Daily Readings
Just for Today & Spiritual Principle a DayJust For Today
We need our fellow NA members--their experience, their friendship, their laughter, their guidance, and much, much more. Yet many of us hesitate to call our sponsor or visit our NA friends. We don't want to impose on them. We think about phoning someone, but we don't feel worthy of their time. We fear that if they ever got to know us--really know us--they'd surely reject us.
We forget that our fellow NA members are just like us. There's nothing we've done, no place we've been, no feeling we've felt that other recovering addicts won't be able to identify with. The more we let others get to know us, the more we'll hear, "You're in the right place. You're among friends. You belong. Welcome!"
We also forget that, just as we need others, they need us. We're not the only ones who want to feel like we belong, who want to experience the warmth of friendship, who want someone to share with. If we isolate ourselves from our fellow members, we deprive them of something they need, something only we can give them: our time, our company, our true selves.
In Narcotics Anonymous, recovering addicts care for one another. What waits at the other end of the telephone is not rejection, but the love, warmth, and identification of the NA Fellowship. Make that call!
Spiritual Principle a Day
Some of us spend our early days of recovery in NA more focused on what we were trapped in and what we are escaping--compulsion, isolation, alienation, desperation--than aware of what we want in our lives. We see right away that people in NA have gained some freedom from the consequences of addiction, and hope keeps us coming back. It didn't take long to realize that many recovering addicts get much more than freedom from the cage of addiction--they gain freedom to explore the world outside that cage.
"When I was using, every other interest took a backseat to my disease," one member wrote. "In one of my earliest meetings, I heard an addict share about going into the wilderness to get back into rock climbing after 15 years away from it. I had no interest in climbing rocks, but the idea of being released into the wild was so exciting to me. I decided to find a passion of my own."
That's how it goes in recovery: We regain the ability to pursue our interests. Rock climbing, songwriting, restoring old cars--our lives become our own to live. For many of us, the drive and excitement to follow our own interests grows out of our passion for recovery and carrying the message. Another member wrote, "I was so stoked about life without drugs in early recovery. As soon as I had enough cleantime, people invited me to share on H&I panels left and right, and I felt like I had a purpose. After years of thinking the world was full of threats, I started seeing opportunities everywhere."
Meetings Every Day of the Week!
The meeting list page of the Passaic County Area Service Committee website lists all of the meetings happening every week in our area as well as information about meetings happening in all the other areas of New Jersey, across the nation and even around the world!!