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The NA Way Magazine, published in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, belongs to the members of Narcotics Anonymous. Its mission, therefore, is to provide each member with recovery and service information, as well as recovery-related entertainment, which speaks to current issues and events relevant to each of our members worldwide. In keeping with this mission, the editorial staff is dedicated to providing a magazine which is open to articles and features written by members from around the world, as well as current service and convention information. Foremost, the journal is dedicated to the celebration of our message of recovery — "that an addict, any addict, can stop using drugs, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live."The NA Way"User’s Manual"All manuscripts are subject to a review and editing process and must be accompanied by a signed release. Criteria for the various sections of the magazine are as follows: Feature articles Everything from reports about current issues or events in NA to thoroughly documented historical essays on NA’s beginnings in an area, region, or country. Please send an inquiry first. Maximum length: 2,500 words. Sharing Personal recovery experience, from 500 to 2,000 words in length. Parables These are fiction pieces in which the writer illustrates a spiritual principle or some sort of recovery-related object lesson. Maximum length 1,500 words. Picture This NA groups are invited to send us photographs of their meeting places. We especially welcome photos that include meeting formats, recovery literature, posters, etc.—anything that makes the meeting room looked “lived-in.” Sorry, we cannot use any photos that identify NA members. Humor and "Last Laughs" "Last Laughs" are NA newsletter clippings (including material from
The NA Way Magazine), misreadings of NA literature heard at NA events,
etc. Other humor pieces can be anything from a "top ten" list to a parody
of NA’s literature to a multiple-choice questionnaire. Maximum length:
1,000 words.
Back to the top of the document Feature ArticleSymposiumNA Comes of AgeIn honor of our forty-fifth anniversary, we’ve asked some older members to compare NA as it existed when they came in to NA as it is now. They were delighted to tell us about “the old days” of NA in California, Australia, and Pennsylvania.* We expected to hear that these early NA communities were very disorganized, untutored in the Twelve Traditions, and unable to provide any services whatsoever. We were surprised to find out that this wasn’t very often the way things were. In addition to asking the following members about their recollections of their early days in recovery, we asked what they felt NA’s next step should be, in which areas we still needed to mature. As you’ll see, they were quite willing to share their ideas. As most will acknowledge, we’ve matured as a fellowship. But we’re maintaining a youthful spirit. We’re still open-minded and still ready to take big steps that will ensure our growth for another forty-five years. BOB B, CALIFORNIA
Q. When did you get clean? A. I got clean in 1961, but when I first came around in 1959, there was only one meeting. Q. Your story in the Basic Text is aptly named (“I Found the Only NA Meeting in the World”), but how did you find NA? There wasn’t an NA helpline at the time, right? A. I didn’t find NA; my woman did. She was out looking for help and somebody gave her Jimmy’s number. So she passes the information on to me that they got this thing going on over there [in the San Fernando Valley]. As far as I was concerned it was a foreign country. Once I got out of South Central, I was lost. There really wasn’t anyplace for an addict to go then. There was Lexington, Ft. Worth, and there were a couple of doctors who were trying to start programs, but you were talking about big money just to walk in the door. They had all kinds of crazy ideas as to what drug addiction was and how to fix it. Anyway, I went to this meeting, and there were people reading from this book, and talking about staying clean—actually they were talking about staying clean and sober. There weren’t very many of them—usually about ten, a big meeting might have had twenty. Very often, half of them were from the North Hollywood [AA] clubhouse and were there to see what these addicts were doing. Q. Did they share in your meetings? A. As far as what they had to share, the steps didn’t make sense to me, anyway. I read them. I heard them. There weren’t a lot of people who could talk about them—besides Jimmy and some of these visitors [from AA]. Most of them were what they called “dually addicted.” They were alcoholics, members of AA, but they had done drugs, too. There were people I could talk to, people who I could ask what they used. That was important then. We had to find out whether you were a “hope-to-die dope fiend” or one of them funny-style dope fiends. We were always downplaying people’s addiction. You had to qualify. Q. Was it mostly heroin addicts then? A. Everyone was a heroin addict. There were a few pillheads, but even that was in conjunction with [heroin]. Some addicts probably left thinking “oh, my problem wasn’t that bad” after listening to us talk, but a lot of that was just gross exaggeration. Q. Were people pretty accepting of addicts coming to meetings loaded? A. Yeah, we’d just tell them not to be too obvious about it. More often, it was a case of being not quite certain whether we should drink or not. I mean, as far as we were concerned, alcohol wasn’t a drug. Q. Did Jimmy set you straight on that? A. No, Jimmy didn’t try to force any issues. Q. So he didn’t tell anybody they weren’t clean if they were drinking? A. No, he never told anyone they weren’t clean. Q. So how did that develop then, that NA members understood that alcohol was a drug? A. That happened much later, when we came to some understanding of the disease concept. We also worked very closely with some “outsiders” [non-addicts]—people like Dorothy Gildersleve [a social worker], Dr. Lewis Quick, and Judge Emerson. They were constantly referring people to us to get help, so they were always in touch. They managed to get across that you weren’t clean if you were drinking. People came in thinking they could drink, but it was very short-lived. We learned by experience. In those days, I think we violated every tradition that ever was written. They didn’t mean anything to us; we mixed and matched or eliminated or whatever. That was what worked for us—until it didn’t work. Q. So you had the traditions hanging on the wall …? A. Yeah, but those were their traditions. Q. What did you do to violate traditions then? A. Just talking about Alcoholics Anonymous, doing things with them. Without their help, a lot of stuff wouldn’t have happened, especially the institutional stuff. I’ve got a letter from Tehachapi [Correctional Institution] or someplace that talks about “double-dippers”—AA/NA meetings. Anonymity sometimes got loose. Q. What about money? Did you take money from outside sources? A. We took money from anyone who had it. [Laughs] There wasn’t a whole lot of money floating around back then, anyway. No, we had to learn how to return money, in fact. A couple of places sent us money, saying, “You’re doing a good job, blah, blah, blah,” so we sent them a letter and sent the money back. We were self-supporting as best as we could, but there were no funds most of the time. We got most of our printing on credit. Our printer was a program person—AA program—but he printed for us for a long time, years, and waited for the money. We never ended up owing him much; our bills didn’t run over two or three hundred dollars for the year. Q. What were you printing then? A. Just the Little White Booklet. Q. That was in 1961? A. Yeah, the early sixties, thereabouts. Then I had to go do some time, clean up some wreckage, and I started a meeting in Tehachapi in 1961. But there again, we kind of rode on the coattails of AA’s institutional thing. Q. Were you using AA’s literature then? A. No, Jimmy sent me some Little White Booklets, [guidelines for] how to run a meeting, that kind of thing. Anyway, it was the first institutional meeting we had inside, and there were people there who were interested in recovery or at least interested in getting the right piece of paper so they could get out. [Laughs] Q. It looked good to the parole board? A. Sometimes. It didn’t look good to my parole board, but that’s okay. So we’d ask AA if we could carry in some literature, and they’d usually let us take half the meeting. Q. So there was a lot of leniency in interpretation of the traditions? A. Well, like I said, we didn’t understand the traditions then. Q. It sounds like the AA members didn’t, either. A. They may have known; they just didn’t care. Q. Were there more meetings on the street when you got out? A. Yeah, there were three. Q. All in the Valley? A. No, one in Hollywood, which was important because it was the only one that was inner-city. People were starting to show up in meetings. It became like an alternative [to incarceration]. Not that the parole or probation departments were in our corner, because they weren’t. They still had the idea that they could fix the addict problem. I had a lot of problems with my parole officer, because I wanted to do it my way. I wasn’t using, but I was talking crazy shit. I was still having problems with authority. I thought, “I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m bringing you clean tests, and I’m working, and I’m staying at home, and I’m going to these meetings”—and he didn’t want me to go to meetings. Q. So the correctional community was still pretty worried about addicts congregating in those days? A. Yeah, NA had not been validated. Besides, if you’re on parole, you’re in violation [for congregating with other addicts or felons]. I had a difficult three or four years with the parole department. I had an attitude, and the parole officer, he said, “Well, I’m going to lock you up and see if you get a change of attitude.” Q. Did your PO do that? A. Yeah. Q. That’s terrible. So you got locked up for going to meetings. A. Yeah, but I came to believe in jail, so they actually did me a
favor.
Q. As far as decision-making for NA, it was done by whoever was around? A. No, we had what we called the “parent organization.” The parent organization consisted of the secretaries and treasurers of the two or three meetings. Q. A representative from each meeting? A. Yeah. Q. So it was like a mini-ASC? A. Yeah, there was about ten of us. As far as services, we tried to keep some kind of answering service going. The answering service would answer the phone, then call a list of NA members to see who lived in the area and was available for a Twelfth Step call. Q. So did you go on a lot of Twelfth Step calls? A. Oh yeah, a Twelfth Step call used to be quite an event, cause two or three or even six people used to go out on these Twelfth Step calls. You’d get a bunch of people to go because you never knew what you were going to walk into. You’d walk into some pretty weird Twelfth Step calls—drugs on the table, guns on the table, some joker paranoid, and his mama called or he called out of being scared, or whatever. There was a lot of crazy stuff, but we went anyway. We’d go out and capture one, put him in the car, and take him to a house, sit him down and talk to him all night long. There seemed to be a lot of [NA members] who weren’t working during the early days. Q. So you’d sit these guys down and carry the message. A. Yeah, and we wouldn’t let them get away, not for a while, anyway. There wasn’t a lot of places to take them for detox so sometimes we’d just have to sit on them. We’d pass them around amongst ourselves. Q. I’m assuming these guys were willing? A. Well, they may not have been so willing, but they didn’t know what else to do. [Our attitude was] don’t call if you don’t want help. Q. So you’d get them through kicking, and turn them loose? They’d either stay or they wouldn’t? A. That’s right. Some of us would give them some matches and say: “Go burn yourself up. Don’t come around here if you’re not serious.” I think there was a lot more of that then. It was pretty hard-nosed. I think the way we grew out of that was that when the need increased, we tried to write some paper on how to run a meeting, or about the traditions, or what we expected to do: help addicts stay clean. We needed some committee-type work to get the word out [about NA]. Also in the sixties, there was a big turnaround in [society’s] thinking about treating addicts. There was the California Rehabilitation Center, stuff like that. Along with that, they were doing a lot of radio stuff. They used to come out to meetings and interview right on the parking lot. [It gave us the opportunity to explain] what NA is and isn’t. So we started doing some slots about once a month on a call-in radio station. After one of these, people were showing up [at meetings] just by hearing about it on the radio. Q. When did you start seeing people other than heroin addicts in meetings? A. Probably around ’63 or ’64. It was just about the time of the flower children, and you know, they were pouring it on, taking whatever. So we said, “I guess we’ve just got to tolerate this; it is drugs. They are insane and crazy.” And we were seeing it work. People started staying clean. There was a lot of growth from that. Probation officers were sometimes sending people to us. And then there were some community-oriented people, friends of NA, so to speak. That’s where part of our first trustees came from. It was decided that we definitely needed some people who weren’t addicts. They could act as advisors. Most of them were people who worked in social work. It was a good exchange. They told us a lot of things we needed to do or needed to train to do. We didn’t know anything. We were a bunch of ragtags. Q. How do you think NA has matured as a whole? A. I think we’re more accepting of the fact that there are people who can do the work. We’re very businesslike; we’re in the mainstream. We weren’t recognized in any stream for a lot of years. We really didn’t get any recognition until the early seventies. Q. What happened then? A. I think the growth started taking place—the Northern California explosion, then Colorado, Australia, England, Philadelphia…. People started finding out that there was a place you could get clean and stay clean. And the office became very important. Before we got the office, we only had an answering machine and a PO box. When the mail got answered depended a lot on who went to the mailbox or who had the key. Q. So that was the most centralized and stable thing we had? A. That was it. That was our World Service Office. Q. The world in a box. A. That’s what it was. I’d just carry stuff around in my trunk until I caught up with someone who could answer it. Q. What do we still have left to do? Where do we still need to mature? A. We need to inform the fellowship [about world services]. They have no idea what’s happening at the World Service Conference. They have no idea why the conference even exists. DEBI S, CALIFORNIA
Q. So you got clean in 1973, right? A. Right. Q. How many NA meetings were there at the time? A. Well, I went into a treatment center, so we went to NA meetings, but there weren’t a lot of them, so the treatment center had two NA meetings a week. Q. In-house meetings? Were they open to all NA members? A. Yes, the NA community came in and ran the meetings. So that was the pool of people I got clean with—the people who came to our meetings. They were also the people you saw at all the meetings. We went to other meetings. . . . Q. It’s okay to say you went to AA. A. I am going to say that. We went to a lot of AA meetings because there were AA meetings everywhere, every night, and NA was very young. [The treatment center] was in West Los Angeles, so we would get in a car and travel for an hour to some town called El Monte that I had never been in before because that was where the other NA meeting was. The was also a meeting in the Crenshaw area and one in Hermosa Beach. So that was it; that was our NA community. We didn’t have three or four NA meetings a night to choose from. A lot of times we didn’t have transportation, so we had to go [somewhere] close by to get to a meeting, and we went to a lot of AA meetings. Q. I remember once you said at a speaker meeting that your early recovery was in AA, and you asked if the “purists” who had problems with that wanted you to go out and start over. A. Right. A lot of our old-timers had bad experiences in AA in the early days, but I’m one of the ones who had a totally, completely positive experience. [The treatment center] would send carloads of us to meetings in the clubhouses and the people loved us. I mean, here was this carload of young newcomers, and they were, well, to us they looked elderly, but they were probably the same age I am today. They welcomed us; they wanted us to come back, and they didn’t make a big deal about the language. I can remember raising my hand and talking about addiction and drugs. They just totally accepted us and encouraged us. I just remember good, positive support from going to those meetings. Then of course there was the NA literature—there wasn’t any. We had the White Booklet and that was it. All of us used the AA Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve. I feel I was very fortunate. I had a sponsor who was into the Twelve Steps, Twelfth Step work, going to hospitals, I mean every weekend. Q. So there wasn’t much experience with the Twelve Steps in the NA community at that time? A. No, there wasn’t. But when we went to step meetings that were AA-based, they were just filled with information: basic how-to stuff, and personal experiences about how to work the steps. Q. Can a newcomer who’s coming into NA now get the same kind of maturity that you had to go to AA to get? A. [Long pause] Sometimes. I’m speaking for myself, but when I came into the program, I didn’t know how to judge these people or what kind of program they had, and I wasn’t schooled in how to choose a sponsor. They didn’t have IPs laying all over the place. I’ve had conversations with others who have been clean and around NA a long time, and one thing we’ve all noticed is that when NA sort of “broke off” formally from AA and we had our own book and our language, there was a positive side to that but there was also a negative side. The positive side was the unity, the identification for the newcomer. [If a newcomer] comes in and hears all this different language from all these different programs—it’s confusing. Q. What was the negative side? A. You lost a lot of the wisdom, a lot of the experience that the older members of AA contributed to people like me. Q. Did we also lose NA members who left NA entirely to sustain their recovery in AA? A. There were a lot of NA members who resented [other NA members]
coming in and telling them they had to use this new language. They were
reading statements at all the meetings about what [members] said. So they
left and took their recovery with them, and we’re talking about people
who had ten or fifteen years at the time.
There were a lot of times I didn’t want to be here, times when I was the only one in the meeting with five years clean, or I was the only woman in the meeting. There was this exodus that happened. I don’t ever deny where I got my foundation. It’s difficult sometimes,
like when I’m speaking in a meeting, one of the little sayings will crop
up or a reference to something that was so embedded in me. At some point,
I stopped worrying about it. I can’t change my story. I can’t change where
I came from. Anyway, I worked with it.
Q. Hasn’t a lot of that hostility blown over—like if a newcomer shares in a meeting that she’s clean and sober, there isn’t a lot of hissing and booing? A. Right. It went from one extreme to the other, and now it’s kind of balanced out. I think people are more reasonable about it. I think about newcomers in treatment centers, and they get taken to a different kind of meeting every night of the week. They don’t know what’s going on. You don’t want to humiliate them out of the room, but that’s what was happening back in the early eighties. That has stopped. Q. So NA has grown up a little bit? A. Yes, absolutely. MELVYN B, AUSTRALIA
Q. What was your involvement in NA in Australia when you got clean? A. There was no NA at all. Q. And you live in Melbourne, right? Was there anything going on in Sydney? A. There was and there wasn’t. There was a guy using the NA name for his rehab center, and there was a lot of controversy and starting and stopping. The main start, I suppose, was in Melbourne. One of the things I’ve found out about “historians” is that they often miss out on what they don’t want to hear or don’t like. I can tell you about how NA got started here, but it’s not a rags-to-riches, addict-was-desperate [story]. They were all clean members of AA. How I got involved was I was going to AA meetings, and I ran across this book from Hazelden, and I thought, “This is good. I wonder if they’ve got any more.” So I wrote away to Hazelden about 1975. They sent me a catalog, and inside the catalog were a couple of [NA] things. There was the Little White Book, and there was a guide to the family of the drug abuser. Q. Was that from NA? A. No, that was from Families Anonymous. Anyway, there was a lot of stuff. I sent away for it, and it all came. It caused a lot of controversy—it was unapproved literature, it was this, it was that. Anyway, about that time I got very sick and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. I had to go in the hospital, and while I was there I decided to become a volunteer alcohol and drug counselor. Part of my training was to spend a day or half a day at every [drug treatment] facility in Melbourne. So I went around to all these places, and what I discovered was that there was nothing for addicts who wanted to stop using and there was nothing for parents who wanted help for their pain. So with the literature I had from Hazelden, I knew about NA and FA and I decided to start them both. That’s when I wrote off to Jimmy K. I got a lovely letter back with some encouragement plus the literature that was available at that time—which was quite good—The NA Tree and stuff like that. Q. How long did it take to get a response? A. Oh, it was almost immediately. Q. That’s great. Knowing how mail was answered at the time, I’m pleasantly surprised. A. Anyway, I was going around to AA meetings and at the young people’s group here in Melbourne, I heard others talking about drugs. I met [several people] and we decided to get NA going. We’d heard about NA starting and stopping in Sydney and we went to see a couple who had been involved there. I looked for a place to hold the meetings, and we found a place. What actually happened was that Narcotics Anonymous and Families Anonymous started within a week of each other at the same place. And as far as I know that was the start of the tradition-oriented NA that has been spread around Australia. Q. What year was that? A. 1976. The interesting thing from my point of view is that if I hadn’t gotten into counseling… I was able to speak about my drug use at AA and so were the others. In other words, I didn’t need NA to stay clean and sober, and neither did they. Then for me there’s always been a connection with FA. That, of course, has caused anger and resentment in other people who don’t like that historical connection. Q. Why do you think they don’t like it? A. Well, if you want to get neurotic about the traditions, talk to NA members, because there are a lot of very uptight people around. How we’ve survived I don’t know, because there’s certainly an element of self-destruction in NA. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself…. So that’s how it started. There were [seven of us] and that’s how it stayed for a while. The first guy who got clean and sober in NA was the best man at my wedding. Q. I like that. A. Yeah. I got him to AA and he didn’t like AA. Later on he got sicker and I took him to NA, and as far as I know he’s been clean and sober ever since. He started NA in Bendigo. Q. What was going on in Sydney at the time? Nothing? A. No. I think it was around about 1982 or ’83 that we started having groups that were following the traditions and getting stronger in Sydney. Q. One thing I’m sure our readers would like to know is how much NA has matured. You’ve told me some things about how immature NA was then, what with the traditions police on one end of the spectrum and people at the other end who knew nothing about the traditions…. A. That’s the way it is now. In the early days, it was much better. Q. How so? A. It was just more relaxed. We had the basic outline of what we needed to do and we were all trying to work for a common cause, but as it got bigger, it had room for people to be bloody-minded. Q. In what areas do you think NA still has some growing to do? Where do we still have problems? A. Narrow-mindedness. Rigidity. Addicts coming along are not going to accept that authoritative do-as-I-did, go-to-meetings, read-the-book, work-the-steps attitude. Q. Are you basically talking about certain NA members not accepting people seeking additional help outside of NA such as therapy or religion? A. A perfect example is a cartoon I saw in the NA Way. This woman was talking about finding [something else] and the woman on the other end was getting more and more worried. Q. Right, that was the January 1998 issue. A. I nearly wrote to you about it. Q. Well, now you don’t have to because you’re being interviewed for the magazine. A. I thought the cartoon was shaming people who wanted to do other
things outside of NA. [That attitude] ultimately causes divisiveness because
it shows intolerance. We’ve got to have respect for people. When we shame
them for doing something outside of a narrow point of view, then we’re
not respecting them. I mean, what you published was the norm [in NA]. When
I became a full-time counselor, there was a lot of prejudice. What’s more,
I’m an atheist. That has caused enormous problems for people—not for me
as a recovering person, but for others. Then I stopped going to meetings.
That was another problem because I got so much shit at meetings and I was
sending my clients to meetings. They said you couldn’t stay clean without
going to meetings. Nonsense!
NA is always going to be reborn with new people maturing within the fellowship and implanting their persona on it. But what’s dangerous is the idea of “circling the wagons”—outside is bad and inside is good. I don’t believe addiction is a disease. That’s absolute nonsense to me. For addiction to be named a disease—that was useful in 1935 and 1953. It’s useful now if you just want to get clean and not go any further. You know yourself how many addicts get clean, but are into other addictions. Q. Or just don’t make any fundamental changes … A. Exactly. Another [conflict I have with NA’s philosophy] is that
I don’t have a God. You take a look at the steps and they have a real God-orientation.
I spend a lot of time counseling people to work through the first three
steps using their own higher self or whatever so we can move on to the
important steps: the fourth and fifth.
Q. I was going to tell you that some of the new literature, particularly the new Step Working Guides, make mention of members using a set of principles at their Higher Power or their own highest self. A. That’s a good trend, but when you get in there in the groups and people come in and they’re desperate and they’re told, “This is what you have to believe”—it’s very easy to propagandize the old stuff. Older members stayed clean because they had support from the fellowship, but that’s the thing: You only get support if you follow the party line. If you don’t, you’ll get condemned, you’ll get ostracized. It happens to new people. It happens to people like me. The love is not unconditional. Q. So you think NA really needs some unconditional love, then? A. Yes, because that’s the thing that really heals. DAVE F, PENNSYLVANIA
Q. What was NA like when you found it in 1974? A. There was a local rehab here, and it was a very enlightened rehab in that it opened its doors to addicts. It treated alcoholics for five or six years, and in the late sixties began treating addicts. The director believed that the same principles that worked for alcoholism would also work for addiction. So there was NA on the ground at that time. There were two NA meetings a week and there had been NA off and on in Philadelphia, but mostly on since about 1969. There’s a quick, interesting little story… Q. Do tell. A. It has to do with the importance of literature. An addict from this area had gone to an AA convention in California in 1969, and he met some people who said, “Look, there’s NA out here.” And they handed him one—one!—copy of the Little White Book. He brought it back to the rehab and showed it to a friend of his who was a therapist at the rehab and they started an NA meeting. All they knew about NA was what they got from the Little White Book. Q. That was enough, I guess. A. That’s right. And from that, people who went through the rehab started meetings in their own communities, so by the time I came in in January 1974, there were about a half-dozen meetings in the Delaware Valley, which is Philadelphia and the surrounding suburban communities. Also about that time—the late sixties, early seventies—the drug problem was growing. A lot of drug rehabs were starting to spring up that were modeled more on the Synanon approach, which was therapeutic communities [advocating long withdrawal from society]. A lot of them never addressed the problem of alcohol in the life of an addict. Then here was this Little White Booklet and meetings that made it very clear that alcohol was a drug. That was a radical minority view at that time. There were rehabs that, after you were there a year, would try to teach you how to drink socially. They would take you out in the evenings and try to show you how to have one or two beers. Q. We’ve come a long way. How about the Twelve Traditions? Did the NA community in Philadelphia follow them? Did you talk about them? A. That’s a very interesting topic because everybody went to AA. Nobody would have even attempted—it would have been viewed as foolhardy and half-stepping—to try to stay clean solely on NA meetings. [NA members] simply didn’t have the clean time. I remember my first home group. It was a big meeting because it would have something like twelve or fifteen people, and that’s really about all the addicts that were going to NA. Q. And that was a huge NA meeting in Philadelphia in 1974? A. Huge. And there was someone down there who was rumored to have three years. That was an extraordinary amount of time. So we all went to AA, and that’s something people in the fellowship today have a hard time understanding. We read AA literature at the meetings. So with the exception of our relationship with AA, I’d say we followed the traditions. There was a meeting in a treatment center, and [the staff] insisted that addicts [from outside] have a urine test before going to the meeting. So what we called the “Intergroup” then voted not to support that meeting because it was a violation of traditions. Q. That’s a controversial issue even today. A. But we never viewed ourselves as a “little AA.” We had our own personality from the beginning. We went to AA to learn spirituality and about the steps from alcoholics who had more experience with them. Q. Would you say that NA language played a role in developing NA’s identity? A. I don’t think so at all. We had a very clear identity. We had our own activities. We had our own Intergroup. We had our own public relations committee trying to get the message out, I’d say even more aggressively then than now. We had a hotline in Philadelphia, and it rang in an addict’s home. So I’d say the identity as a separate fellowship from AA predated the whole focus on NA language. That didn’t hit here until the early to mid-eighties. Q. How did that affect the fellowship in Pennsylvania? A. It caused a lot of problems. A lot of people who were very involved in NA no longer go to NA because of it. This wave of “correct-speak” drove people away. But that wasn’t the first thing. We had a major exodus when The NA Tree came down. Q. Oh, really? A. Yeah, it was disseminated in about 1977 after it was passed out there in California. A lot of people were very resistant. It turned out to be a minority, but it was a strong, vocal minority who resisted adopting the service structure that—we felt—was being foisted upon us. Q. What was your service structure before that? A. Pretty much like AA’s. We had an Intergroup. Q. I’m not sure all our readers are familiar with AA’s structure, so would you elaborate on that a little bit? What did Intergroup do? Did a representative from every NA group go to an Intergroup meeting? A. Yeah, and it was done really well. The meeting was moved around to try to encourage interest from other areas. Q. That’s great. Did it provide any services? A. Yeah, we had public relations. We had a literature committee. We did our own literature here. As I understand it, the First Step out in California read “…powerless over our addiction” in the early sixties, and it probably read that way in the Little White Book that landed here in 1969. But somebody here decided that it should be “…powerless over drugs.” It was that way for quite a while, and it became a real controversy here. Meetings were reading it with “powerless over drugs,” and when The NA Tree took hold, people went out to these meetings to tell them they weren’t NA. Also, we were always trying to contact California and we never got a response. There was no viable fellowship in New York then. There was no viable fellowship that we knew of anywhere else. That’s when a lot of people who were instrumental in early NA here just left. But as many stayed as left, and they got their rewards. It’s been tremendous to watch the growth of the fellowship. It takes compromise. I will say that [the NA language controversy] has tempered over the years. People can come into meetings and talk any way they want without causing a negative response. Q. What else has changed? A. Yeah, I’ll tell you something else you’d never see in a meeting today. We had fifty-fifty raffles. [Editor’s note: In a fifty-fifty raffle, tickets are sold for a certain amount and the pot of money is split between the organization conducting the raffle and the person whose ticket is drawn.] Q. In meetings!?! A. Can you imagine trying to get away with that today? There’d be a shoot-out. Q. What other wild and crazy things did you do back then that NA doesn’t do anymore? A. Smoke in meetings. It was coffee, donuts, and cigarettes at every meeting. Nobody gave any thought to non-smoking meetings. Q. What else? A. People knew that if we wanted this thing to take off, we needed newcomers. Somebody sick with their ears open was a precious commodity. Also, relapse was viewed a little differently then. One could almost get the feeling that relapse today is just another day in recovery. I’ve heard people say in meetings that relapse is good and some other pretty absurd things. Relapse was taken very seriously, and it was something to be avoided. Q. Do you think that’s due to people coming in with “higher bottoms” these days? A. I don’t know. I think people are afraid to give each other direction today. It’s not hip to tell someone, “hey, you’re making a mistake.” We’ve gotten to be this “we’ll accept anything you do” thing, and that’s bullshit. People need direction once in a while. The old-timers when I came around would get in your face if they thought you were doing something wrong. I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago, and this guy was sharing about how alcohol wasn’t really a problem for him and he could drink. I interrupted and said NA’s a program of total abstinence and he really shouldn’t be sharing here. People got upset with me for saying that. Q. In your view, in what areas does NA still have some growing to do? What’s the next step for NA? A. I think we need to get the message of NA out to the public again, in terms of getting our phone number and meeting lists out there. Basically, I’m pretty happy with the way things are. I love the interest in history that’s occurring. I think the next big move is that every region should record its history. I think the conventions are great and incredibly well-organized. Thank God so many addicts have the talent for putting those things on. I’d also like to see us recognize the NA Fellowship in New York that existed back in 1949, 1950, etc. I have a copy of the articles of incorporation of Narcotics Anonymous filed in 1951. I also have an original copy of “Our Way of Life—An Introduction to Narcotics Anonymous,” published in 1951 in New York. I just think we need to be more objective about our history. It doesn’t diminish in any way the contribution of the people in California. I owe my life to that Little White Book ending up here on the East Coast. I don’t think it diminishes Jimmy K one bit to talk about the contributions of Danny C and Houston S. I think we should explore the connection between the fellowships in California and New York. There may have been some contact between them. Another thing I’d like to see is us somehow luring back the people who may have been put off by the intransigence of the mid- and late eighties. They have a lot to give—and they also have a lot to get here. You can get clean here and never walk into another fellowship’s meeting today. I’ve seen it. It’s that strong. It’s that big. We don’t have to be afraid anymore that we’re going to dissolve into some other fellowship. We’re not going anywhere. Back to the top of the document
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