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And recovery is then possible.
We are addicts seeking recovery. We used drugs to cover up our feelings, and did whatever was necessary to get them. Many of us woke up sick, unable to make it to work, or went to work loaded. Many of us stole to support our habit. We hurt the ones we loved. We did all these things and told ourselves,
“We can handle it.” We were looking for a way out. We couldn’t face life on its own terms.
A NEW SURRENDER
l’ve learned to look at it all from a principled distance. We have this fellowship full of newcomers who don’t know the full history of N.A. service.
At just about every meeting they attend they hear…”our common welfare should come first….. one Ultimate Authority, a loving God.. in our Group conscience our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern…. Each Group is autonomous……N.A. ought never… finance.. any outside enterprise ……N.A. ought to be fully self-supporting……… N.A. as such.. may create service boards and committees, directly responsible to those they serve.”
When l was in their seat, when l was new, l treated these principles as cherished truths, describing the nature of Narcotics Anonymous: pure and simple. Just as you and I did, they will probably soon be attracted to service in order to ‘give it away so they can keep it’. Today, that’s usually where their disillusionment begins. Ur where they begin to be corrupted, depending upon their character and the character of those members they find involved in service. Each of us discovers the spiritual corruption in N.A. structural service m a different way and each of us deals with it according to our own recovery.
We find that lock stepped compliance to ‘what is done here’ and unthinking uniformity masquerade as Unity, overriding any considerations of the truth and Spiritual Principles as they regard our common welfare.
We find that service committees tell N.A. Groups and members how to think and how to behave.
The conscience of those groups is either manipulated or ignored. Each service committee takes its lead from the next ‘higher’ service committee. We find our leaders running the show with strong hands and wills, skillfully assuring us that they do what they do in our best interests. We find a structure more nearly resembling representative government than any form of ‘service’ we may have considered. We see any group that differs from the norm criticized, ostracized or outcast, and are told not to go near those people because they are sick and not ‘real’ N.A.
As we become more sophisticated and perhaps ask our representative to read some financial reports from our primary service center we realize that outside concerns buy our literature at reduced rates so that they may charge the same amount we charge our members while defraying their own costs. Ur in other words, we indirectly finance outside enterprise. We also see from these reports that large ‘profits’ are made on the literature that we buy as newcomers or buy as groups to give to newcomers and that this profit is used to finance service projects that are supposed to benefit our group.
We find that groups don’t really need to be self supporting that their services are paid for through our newcomer tax. We find that most every function sponsored by a structural service committee is designed to raise funds or encourage conformity. We learn that our services are funded by literature/ convention profits and fund-raisers with groups’ donations being relatively meaningless as funding.
Consequently we are not amazed to discover that the services rendered by our boards and committees were seldom if ever requested by most or even any of the groups. We wonder how our structural services, our boards and committees are ‘directly responsible’ when the pure and simple Spiritual Principles shared at most every meeting of N.A. seem foreign to the conduct of these boards and committees we have created. We question the honesty of the Narcotics Anonymous fellowship when we look at the service structure it has built for it self.
How has this happened?
NA truly is a spiritual fellowship where an addict with the desire to stop using drugs can miraculously stop using, lose the desire to use and find a new way to live. We say our recovery in NA is based upon the application of spiritual principles in our lives. How then, can such blatant compromises of such basic spiritual principles be tolerated? Perhaps it’s because most of the fellowship is not aware of the reality of our services.
Perhaps it’s because most of our fellowship doesn’t know our real history. It sounds to me as if our fellowship needs to inventory it’s services, current and past so that we may begin living up to our principles here and now.
LETS PUT A STOP TO THE CURRUPTION BEFORE THE CURRUPTION PUTS A STOP TO OUR NEWCOMERS.
… ANONYMOUS
CHAPTER SIX
THE TWELVE TRADITIONS OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
We keep what we have only with vigilance and just as freedom for the individual comes from the Twelve Steps so freedom for the groups springs from our Traditions.
As long as the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would tear us apart, all will be well.
- Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to put principles before personalities.
- Our common welfare should come first; personal re covery depends on N.A. unity.
- For our Group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our Group conscience, our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.
- The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using.
- Each Group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other Groups, or N.A., as a whole.
- Each Group has but one primary purpose–to carry the message to the addict who still suffers.
- An N.A. Group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the N.A. name to any r lated facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property or prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
- Every N.A. Group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
- Narcotics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our Service Centers may employ special workers.
- N.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly respon sible to those they serve.
- N.A. has no opinion on outside issues; hence the N.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
Read the full chapter from the Grey Book here
A member takes a close look at tradition nine…
I was recently asked to share with a group of members on the ninth tradition. Study of any one of our traditions has recently made me aware of how intertwined the spiritual principles of our twelve traditions are. Achievement of the spiritual goal in each tradition is dependent upon the spiritual principles in several of the other traditions.
As I see it, our ninth tradition provides the ways and means to achieve the spiritual goals of the first tradition and our fifth tradition. The ninth tradition gives us the vehicle which allows our trusted servants to express and satisfy the will of our ultimate authority. Our directly responsible service boards and committees are composed of our leaders; those members in whom we’ve invested our trust. They do the jobs that we as groups require in order to make our message; recovery from addiction, more generally available. Directly responsible service boards and committees also offer us enhanced personal recovery through the development of N.A. unity. That all seems quite complex, but in the reality of practice, it’s really quite simple. We as a fellowship utilize our talents as individuals in order to live the twelfth step in our personal programs. We band together in recovery with addicts who seek it, we find that some of the jobs that need done require groups to band together. The ninth tradition provides for us a structure within which our autonomous groups may collectively achieve their primary purpose. We’re not organized, but we do have structure. Directly responsible to autonomous groups, our service boards and committees are different from each other because each of them serves the needs of a different part of the fellowship. Our service boards and committees need no autonomy because the are directly responsible to those they serve. Each service board or committee specializes in their activities according to the needs of the groups and members they serve in order to be directly responsible.
Direct responsibility is a two-sided affair. The people we trust to serve us become informed trough travel and communication within N.A. they learn the best ways to act on their own exclusively – direct responsibility demands that they receive at least their general instructions from us, the groups and the members. Therefore, it is their responsibility to inform us of what is required from them to accomplish the job we’ve trusted them to do. We members and groups need the correct information to make logical decisions. It is equally our responsibility as members of autonomous groups to seeks out this information, accept information from those we trust to serve and discuss it so that we might provide the guidance that groups in order to carry the message of recovery from addiction more effectively than we can as individuals. In our meetings, we reinforce each other’s recovery as well as offering recovery to new people. As individuals and groups of individuals we sponsor the addicts seeking recovery in their attempt to stop using. Lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live. That’s what N.A. is all about. We are each, as individuals, responsible in our twelfth step to carry the message to the addict seeking recovery. We gratefully live this responsibility in order to keep the recovery we have found in N.A. as groups, this remains our primary purpose so that we may work together for our common welfare and the unity that results in enhanced personal recovery. Each of us has a special way of carrying the message of recovery from addiction. We meet together in groups and work out our differences. We design our meetings so that the message becomes more available. A loving Ultimate Authority is expressed when we work together to do this. We select from among our members the best qualified and most willing, trusting them with the jobs that we need done. They serve us. Although the groups is the most primary vehicle of sharing our trusted servants need to act. We’ve often seen groups make decisions based on rumor and mis information, forcing their directly responsible service boards and committees to take action detrimental to our common welfare. Sometimes these inappropriate actions result in our message becoming less available rather than more available. We have also seen service boards and committees acting in opposition to the wishes of those they serve, or simply failing to seek guidance from those they are designed to serve. This usually results in disunity, confusion and fewer addicts finding recovery.
It seems to me that directly responsible service boards and committees would result in more addicts finding the life saving message of recovery from addiction, more unity, more trust in our servants, and a clearer expression of the will of our Ultimate Authority. We can not allow groups of individuals to perform tasks in the name of Narcotics anonymous unless they are directly responsible to the fellowship of narcotics anonymous. We may only create service boards and committees which are directly responsible to us. Clearly stated in the ninth tradition, it is our duty to guarantee that any service board or committee or any groups of individuals functioning in the name of N.A. and directly responsible to N.A. and composed of our trusted servants. We the groups and the members of N.A. give the directives of our service boards and committees.
Here’s the Why of Anonymi Foundation.org website and all A.S.I.S. for NA activities
In 1984 the course of NA Service changed – in reality it changed back to what it had been for years but I was too new (5yrsClean) to realize it then! At the 1983 WSC the motion “…That RSR’s Only Vote at the WSC” came up after truly having been distributed to all of the fellowship for consideration and vote in the Groups of NA (“…those they serve” that the WSC was (is) Directly Responsible to) the vote of WSC voting members was taken: and this motion passed by 1 over the number required for a 2/3 majority. At this point the fellowship of NA had clearly stated through the process of Group Conscience that we wanted the WSC to abide in the simplest way with the process of group conscience, and that we required the WSC to become more clearly Directly Responsible to those they served. After some side comments the Chairman of the WSC declared the motion failed because the number of yea votes fell 1 short of 2/3 of those who were recorded at the previous roll call (now the vote it’s self was a roll-call vote) – this was an unprecedented declaration of changed voting procedure at the WSC arbitrarily imposed by the chairperson and the parliamentarian.
Two other things happened right then and just after that I’ll share when this had has time to sink in a bit…
In retrospect NA World Services had at that point clearly stated they would not abide by the 2nd and 9th Tradition
…shortly after they began selling our book at a discount to Hazleton: clearly stating they refused to abide by the 6th Tradition
…on the heels of this “above the Traditions” policy of world services they closed the Literature committee and hired professional writers refusing to abide by the 7th Tradition
I was there and I owe amends to you and every newcomer to NA since then for not doing more…not doing enough – to help our world services to abide by our traditions… All of my service beyond my service to the home group I belong to is my amends
We, in NA do not have provision to “be served” by any entity: board or committee unless that entity is directly responsible to us … so in reality everything that has happened since that vote was called defeated and WSC chose to defy the group conscience of NA – everything done by world services since then has no bearing on NA – yet we all know it has influence.
A wise man once said know the truth and that truth will set you free … now you know the truth please help us see how it sets us free…
Your Predecessors
A world-wide NA Home Group designed to provide our trusted servants (whose service has sometimes isolated them from their local groups) with the love and understanding they need to survive.