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From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 09 Jan 2000
Time: 17:00:51
Remote Name: spider-tj032.proxy.aol.com
I attend NA meetings most times 5 times per week -- when I am experiencing change or difficulty I attend NA meetings everyday. I recently celebrated 19 years in recovery. I have lived in 5 different states (New Jersey, Pennsylvannia, Arizona, California & Geogia) so far in these recovery years. I have also attended NA meetings in Puerto Rico, New York and Delaware. And even though the meetings have been autonomous, I have always managed to receive what I needed to keep me clean and coming back no matter what. I have had varied experiences and many sponsors but I have consistently remained an active member of the fellowship/program of Narcotics Anonymous. I do notice that some people with more than 10 years tend to stop attending meetings (most of them are invested in a religious system) and only come to celebrate clean time or their sponsees' clean time. Now this does disturb me because I found AA (the fellowship that we are admonished for mentioning) (snicker) tends to have a higher attendance of people with double digits on a more regular basis. Since NA is the only thing that has ever worked and continues to work for me, I have no alternative but to keep attending. My attitude is maintained at a more positive level when I attend at least 5 meetings per week. Since recently moving to Georgia, I have found an overall disrespect for members with time and it saddens me. My only concern is what does NA as a whole need to do to keep our dinosaurs actively participating in the process of recovery the NA Way? I have been personnally offended by the statement that words used by members denote lack of recovery the NA Way. When I got clean in NA in 1980 in California and at that time Narcotics Anonymous did use the terminology Clean and Sober and we even had chips that said that on them. Now I find just because someone can parrot some NA terminology it does not mean they are recovering the NA Way just as ludacrious as a member who says the word sober means they are not recovering the NA Way. I do my best to honor the house I am in and when I am visiting someone else's house I honor their rules. But I don't believe one should be blasphemed because they inadvertantly used a word such as sober which is not AA or any organizations patented word. I am grateful for my good experiences in the fellowship of NA but I certainly sometimes wish there was somewhere I could attend that did not judge me on the ability to parrot but listened to the content of my message and allowed me the right to be individual and different. But I keep coming back and want to be in the number one day when addiction will truly be our common denominator and words will not and cannot alienate some folks. Peace and Love Rocksann Harris