Welcome to the Burlington County Area of Narcotics Anonymous
“The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using”…Tradition 3
DRUG PROBLEM? CALL OUR HELPLINE: 1-800-992-0401
UPCOMING MEETINGS
The NA White Booklet
If you are new to Narcotics Anonymous, we recommend the Narcotics Anonymous White Booklet, also known as “The Little White Book” and as NA’s first piece of Literature. It’s a great introduction to the program to get you started! Click on the image to download the booklet. You can also explore one of the other informational pamphlets found on the Literature page of this website..
What is NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS?
~ Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text, page 9.
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Narcotics Anonymous is an international, community-based association of recovering drug addicts with over 58,000 weekly meetings in over 131 countries worldwide
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Recovery from addiction is possible and available through the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous.
Just For Today
The longer we stay clean, the less surely we "know" what our Higher Power's will for us is--and the less it matters. Knowledge of our Higher Power's will becomes less a "knowing" thing and more a "feeling" thing. We still practice the Eleventh Step faithfully. But rather than look for "signs" from our Higher Power, we begin to rely more on our intuition, trusting our feelings about what will make us comfortable.
After staying clean a few years, what we do seem to know is when we are acting against God's will for us. When we are going against God's will, we get that old uncomfortable feeling in our gut. That queasiness is a warning that, if we continue in this direction, ahead lie many sleepless nights. We need to pay attention to such feelings, for they are often signals that we are acting contrary to our Higher Power's will for us.
Our Eleventh Step clearly states the true goal of prayer and meditation: improvement of our conscious contact with the God of our understanding, bringing us clearer knowledge of our Higher Power's will for us and the power to carry it out. We know God's will most clearly by how it feels, not by "signs" or words--and it feels right.
Spiritual Principle a Day
On the day of our first NA meeting, we may have predictions about what our lives will look like without drugs, but what if our dreams don't come true? Desperation has forced us to strive for something new, but what will it be? We now have choices about how we live that we didn't have before, but how do we know which is the "right" path and if we're following our life's "true" purpose? If we don't have a whole lot of faith in the future, how can we get more?
Whatever questions we have about finding our true purpose, the same crystal ball that didn't work when we were high doesn't when we're clean either. Thankfully, more is revealed as we stay clean. Through the Steps, we discover our values and convictions. For many of us, that means our purpose radically shifts, or we find one at last. Recovery gives us a chance to revisit goals that addiction interfered with, or we start from scratch. Hope helps us to believe we're headed down the right path, and faith keeps our feet moving in that direction.
We find purpose (or many purposes, as time passes) in NA, in a career, in relationships, in our communities, on a mountaintop, in a foreign land, or in sitting still. We learn to serve others more than our egos. We practice self-acceptance and model it for newer members who think that being okay with themselves is unattainable. Many of us also have--or regain and revitalize--our faith in a God who has a plan for us that we can't predict, ardently believing this plan is better than one we could create on our own. Others find purpose in a life guided by spiritual principles or believe the universe conspires in our favor, cheering us on. Having faith in finding and living our purpose takes practice. Recovery in NA provides us with tools to manage our discomfort with trial and error, impossible without plenty of open-mindedness and willingness along the journey.