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
We're in recovery now. Through living the program, we've attained some stability in our lives. Our faith in a Higher Power has grown. Our individual spiritual awakening is progressing comfortably. So now what? Do we simply sit still and enjoy? Of course not. We find a way to be of service.
We tend to think of service only in terms of committee service or holding a position at some level, but service goes far beyond this understanding. In fact, we can find opportunities to be of service in nearly every area of our lives. Our jobs are a form of service to our communities, no matter what our occupation. The work we do in our homes serves our families. Perhaps we do volunteer work in our communities.
What a difference our service efforts make! If we doubt this, we can just imagine what the world would be like if no one bothered to be of service to others. Our work serves humanity. The message we carry goes beyond the rooms of recovery, affecting everything we do.
A Spiritual Principle a Day
In a program where the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop using, it logically follows that there are myriad ways to work the program of Narcotics Anonymous. What doesn't necessarily follow that same logic is the fact that we addicts in recovery can lose our patience--or have none to start with--for addicts whose program differs from our own. For a bunch of nonconformists, we can sure be rigid. We certainly can have plenty of opinions about what works and doesn't work: how and when we work Steps, how we sponsor, what service looks like, to hug or not to hug, to medicate or not to medicate. These are the opinions of individual members, not NA's.
Our passion about these opinions comes from our passion for recovery. We know what is working for us and what we see work for others. Yet there are times when we'd do well to infuse that passion for our experience with compassion for others who don't "get it" the way we expect they should.
When we keep an open mind about the varied ways that members recover from addiction, we are honoring Tradition Three. When we become earnest in our desire to reach out to other members who are different from us, we are practicing compassion. If there's any logic here, that openness will make us more patient with newcomers because we know that everyone walks a different path. Who knows? We might even learn something.
Translated literally from its Latin roots, compassion means "suffering together." While some may take issue with "suffering" defining what we're doing together in NA, there's one thing that we can agree on: We are in this thing together.
