Welcome

This pamphlet was written to answer some of your questions concerning the program of Narcotics Anonymous. Our message is very simple: We have found a way to live without using drugs, and we are happy to share it with anyone for whom drugs are a problem. 

Welcome to your first NA meeting. NA offers addicts a way to live drug-free. If you are not sure you’re an addict, don’t worry about it; just keep coming to our meetings. You will have all the time you need to make up your own mind.

If you are like many of us when we attended our first NA meeting, you may be feeling pretty nervous and think that everyone at the meeting is focusing on you. If so, you are not the only one. Many of us have felt the same way. It has been said, “If your stomach’s all tied up in knots, you’re probably in the right place.” We often say that no one comes through the doors of NA by mistake. Nonaddicted people don’t spend their time wondering if they’re addicts. They don’t even think about it. If you’re wondering whether or not you’re an addict, you might be one. Just allow yourself the time to listen to us share about what it has been like for us. Perhaps you will hear something that sounds familiar to you. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have used the same drugs others mention. It is not important which drugs you used; you’re welcome here if you want to stop using. Most addicts experience very similar feelings, and it is in focusing on our similarities, rather than our differences, that we are helpful to one another. 

You may be feeling hopeless and afraid. You may think that this program, like other things you have tried, will not work. Or you may think that it will work for someone else but not for you because you feel you are different than us. Most of us felt like that when we first came to NA. Somehow we knew that we couldn’t go on using drugs, but we didn’t know how to stop or stay clean. We were all afraid to let go of something that had become so important to us. It is a relief to discover that the only requirement for membership in NA is a desire to stop using..........