WELCOME TO LIFE

"Welcome home. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life." These are the words one addict uses to greet a newcomer in First Step meetings. This sentiment can set the tone of loving acceptance, the same acceptance shown to us when we were newcomers at our first meeting. Carrying our message begins with a welcome. We can see and identify the pain that comes from active addiction and leads us into a real desire for recovery. Simply taking time with someone as others took time with us, we welcome our new people into our way of life. We explain that NA is not a cult and that if some members try to push their personal ideas on them, not to get too upset with them. Our program, as such, is a collection of what works for addicts in recovery and nothing else. Where written materials accord with what addicts do to stay clean, grow spiritually and help others they prove useful. We don't have good literature and bad literature. It helps addicts or it doesn't. Writing can only approximate the wonders our members perform and experience in a day's time. So our personal, friendly welcome it the way we pass on what someone else gave us.

We may have sat at a meeting and groaned inwardly when addicts from a treatment center walked in with a newcomer for a First Step meeting. We may feel tired of the basics. We may sit there wishing for something more ‘on our level.’ What could be a greater leveling than sharing with a newcomer? It brings all our recovery resources to bear against the disease of addiction personified in an addict seeking recovery! What better way to show ourselves where we truly stand with our commitment to recovery? By making ourselves available, we will find ourselves getting close enough to someone to do some good. They will expect to see us at a meeting and feel let down if we're not there. At some point, we may want to take some responsibility for this and let ourselves become bonded to the person. It is a choice. Once we have made the decision, we can see into the needs the other person may have and can pray to be used as an instrument. We can check with others, pray, use our imagination and do all sorts of things to help the person if only they are asking for our help. We have found that trying to force help on an unwilling recipient is like pouring water into a jug while the stopper is still in place. It needs to be open.

In this, our Twelfth Step work, we begin to participate consciously in the miracle of NA. It is the recovery process come full circle. We have gotten enough to begin to give back. We know well the spiritual law that says we will receive at least three times as much as we give. Whenever we stop having stuff come our way, we have stopped giving in some essential way. Actually, we may unconsciously begin to deny ourselves. It will do no good to receive more if we are full already. We have to let go some to make room for more. We may have been coming to meetings for a long time. Gradually we watched ourselves grow from being a taker to a giver. We remember to give and grow so that others may grow to give. This was the nourishment offered to us when we began our journey.

By giving out of gratitude, we find our focus off our own needs and on those of another. Then we may begin to have some breakthroughs. The spiritual life is a serious matter for us and we don't strike bargains with our Higher Powers. That is part of what ‘Higher’ means, it means we can't command or call God to task for how the universe is running. We give because we know our giving makes the world a better place and allowing for temporary setbacks, we know our giving changes us from a lose into a winner.

There are simply too many help services available to go without. If only we are open to receiving help, these individuals, professionals and agencies can help us. This goes for friends and family members as well as the public and community organizations. Many of us could not conceive of a life without the use of drugs. We believed that if we didn't have drugs in our lives our lives would be boring and incomplete. It has been heard many times in our meetings, "If I listed all the things I expected to achieve in my first year of recovery I would have short-changed myself." We quickly learn that the life of a using addict is no life at all. It is saturated with pain and unfulfilled dreams. Hope remains hidden in the fog of our denial. As newcomers we were filled with questions. How can these meetings change my life? What do I do now that I'm not using? More experienced NA members may have smiled that knowing smile and encouraged us to just ‘keep coming back.’ It was too difficult for many of us to conceive this new way of life at the early stages of our recovery. By not using and going to meetings before we believed that NA would work for us, we learned a lesson in faith.

NA has been described as an archway. As we enter into recovery through this arch we find many paths before us that we can take. We find spiritual principles which can guide us on our journey. We find that our hopes and dreams can be fulfilled. What were once only fantasies are now our reality. Life is no longer filled with pain and despair. Joy and hope are the replacement. Happiness and gratitude have replaced sadness and depression. Satisfaction replaces lust. We are no longer bound by our addiction or chained by our fears. The Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous welcomes us to life. It is a life beyond our wildest dreams.