Welcome to Narcotics Anonymous of NJ. Our Message Is…
That an addict, any addict can stop using drugs,
lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live.
Helpline
If you feel you have a problem with drugs, call our helpline
Events
See upcoming NA events and activities in NJ
Narcotics Anonymous 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.
– Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text, page 9
Recovery from addiction is possible and available through the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous.
Narcotics Anonymous is FREEDOM from active addiction.
Narcotics Anonymous is an international, community-based association of recovering drug addicts with over 61,000 weekly meetings in over 131 countries worldwide.
Just for Today
When we come to our first meeting and hear that we must be honest, we may think, "Well now, that shouldn't be too difficult. All I have to do is stop lying." To some of us, this comes easily. We no longer have to lie to our employers about our absence from work. We no longer have to lie to our families about where we were the night before. By not using drugs anymore, we find we have less to lie about. Some of us may have difficulty even with this kind of honesty, but at least learning not to lie is simple--you just don't do it, no matter what. With courage, determined practice, the support of our fellow NA members, and the help of our Higher Power, most of us eventually succeed at this kind of honesty.
Honesty, though, means more than just not lying. The kind of honesty that is truly indispensable in recovery is self-honesty, which is neither easy nor simple to achieve. In our addiction, we created a storm of self-deception and rationalization, a whirlwind of lies in which the small, quiet voice of self-honesty could not be heard. To become honest with ourselves, we first must stop lying to ourselves. In our Eleventh Step meditations, we must become quiet. Then, in the resulting stillness, we must listen for truth. When we become silent, self-honesty will be there for us to find.
A Spiritual Principle a Day
Addicts are often viewed and portrayed as disaffected loners or rebels without causes. Many of us were (or still are) quite comfortable with that image. Even so, identifying what we believed in or what we wanted out of life escaped most of us before recovery. Breaking out of our rut and genuinely standing for something different from the people in our using lives was rare--and certainly not something we viewed as self-support.
For one addict, approaching and finding self-support came at the end of the road: "My whole family used, and I let that stop me from getting clean more than once," the member wrote. "I didn't want them to think I was abandoning them or that I thought I was better than them. But I couldn't live that way anymore."
Changing our lives is scary enough already, even without the additional burden of having loved ones who don't share our interests or goals. Not everyone we used with wants recovery, but many people still respect our needs and boundaries when we get clean. We may grow apart from some people, but those who care about us want us to follow our own path.
We may feel a similar sense of hesitation about pursuing interests in recovery. We don't want to abandon our friends. "When I had a couple of years clean," one member shared, "I was the youngest person in my NA crew. I wanted to take college classes, but I thought I'd be ditching my people. My sponsor told me it was okay--he got the prison experience for me, now I could go get the college experience for him."
We don't have all of the time, energy, or money to do anything and everything we want. We can't be in two (or more!) places at once. Practicing self-support means taking responsibility for the choice of how we use our limited resources. Some of us may still rebel, but it's more likely we now have a cause to support.
