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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.
May 14, 2026 |
Oops! |
| Page 140 |
| "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." |
| Basic Text, p. 23 |
| Mistakes! We all know how it feels to make them. Many of us feel that our entire lives have been a mistake. We often regard our mistakes with shame or guilt--at the very least, with frustration and impatience. We tend to see mistakes as evidence that we are still sick, crazy, stupid, or too damaged to recover. In truth, mistakes are a very vital and important part of being human. For particularly stubborn people (such as addicts), mistakes are often our best teachers. There is no shame in making mistakes. In fact, making new mistakes often shows our willingness to take risks and grow. It's helpful, though, if we learn from our mistakes; repeating the same ones may be a sign that we're stuck. And expecting different results from the same old mistakes--well, that's what we call "insanity." It just doesn't work. |
| Just for Today: Mistakes aren't tragedies. But please, Higher Power, help me learn from them! |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
May 14, 2026 |
Autonomy and the Ties That Bind |
| Page 139 |
| "Autonomy offers us the freedom to try new things, and we demonstrate courage when we make new efforts to better carry our message." |
| Guiding Principles, Tradition Four, "For Groups" |
| When Tradition Four says that "each group should be autonomous," it opens the gate for creative expressions of our primary purpose. What comes next--"except in matters affecting other groups or NA as a whole"--defines the path beyond that gate. The other eleven Traditions and our spiritual principles guide us along that path. They offer direction to ensure the best possible conditions for our journey and mark potential trouble to keep us from wandering off a cliff. "We don't just do as we please. We do what's right," as one member put it. "At our business meetings, my home group considers two questions: 'How do our actions carry the message?' and 'What else can we do to improve the atmosphere of recovery?'" Keeping our primary purpose foremost in mind has a clarifying effect. It ensures that each innovation is motivated by our desire to carry the message more effectively. Changes in society, in the neighborhood, or in the law can impact our meetings and often call us to innovate. We do our best to let go of that "this is the way we've always done it" mindset, which can undermine the courage we need to exercise group autonomy. It may be helpful to distinguish between the capital "T" Traditions that guide all our efforts in NA and the small "t" traditions--local customs or norms--that sometimes feel as important. Longtime members assure us that we won't break this thing by thinking a bit outside the box. We're reminded to strive for unity, not uniformity, and to evaluate proposed changes with our hearts open and the guidance of all Twelve Traditions in mind. We can practice our autonomy and pay attention to the ties that bind. When we do, we find that--as promised--all will be well. |
| I will appreciate both the freedom that group autonomy offers and the continuity that our guiding principles provide. |
| Copyright (c) 2007-2026, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved |