsor more addicts or try out new service positions. Having hope for the good things that will come our way is great, but we would do well to remember how much more precious hope can be when we have very little of it. We are bound to experience tremendous disappointments when we stay clean for years and decades, some of which rattle us to our very core. We bury parents, children, siblings, or spouses--and lots of fellow addicts. We lose jobs and relationships, we make terrible mistakes, and hurt people we love. Guilt, shame, and loneliness take up so much space in the room that it's hard to make any space for hope, even when it is what we most desperately need. Hope is why we must stay in the practice of going to meetings, sharing, calling our sponsor, reading literature, and talking to other addicts when life is going well for us. We get to see clean addicts find their way through incredible difficulties by showing up--no matter how fragile or broken--and putting themselves in the position to receive some hope. When we find ourselves there, fragile or broken, we think of the others we have seen walk through it, and we know it can be done. We must go on--together, we can. |
| I will pay attention to members going through the unthinkable and do my best to offer them hope. If I am one of those members, I will go where I know I can find hope--to an NA meeting. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |