Before coming to the Fellowship of NA, we could not manage our own lives. We could not live and enjoy life as other people do. We had to have something different and we thought we had found it in drugs. We placed their use ahead of the welfare of our families, our wives, husbands, and our children. We had to have drugs at all costs. We did many people great harm but most of all we harmed ourselves. Through our inability to accept personal responsibilities we were actually creating our own problems. We seemed to be incapable of facing life on its own terms.
Most of us realized that in our addiction we were slowly committing suicide, but addiction is such a cunning enemy of life that we had lost the power to do anything about it. Many of us ended up in jail or sought help through medicine, religion, and psychiatry. None of these methods was sufficient for us. Our disease always resurfaced or continued to progress until in desperation we sought help from each other in Narcotics Anonymous.
After coming to NA, we realized we were sick people. We suffered from a disease from which there is no known cure. It can, however, be arrested at some point and recovery is then possible.
Reprinted from the Little White Booklet, Narcotics Anonymous.
© 1986 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc., PO Box 9999, Van Nuys, CA 91409
ISBN 0-912075-65-1 10/00