All are welcome to support, participate, and engage in this effort. Write seriously and playfully, as the Spirit guides you. There is no telling what great goodness may emerge if our motives and our spiritual centers are purely devoted to being instruments of a loving God. We write this for the good of others like us that who have lost their way or never had a way to start with.

We are addicts who come from the dying times. We vividly recall when we believed that there was absolutely no hope, anywhere on earth, for people like us. No one else believed there was any hope either. We have created a life style and mind set which was partially given to us by God and largely filled in to suit our peculiar needs. We are still creating and enlarging the pathway that gives people like us choices that we never knew that we had before. Our newfound virtual reality lets us live clean and grow spiritually.

We have applied the Twelve Steps of NA to our lives and we live the results. We see the negative consequences of unhealthy selfishness and compromise. We prefer now to go our way in peace and to follow the Will of our Higher Power.

The main obstacle to recovery writing is the fact that it has to come from addicts. When considering written input, we go through an enormous amount of extra trouble to determine whether it is our disease talking or our recovery. Most of us usually do this before we get out of bed in the mornings. Writing material to suit the needs and preferences of many NA members is either very difficult or nearly impossible for an individual to do. The fact that we wrote even one book, our Basic Text, is a great miracle, a second is bound to be less difficult because now we know it can be done.

We are free to consider and discuss any subject that needs consideration and discussion to be known. Whether it is about a helpful technique or an obstacle to recovery, we declare our right to write. Recovering addicts write about their lives and their recovery as part of the process of sorting out their lives and filling in the blanks.

As in recovery, fear is the basic obstacle to the writing. It begins when we are afraid to tell the truth. Truth telling may seem an all occasion remedy, but that can be another illusion. There are frequent times when to tell the truth will be mistaken for it's opposite by the listener or will overburden the unlearned. These things take time - God's time.

We believe NA started to grow in the nineteen seventies because a bunch of little guys, from little places, were encouraged to participate and add our voice to NA. Reversing this, by leaving people out, diminishes NA as a whole.

It is not necessarily superior, correct or more efficient to handle these things ‘professionally’. Professionally means either you don't care enough to do something on your own time, or you can't, so you have to pay someone else. In our case, we care and we're the only people in the world who know what we do to recover on a daily basis. Professionalism has been used to downplay the beauty and wonder of ordinary members writing recovery material. This betrayed the Spirit of NA. The writings of clean addicts expressing their gratitude, their concern for others and their commitment to improve themselves is valuable evidence that our way of life is real. Without it, the more conspicuous elements can seem to dominate. Whining, complaining, misrepresenting others and an endless rain of misinformation can create the impression that where there is smoke there is fire. Only with us, the fire is often burning those we would help!

Professionals can only mimic what works for us. We have to discover the answers and share them out. Since recovery is transmitted experience, not theory, it doesn't require the kind of talent that you have to pay for. Technical assistance should not take precedence over accuracy. Not all our truths are pleasant or convenient.

The disease of addiction cannot afford to be honest. It cannot say, "Give me all your money, all your love life, your offspring and I'll give you a good feeling. True, it won't last long and it'll hurt a lot while you're dying, but for a few moments, you'll feel great." In recovery it may say, "Hold back, play it safe. Don't be too up front here. Wait for another time."

We want to be fearless and thorough in recovery. It gets away with this enough of the time to water down the truth to the point where the truth no longer has much power among the background noises. This is how we are at risk of becoming weakened and divided.

This is a new effort to address our NA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Much has been learned through observation and discussion in recent years. This material is written by addicts who are grateful to Narcotics Anonymous and we want our experience to be available to others through our writing as part of our Twelfth Step, carrying the message.

That any addict can stop using, even for a time, is a miracle. That we can arrest the disease of addiction by total abstinence extends that miracle in time. We get the time back - to use, as we will. All A’s finally reach the point where they make a conscious decision to align their will with the will of their Higher Power. We do this by learning principles that allow us to discard and replace many of our old ideas and ways of coping with life. This is a modern day testament to applied spirituality. Personality change in human beings at a basic level is unlikely after age nine. It requires great willingness, faith, and courage.

Our way of life makes this unlikely phenomenon possible. The words we tend to use to describe the process may seem confusing. We try to describe accurately the feelings and perceptions that occur during the process to allow others to follow our trail and to confirm in a sense what we are learning. All this may require learning, study, and evaluating new perspectives.

Among recovering addicts in Narcotics Anonymous, certain assumptions evolve. Some of these elements allow us to enter recovery and get along with clean addicts almost immediately. Some of these basics of recovery need to be re-examined even by our long-term members and certainly by non-addicts who are interested in our recovery.

We try to avoid the cliches that are employed by others. We don't want to dull ourselves or our message. One of our problems in recovery is our appearance of normality. When we have stopped using, even for a short time, we can look so good that someone may offer us drugs to celebrate! This makes it hard for us to maintain the recovery practices that have worked for us. When we were at our weakest, our pain served as reminder. When we get a little better, we are apt to want to leave off the elements of recovery. Social pressures set in immediately to force us to resume our lives as if we were normal. We addicts are anything but normal.

Our needs and abilities can be viewed as ordinary. Our reactions to the world around us show how we are different. The distortions we adapted to while in active addiction continue along with us in recovery. For most practical purposes, this only means our orientation is a little different. We can work, cope with daily living and function in an effective and agreeable manner. Our recovery process enhances these things.

Certain fears remain embedded in us. We have had the experience of finding ourselves betrayed by our senses. We have sought pleasure and found pain. We have moralized and proved personally insufficient. We have crusaded for various causes only to find emptiness and a sense of time wasted. Our bodies registered ecstasy and we awoke in the gutter. Therefore, we are careful to guard against the search for, and acceptance of, momentary pleasure.

Our recovery writing is our attempt to share with others what we have found to be true for us in simple direct terms based on our actual personal experience. It is brave because it is our effort to not only make sense out of our own recovery but also a sincere effort to help other addicts get clean and begin to grow again as human beings.

There are many forces arrayed against us in our effort. Many institutions exist because our disease is so prevalent and multifaceted that it is hard to imagine a world without addictive disease. Our disease takes so many forms other than addiction to drugs.

We have to suffer immense disability from being incredibly disabled by our addiction to seek recovery in NA or anywhere else. Recovery would be a heck of a lot of trouble for a non-addict to go through if they did not feel their life was at stake.

It takes some moxie to move forward and do the right thing. Infighting, greed, and petty jealousy constantly rip away at our efforts. Avarice, greed, and envy take their toll. Those who criticize may devalue our freely given efforts. Recovery writing in NA is a different form. There is a saying that may apply here, "If a pickpocket meets a saint, he will see only pockets."

Those who find a message of recovery in meetings of NA will surely experience some of the curiosity and wonder we share in our meetings. Those who look for flaws will see only flaws. A successful piece of recovery writing illuminates areas of personal growth and has the internal power to leap from the page into our loneliness, despair and pain. We have found success in these areas. Our writing has helped many shake off the feelings and mindset that leads to relapse. The energy seems to come from direct entry into the mode of thinking that accompanies relapse and the reader suddenly realizes that others have turned back before using. Only sharing what we have has experienced personally has the power and energy to do this.

There is a tendency among us to look for the dark hidden meaning in things and avoid the simple and obvious need we have to share. The lessons we learn may not become ours until we share them. Information can feel like power. We can forget that the learning we have found has a universal source that any sincere individual can access at any time. Our sharing is only a reminder of what we know to be true when we are in our right minds. The distrust that is a big part of our addiction seeks loopholes and exceptions.

If we fall into the trap of possessiveness, what we know becomes tainted with greed and a lust for personal power. We who do this work seek to become aware because we care. We learn so that we can pass on important information to those who are in dying need of it. Often we opt for plausible optimism to counteract the negativity spawned by our addiction to fear and disbelief. We have found that when we look at the brighter side, the brighter side becomes real for us.

Our loving gratitude is abundant. Caring and sharing is our way. We stand ready, with God's help, to supply any need, right any wrong, and take on any responsibility required to insure the growth and continuance of Narcotics Anonymous. NA is the miracle that an addict of our sort can get clean and stay clean by following a set of written principles: The NA Twelve Steps and the NA Twelve Traditions.

Therefore, in all sincerity, we undertake this work that others may benefit. Possession of this work resides with that Spirit that makes us one in our gratitude and effort. No service body, board, or other group of people within or outside NA should ever regard our work as their own legal possession. In the exhaustive process of doing our work in the traditional manner, all should be in order before the work is considered finished. After completion, we will allow no further changes. If other points of concern arise, we will address them separately in other writings. We don't want to foster close-mindedness, yet we have learned that the tendency to personal preference is so strong in some of us that efforts towards change would begin to defeat our efforts as soon as opportunity existed.

Truth has no copyright. We borrow from all fields anything that might help our people. We expect others to borrow from our experiences. Possessiveness would undermine our spiritual integrity and deny our faith in our Ultimate Authority. Our writing is an expression of our love. We are willing to be forthright and honest, though it may arouse envy and jealousy in others.

Proceeds from the copyrights should go to the Fellowship of NA forever in the form of services as directed by the groups within the Fellowship. We grant permission for reprinting to members from within the Fellowship. Non-member individuals, groups, or organizations are forbidden to copy our materials or use our trademarks. Our literature belongs to our Fellowship and is a tangible form of our common welfare. Our method is simple: All of us own our literature, and none of us can sell our copyrights.

To change material after it has been subjected to the close scrutiny, study and seemingly endless discussion that only the NA Fellowship can conceive of is like touching up a masterpiece because you found a crooked line. It diminishes the quality of the material by substituting work that may seem `nicer' yet lack the core of inner strength our extreme processing creates. Critics should go to their own studio and paint their own picture.

Being clean, helping others and living a better life on a daily basis has an intrinsic value beyond what can be bought with money. If our writing does not have the ring of truth and love for those who suffer from our disease, it will be useless for purposes of recovery. It will get old in one reading or less and will not even touch us at the times moments when we need it the most.

Individuals are free to write and publish whatever they like within the law of the land. Our literature in NA must also be free. We want to pursue our recovery process without the constraints others would place on us. Some of us may become writers the same way others will find their places in the world.

Today, we want to give back some of what we received and let addicts coming to NA today know that they are loved and have people praying to be used as instruments to help them. Recovery is a wonderful thing and many of us feel that too much time has been wasted haggling over the right way to do literature in NA. We'd have done better to encourage addicts working individually or as groups and let the quality and usefulness of certain pieces become self-evident. Bureaucracy has a deadening effect on most processes involving spirituality. Bureaucracy cannot bind the free Spirit that is NA.

The disease of addiction does not like us and would divide and destroy us if we allowed it to take control. Our spiritual guidance on these issues is this: That we have to keep the faith ourselves before we have anything to offer others. As long as we can tell the truth as we see it in a plain, simple and honest manner, the way will open to us.

The Authors