Inspiration for this booklet came out of a phone conversation I had with my sponsor. One evening, we were discussing the apparent apathy... putting action into own recovery... no time or effort in it... passive... not trained the way we were... newcomers and old-timers too... seems like they think it doesn't mean anything to be an NA member... membership is taken lightly... has no responsibility... how it is not like it used to be... in NA we realized that the people newcomers were not and are not getting the same message we did he said to write a pamphlet that would pass on give away to keep it preserve record share capture all of the basic spiritual creative action that are crucial and essential in early recovery and now too he said we needed to write them down so none of us would forget them in later conversation, I shared with him that I began the work and he offered up a title: The NA Book of Basics!

It fits for us these are the basic essentials to getting, staying and living clean based on the NA way of life...

In an effort to document and preserve our history, myself and a few other NA members have decided to put together a pamphlet that lists several creative actions of our spirits that were helpful in early recovery from the disease of addiction. With the ever growing/changing service structure and the disillusionment with the politics, distortion of our message requires that we preserve our past to validate our future. Our program is grounded in spiritual principles. To drift away from the honest caring and sharing of our tremendous growth period is to betray the spirit of NA.

We know the general fellowship is insulated from these changes in most cases. Still, if our officialdom chooses to alter the processes that have generated the enthusiasm and spirit as exemplified in our literature, hopefully their sense of humor will prevent their being offended if we continue to do what we can.

[Phone conversation first one was sometime between August, 1990 and March, 1991 I began writing the pamphlet in March, 1991.]

Complete Abstinence - Our program of recovery is based on total abstinence from all drugs. This is achieved by almost all our members. We include among our addicts seeking recovery, members who have other problems and must take medications that alleviate their suffering and do not get them high. While in the intellectual sense, this may seem inconsistent, you have but to open your heart to their predicament to understand their pain. To not include them would be to deny to fact that, in our understanding, the disease of addiction is something other than the specific drugs. These people stabilize and many eventually get off their medications. Others may be on medication for the rest of their lives. It takes no great wisdom to tell when an addict is loaded. They don't want to go to meetings and they don't seek out the company of clean addicts in NA. Perhaps the love of God allows us to include them as members simply because of their desire.

It is all too apparent that money is a mood altering substance. Power can affect our feelings and conduct. Power junkies, food junkies, money junkies, sex junkies are terms we must come to terms with sometime in our recovery. If it was just the drugs, we wouldn't need the program to live clean. Once we were off, we could stay off. Our desire is the pointer and it directs our lives, one way - or the other.

In the early days, it was not uncommon for our members to go to many places seeking recovery. Then in the late seventies and early eighties, something different started happening.

Get and use phone numbers of clean addicts as a way of clearing away habits of thought that might lead us back to using and discussing clean ways of looking at life and how addicts can adapt to living without using.

Come early/stay late is something many members miss out on. If we are never among the first members to show up for a meeting, we get the association that the meeting is there for us without us ever being there for the meeting.

Help set up/tear down the meeting - Those who get involved with their home group and become so involved they are among the first members to show up at the weekly meeting get an even deeper sense of involvement. Watching the new members come in and the rounds of exchanged greetings, gives us a real sense of the fellowship. Staying late and helping with the clean up also deepens this sense of being a part of the NA Fellowship.

Leave our meeting place better than we find it - This basic has helped us enjoy a great range of meeting places. It speaks well of our validity as a recovery program and makes us experience the positive feelings of being responsible at the same time.

The following is by no means to be a guide or cure all to the problems many of us encounter in relationships. Rather, it is the freely shared experience of our members.

While actively using, true meaningful connections between people, including ourselves, seemed impossible. Acceptance, friendship or the simple love from another seemed to be our most elusive goal. When the use of chemicals ended, our senses seemed to awaken tenfold. We allowed ourselves feelings and responded to others in ways strange to us. For the first time in our lives, relationships began to have a sense of meaning.

In recovery, we seem amazed at how many forms of relationships we may allow ourselves. Before, our thinking may have been very limited in understanding the word "relationship." Many of us may have naturally thought of this topic in the male/female form. But this subject, while talked about often at meetings, covers a very broad area.

We now realize that we can have relationships with other men, women, children, employers, our Higher Power, ourselves and so on. The list may seem endless once we permit ourselves the freedom that is given to each of us. We come to the conclusion that it is important to deal with all forms of relationships. If they are good, bad or indifferent, we have to deal with them somehow. It is necessary in our program of recovery to respect first ourselves and our lives for what they are. This lays the groundwork for any association we may have with others.

Our capacity to have meaningful relationships has been damaged by our self centered attitude and the kind of thinking we developed over time as our disease progressed. We learn to stop making excuses for our past and accept our reality. We need to realize that there are many recovering addicts struggling with the same feelings regarding relationships.

It is important to begin forming new bonds with people who are going to teach us a new way of life. We begin to trust them and believe in the principles of this program.

Relationships are a process and in anything we do, we need to always remember that we only need to improve, we will never stop growing. We need to challenge our `old beliefs' about relationships. We learn from our past mistakes that led to problems in dealing with others. We accept the fact that work and effort must be applied and are willing to make the necessary changes.

But what changes and options are available? This list may also seem unlimited, considering we all walk different paths in our recovery. What works for one may not work for another. We need not dwell on the negatives in our relationships but instead nurture our positive qualities. In the past, we may have thought that a troubled relationship was not worth saving. We were blinded by chemicals and unsure feelings. In essence we weren't sure what we wanted and where we were headed.

Today, we can envision our relationships with others and how we would like them to be. We learn to develop any associations we have in the present moment and proceed from there. If we allow ourselves to be tormented by past memories or threatened by future worries, we may never attain a truly loving relationship. Unnecessary stress will be placed on all our daily encounters.

Honesty, trust, open communication, acceptance, courage and wisdom are some of the more important aspects of leading a spiritual life and nurturing both existing and new found relationships. Many of us never learned these attributes or lost them while we were using. However, we can acquire them through listening at meetings, using the Serenity Prayer and working the Twelve Steps. [Input from Philadelphia Area Lit]

I came to find this fellowship after a long search. I really don't know what I was searching for, but when I walked through the door of that first meeting and was told to "keep coming back", I felt that you all had what I wanted, and were willing to give it to me, if only I asked. It took me a while before this first awakening came to me. "We aren't going to hand this to you on a silver platter", I was told.

You had to ask. "If you want what we have to offer and are willing to make the effort to get it then you are ready to take certain steps, these are the principles that made our recovery possible."

Well I was more than willing, I was "wanting it all now." The next great awakening for me was perspective. I either did whatever until it was all gone or I lost interest. "Sounds like addiction to me", someone said.

I learned the meanings of obsession and compulsion. I learned that it can be beneficial to me and the fellowship if I make service an obsession. The only thing is I can't expect anything in return for my selfless efforts. The rewards are much greater than anything that can be expressed on paper. This spiritual program has given me back the self respect I lost while running from the truth. These things we are in search for are all but glimpses of the way things are meant to be. We will find them in Gods time. "Coincidences are miracles in which God chooses to remain anonymous." So keep in mind that the gifts we receive that touch the heart are the truths we once were searching for, and the awakening is in changing the old patterns and knowing we are getting what we need and not what we want. So get ready for the awakening of a Spirit that lives inside of you that was harnessed and put to rest by the abuses and habits learned and adopted as a way of living. Today we are awakened to a new way of life. The truth will set you free from the old way of living and into a new way of life. Today I can feel and I have a lot of empathy for the newcomer. I know your pain and I believe in my heart we can love you until you learn to love yourself. So please give yourself a break and let us help you and give me a break and don't try to manipulate. Just ask and you may find we will give you the answer you were searching for all along. And if you do get the answer that you want, get honest. Honesty is the truth. The spirit awakens.

Anonymous

One of the most painful and degrading actions my active addiction demanded of me was that I consistently had to compromise my ideals to survive. I had grown up believing in honesty and personal integrity. I'd learned to be "... as good as my word." In my youth, before active addiction stole my self-worth, I was a person of my word. You could believe what I said. You could count on me. I believed in certain principles, and consistently stood up for them. I wasn't always right but I stood up for what I believed. My belief system was based in my perception of reality. Honesty was honesty, and like pregnancy, you either were or you weren't. Personal integrity meant doing the right thing for the right reason, telling the truth, living without deceit, being fair, just, standing up for principles courageously and accepting the consequences of my actions.

Addiction altered my behavior. Reality became uncomfortable, eventually intolerable. I needed more and more drugs to survive. when I was under the influence of drugs, honesty and integrity were less important and often inconvenient. Between `runs', honesty and integrity were burdens that would have prevented getting more drugs and the relief I needed. My values were still there, however and the only escape from this inner conflict of addiction vs. conscience was to use more drugs. Eventually addiction conquered conscience. Dishonesty, deceit and injustice became as much a part of my life as drugs. I would do whatever was needed, say whatever was required, be whoever the drug culture I lived in expected, to get the money and drugs my addiction demanded. Whatever the consequences of my actions were, there always seemed to be enough drugs to compensate.

Dishonesty, deceit and cowardice became habitual. My self-esteem was lost to the demands of active addiction. I lied and stole for practice, even when I didn't need to. I laughed at honest people who stood up for their beliefs and called them square and used them. Living up to principles made them vulnerable, I thought them weak. Addiction twisted reality cruelly so that I began to feel that my dishonesty and deceit could result in some benefit for them. After all, I thought, I am sophisticated and they are naive. I was baffled when their pain and confusion increased. I gradually began to see myself as hopelessly immoral. The drugs slowly stopped working so well and conscience nagged me about my dishonesty and cowardice. My denial forced me to continue telling me that I'd become such a bad person that there was no hope. I'd become what I despised and there was no reconciliation between my actions and my ideals. Only death or permanent institutionalization could save the world from my taint. I began killing myself with drugs. It didn't work. The fog of addiction thickened and I groped hopelessly for help.

Blindly I reached out and you took my hand. Narcotics Anonymous rescued me from my dishonest, deceitful, cowardly drug-altered world of self-destruction. You taught me that I was powerless over the disease of addiction. I stopped using. You taught me that simple abstinence was not enough. I got honest. You taught me to walk my prayer. I stopped compromising. Courage came slowly and painfully. You taught me that addiction had many more symptoms that just drug use. I didn't understand that at first. My dishonesty, my deceitfulness and cowardice were more difficult to abstain from than drugs. You showed me actively that the spiritual principles of recovery were pure. You taught me by example that compromising on these principles was just as self-destructive as using drugs. The faith to act can only come from acting on faith. My way didn't work any better in recovery than it had in active addiction. My life had become unmanageable, and as I accepted this, my mind opened. Watching you live clean and recover led me to believe in abstinence, accept my condition, and gave me the faith to try recovery.

Narcotics Anonymous taught me that anything less than a total commitment to all twenty-four spiritual principles of recovery and sharing is denial of my decision to turn my will and life over to the Spirit of recovery. I perceive. Therefore, I cannot compromise. Acceptance is acceptance. Reality shows me that I'm powerless over addiction and my life is unmanageable by me. I can choose to accept that or deny it. Recovery demands acceptance. Faith is faith. Hope comes from faith in my life and I believe I can recover. I need to act on this faith or become hopeless again. Commitment is uncompromising to me. It is surrender in action. Honesty is honesty. Recovery reinforces personal integrity for me. I am free to be as honest, courageous and just as I am willing to be uncompromising on spiritual principles.

This kind of limitless recovery forces me to accept my humanity. I fall short of my goals consistently. But by "... shaping my thoughts with the spiritual principles ... (I'm) ... moving toward, ... (I'm) ... free to become who ... (I) .. want to be."

When I compromise spiritual principles in my life, I limit my recovery. When I compromise spiritual principles in my service, I deny addicts the recovery they seek. Just as acceptance is acceptance, faith is faith and honesty is honesty, so group conscience is group conscience, direct responsibility is direct responsibility and anonymity is anonymity. Compromise of these spiritual principles in service brings me similar life-limitation to compromise in my recovery. Except that the life I may limit, the recovery that I may deny, is often someone else's.

Our predecessors taught us that "Half measure's avail us nothing". Compromising Spiritual Principles in recovery and service can only hurt. My recovery demands uncompromising honesty and personal integrity. Real recovery and true service means NO COMPROMISE.

We don't need to be politically correct, because in the spirit of anonymity, we are all basically the same.

The large linen 12 steps & 12 traditions banners hanging on the wall of our group help us focus on the principles when sharing; and, it inspires purpose and thought; thus, giving a good NA focus.

It's okay- you used today, but come back clean tomorrow. And even if you used, come anyway and listen; we care and have been there. But if you used within 24 hours, please refrain from commenting.

Regarding total abstinence, we include everyone and encourage everyone to get clean. While some members need to take medication, we do not separate ourselves. In the spirit of anonymity, we are all basically the same. We do not make one member different from one another. "Oh, he's too sick; he needs that medication for his suicidal depression." We are all examples of hope. Anyone can get clean and stay clean. If we believe in the miracle of NA, in the miracle of our second step, it will work for us. No matter who you are, it can work; but, you are no different. Maybe we can't help everyone, but we know that total abstinence works, and we encourage anyone to try it. In time of illness, sure, medication may be required; but, our bodies, minds, and spirits do not know the difference between street, homegrown, prescribed, over-the counter or not-yet-invented drugs.

Share honestly about your feelings, even if you are not yet ninety days clean. This is especially important if you feel like using drugs or if you are having compulsions to steal or act out violently, and if you are feeling angry, fearful, and/or otherwise suffering. It's important!

Addiction, as a disease, negates the idea that each drug used entails a different approach to recovery. The idiosyncrasies of each drug used may vary; but, recovery is a simple and unified path. Abstinence is mandatory to initiate and continue this process. The urge to differentiate one's using and consequences thereof serves no purpose but to diffuse efforts towards recovery. Wasted motion for recovery can kill. Concentration of our endeavors toward recovery insures our survival. The process of recovery is slow and tedious. Distraction from this focus is similar to our active addiction's compulsion to avoid reality by changing our playgrounds and playthings.

The monomaniacal search for drugs can be our most pointed example of our disease. This same energy directed towards our spiritual growth and ongoing abstinence can be the practical application of actions and ideas learned or developed in active addiction, now transposed to positive results.

We make NA our priority to stay clean. Put the same effort we used into getting high to stay clean. Made NA the most important thing in our life. NA comes ahead of girlfriends and boyfriends. Maintain a humble and honest job, going out with people after the meeting, getting involved in NA service committee- especially fun things like newsletters, special events, making cookies and goodies to bring to our home groups. Our families and real friends who care about us will see the change in us and will encourage our positive obsession in the fellowship. Some may not understand, and we do not need to explain it to them, because only we know our happiness and despair of active addiction.