Forword

 

The Little White booklet is an introduction to the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. It is written for those men and women who, like ourselves, suffer from a seemingly hopeless addiction to drugs.

 

There is no cure for addiction, but recovery is possible by a program of simple spiritual
principles. This booklet is not meant to be comprehensive, but it contains the essentials that in
our personal and group experience we know to be necessary for recovery.

 

Serenity Prayer

 

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change

 courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

 

Who is an addict?

 

Most of us do not have to think twice about this question. We know! Our whole life and
thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another—the getting and using and finding ways
and means to get more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or
woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and
progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

 

What is the Narcotics Anonymous program?

 

NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a
major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean.
This is a program of complete abstinence from all drugs. There is only one requirement for
membership, the desire to stop using. We suggest that you keep an open mind and give
yourself a break. Our program is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them
in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work.

There are no strings attached to NA. We are not affiliated with any other organizations. We
have no initiation fees or dues, no pledges to sign, no promises to make to anyone. We are not
connected with any political, religious, or law enforcement groups, and are under no
surveillance at any time. Anyone may join us, regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed,
religion, or lack of religion.

 

We are not interested in what or how much you used or who your connections were, what
you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do
about your problem and how we can help. The newcomer is the most important person at any
meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away. We have learned from our
group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly stay clean.
Why are we here?

 

Before coming to the Fellowship of NA, we could not manage our own lives. We could not
live and enjoy life as other people do. We had to have something different and we thought we
had found it in drugs. We placed their use ahead of the welfare of our families, our wives,
husbands, and our children. We had to have drugs at all costs. We did many people great harm,
but most of all we harmed ourselves. Through our inability to accept personal responsibilities
we were actually creating our own problems. We seemed to be incapable of facing life on its
own terms.

 

Most of us realized that in our addiction we were slowly committing suicide, but addiction is
such a cunning enemy of life that we had lost the power to do anything about it. Many of us
ended up in jail, or sought help through medicine, religion, and psychiatry. None of these
methods was sufficient for us. Our disease always resurfaced or continued to progress until, in
desperation, we sought help from each other in Narcotics Anonymous.

 

After coming to NA we realized we were sick people. We suffered from a disease from which
there is no known cure.  It can, however, be arrested at some point, and recovery is then possible.

How it works (the 12 Steps of  Narcotics Anonymous)

 

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.

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had
become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends
to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God
as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to
addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

This sounds like a big order, and we can’t do it all at once. We didn’t become addicted in one
day, so remember—easy does it.

 

There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an
attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are
indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. With these we are well on our
way.

 

We feel that our approach to the disease of addiction is completely realistic, for the
therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. We feel that our way is
practical, for one addict can best understand and help another addict. We believe that the
sooner we face our problems within our society, in everyday living, just that much faster do we
become acceptable, responsible, and productive members of that society.

 

The only way to keep from returning to active addiction is not to take that first drug. If you
are like us you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough. We put great emphasis on this, for we know that when we use drugs in any form, or substitute one for another, we release our addiction all over again.

 

Thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse.
Before we came to NA, many of us viewed alcohol separately, but we cannot afford to be
confused about this. Alcohol is a drug. We are people with the disease of addiction who must
abstain from all drugs in order to recover.

 

What can I do?

 

Begin your own program by taking Step One from the previous chapter, “How It Works.”
When we fully concede to our innermost selves that we are powerless over our addiction, we
have taken a big step in our recovery. Many of us have had some reservations at this point, so
give yourself a break and be as thorough as possible from the start. Go on to Step Two, and so
forth, and as you go on you will come to an understanding of the program for yourself. If you
are in an institution of any kind and have stopped using for the present, you can, with a clear
mind, try this way of life.

 

If you are in an institution, upon release, continue your daily program and contact a member of NA. Do this by mail, by phone, or in person. Better yet, come to our meetings. Here you will find answers to some of the things that may be disturbing you now.

 

If you are not in an institution, the same holds true. Stop using for today. Most of us can do
for eight or twelve hours what seems impossible for a longer period of time. If the obsession or
compulsion becomes too great, put yourself on a five-minute basis of not using. Minutes will
grow to hours, and hours to days, so you will break the habit and gain some peace of mind. The
real miracle happens when you realize that the need for drugs has in some way been lifted from
you. You have stopped using and started to live.

The Twelve Traditions of NA

We keep what we have only with vigilance, and just as freedom for the individual comes
from the Twelve Steps, so freedom for the group springs from our traditions. As long as the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would tear us apart, all will be well.

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on NA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express
Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or
NA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry the message to the addict
who still suffers.
6. An NA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the NA name to any related facility or
outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, or prestige divert us from our
primary purpose.
7. Every NA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Narcotics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may
employ special workers.
9. NA, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees
directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Narcotics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the NA name ought never be
drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always
maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place
principles before personalities.

Recovery and relapse

Many people think that recovery is simply a matter of not using drugs. They consider a
relapse a sign of complete failure, and long periods of abstinence a sign of complete success. We
in the recovery program of Narcotics Anonymous have found that this perception is too
simplistic. After a member has had some involvement in our fellowship, a relapse may be the
jarring experience that brings about a more rigorous application of the program. By the same
token we have observed some members who remain abstinent for long periods of time whose
dishonesty and self-deceit still prevent them from enjoying complete recovery and acceptance
within society. Complete and continuous abstinence, however, in close association and
identification with others in NA groups, is still the best ground for growth.

 

Although all addicts are basically the same in kind, we do, as individuals, differ in degree of
sickness and rate of recovery. There may be times when a relapse lays the groundwork for
complete freedom. At other times that freedom can only be achieved by a grim and obstinate
willfulness to hang on to abstinence, come hell or high water, until a crisis passes. An addict
who by any means can lose, even for a time, the need or desire to use, and has free choice over
impulsive thinking and compulsive action, has reached a turning point that may be the decisive
factor in his recovery. The feeling of true independence and freedom hangs here at times in the
balance. To step out alone and run our own lives again draws us, yet we seem to know that
what we have has come from dependence on a Power greater than ourselves and from the
giving and receiving of help from others in acts of empathy. Many times in our recovery the old
bugaboos will haunt us. Life may again become meaningless, monotonous, and boring. We may
tire mentally in repeating our new ideas and tire physically in our new activities, yet we know
that if we fail to repeat them we will surely take up our old practices. We suspect that if we do
not use what we have, we will lose what we have. These times are often the periods of our
greatest growth. Our minds and bodies seem tired of it all, yet the dynamic forces of change or
true conversion, deep within, may be working to give us the answers that alter our inner
motivations and change our lives.

 

Recovery as experienced through our Twelve Steps is our goal, not mere physical abstinence.
To improve ourselves takes effort, and since there is no way in the world to graft a new idea on
a closed mind, an opening must be made somehow. Since we can do this only for ourselves, we
need to recognize two of our seemingly inherent enemies, apathy and procrastination. Our
resistance to change seems built in, and only a nuclear blast of some kind will bring about any
alteration or initiate another course of action. A relapse, if we survive it, may provide the charge for the demolition process. A relapse and sometimes subsequent death of someone close to us can do the job of awakening us to the necessity for vigorous personal action.

 

Just for today

 

Tell yourself:   Just for today, my thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without the use of Just for today, I will have faith in someone in NA who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery. Just for today, I will have a program. I will try to follow it to the best of my ability. Just for today, through NA, I will try to get a better perspective on my life. Just for today, I will be unafraid. My thoughts will be on my new associations, people who are not using and who have found a new way of life. So long as I follow that way, I have
nothing to fear.

(Note: the Little White Booklet, as found on the NA web site, includes Personal Stories, which are not included here.)

 

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions reprinted for adaptation by permission of AA World Services, Inc.