“…we could feel time, touch reality, and recognize spiritual values long lost to many of us.”
Basic Text, p. 88
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In our active addiction, we were prepared to compromise everything we believed in just to get our hands on more drugs. Whether we stole from our families and friends, sold ourselves, or lied to our employers, we were ignoring the values that mattered most to us. Each time we compromised another dearly held belief, another chunk of the mortar holding our characters together fell away. By the time many of us came to our first meeting, nothing was left but the ruin of our former selves.
We will locate our lost values as we carry out our first honest self-examination. But in order to rebuild our characters, we’ll find it necessary to maintain those values, no matter how great the temptation to shove them aside. We will need to be honest, even when we think we could fool everyone by lying. If we ignore our values, we’ll discover that the biggest fibs we’ve told have been the ones we’ve told ourselves.
We don’t want to start the demolition of our spirits again after all the work we’ve put into their restoration. It’s essential that we stand for something, or we risk falling for anything. Whatever we find important to us, we honor.
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Just for today:I stand for something. My strength is the result of living my values.
“Enforced morality lacks the power that comes to us when we choose to live a spiritual life.”
Basic Text, p. 45
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In our active addiction, many of us lived our lives by default. We were unwilling or unable to make choices about how we wanted to act, what we preferred to do, or even where we would live. We allowed the drugs or other people to make our most basic decisions for us. Freedom from active addiction means, among other things, the freedom to make those choices for ourselves.
Freedom of choice is a wonderful gift, but it’s also a great responsibility. Choice allows us to find out who we are and what we believe in. However, in exercising it, we’re called on to weigh our own choices and accept the consequences. This leads some of us to seek out someone who will make our choices for us—our sponsor, our home group, our NA friends—just as our disease made our choices for us when we were using. That’s not recovery.
Seeking others’ experience is one thing; abdicating personal responsibility is something else. If we don’t use the gift of freedom we’ve been given, if we refuse to accept the responsibilities that go along with it, we’ll lose that gift and our lives will be diminished. We are responsible for our own recovery and our own choices. Difficult as it may seem, we must make those choices for ourselves and become willing to accept the consequences.
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Just for today:I am grateful for the freedom to live as I choose. Today, I will accept responsibility for my recovery, make my own choices, and accept the consequences.
“This decision demands continued acceptance, ever-increasing faith, and a daily commitment to recovery.”
IP No. 14, *One Addict’s Experience…
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Sometimes, we really live the Third Step—and it’s great! We don’t regret the past, we aren’t afraid of the future, and we’re generally pleased with the present. Sometimes, though, we lose our vision of God’s will in our life.
Many of us dream of erasing the mistakes of our past, but the past cannot be erased. Many of us are grateful this is so, for our past experiences have brought us to the recovery we enjoy today. By working the program, we can learn to accept the past and reconcile ourselves with it by amending our wrongs. Those same Twelve Steps can help eliminate our worries over the future. When we practice NA principles on a daily basis in all our affairs, we can leave the results up to our Higher Power.
It seems as though our members with the strongest faith are the ones who are best able to live in the present moment. Enjoyment, appreciation, and gratitude for the quality of our lives—these are the results of faith in life itself. When we practice the principles of our program, today is the only day we need.
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Just for today:I will make the most of today, and trust that yesterday and tomorrow are in God’s care.
“We are not responsible for our disease, only for our recovery. As we begin to apply what we have learned, our lives begin to change for the better.”
Basic Text, p. 91
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The further we go in recovery, the less we avoid responsibility for ourselves and our actions. By applying the principles of the Narcotics Anonymous program, we are able to change our lives. Our existence takes on new meaning as we accept responsibility and the freedom of choice responsibility implies. We do not take recovery for granted.
We take responsibility for our recovery by working the Twelve Steps with a sponsor. We go to meetings regularly and share with the newcomer what was freely given to us: the gift of recovery. We become involved with our home group and accept responsibility for our part in sharing recovery with the still-suffering addict. As we learn how to effectively practice spiritual principles in all areas of our lives, the quality of our lives improves.
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Just for today:Using the spiritual tools I’ve gained in recovery, I am willing and able to make responsible choices.
“…we give love because it was given so freely to us. New frontiers are open to us as we learn how to love. Love can be the flow of life energy from one person to another.”
Basic Text, p. 105
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Love given, and love received, is the essence of life itself. It is the universal common denominator, connecting us to those around us. Addiction deprived us of that connection, locking us within ourselves.
The love we find in the NA program reopens the world to us. It unlocks the cage of addiction which once imprisoned us. By receiving love from other NA members, we find out—perhaps for the first time—what love is and what it can do. We hear fellow members talk about the sharing of love, and we sense the substance it lends to their lives.
We begin to suspect that, if giving and receiving love means so much to others, maybe it can give meaning to our lives, too. We sense that we are on the verge of a great discovery, yet we also sense that we won’t fully understand the meaning of love unless we give ours away. We try it, and discover the missing connection between ourselves and the world.
Today, we realize that what they said was true: “We keep what we have only by giving it away.”
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Just for today:Life is a new frontier for me, and the vehicle I will use to explore it is love. I will give freely the love I have received.
God give me the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the consequences may be. Help me to consider others and not harm them in any way. Help me to consult with others before I take any actions that would cause me to be sorry. Help me to not repeat such behaviors. Show me the way of Patience, Tolerance, Kindliness, and Love and help me live the spiritual life. AMEN
“We never have to use again, no matter how we feel. All feelings will eventually pass.”
Basic Text, p. 82
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It hurts like never before. You get out of bed after a sleepless night, talk to God, and still don’t feel any better. “It will pass,” a little voice tells you. “When?” you wonder, as you pace and mutter and get on with your day.
You sob in your car and turn the radio all the way up so you can’t hear your own thoughts. But you go straight to work, and don’t even think about using drugs.
Your insides feel as though they’ve been torched. Just when the pain becomes unbearable, you go numb and silent. You go to a meeting and wish you were as happy as other members seem to be. But you don’t relapse.
You cry some more and call your sponsor. You drive to a friend’s house and don’t even notice the beautiful scenery because your inner landscape is so bleak. You may not feel any better after visiting your friend—but at least you didn’t visit the connection instead.
You listen to a Fifth Step. You share at a meeting. You look at the calendar and realize you’ve gotten through another day clean.
Then one day you wake up, look outside, and realize it’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. You take a deep breath, smile again, and know that it really does pass.
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Just for today: No matter how I feel today, I’ll go on with my recovery.
“…the addict would find from the start as much identification as each needed to convince himself that he could stay clean, by the example of others who had recovered for many years.”
Basic Text, p. 88
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Many of us attended our first meeting and, not being entirely sure that NA was for us, found much to criticize. Either we felt as though no one had suffered like we had or that we hadn’t suffered enough. But as we listened we started to hear something new, a wordless language with its roots in recognition, belief, and faith: the language of empathy. Desiring to belong, we kept listening.
We find all the identification we need as we learn to understand and speak the language of empathy. To understand this special language, we listen with our hearts. The language of empathy uses few words; it feels more than it speaks. It doesn’t preach or lecture—it listens. It can reach out and touch the spirit of another addict without a single spoken word.
Fluency in the language of empathy comes to us through practice. The more we use it with other addicts and our Higher Power, the more we understand this language. It keeps us coming back.
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Just for today: I will listen with my heart. With each passing day, I will become more fluent in the language of empathy.
“Sharing with others keeps us from feeling isolated and alone.”
Basic Text, p. 85
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Intimacy is the sharing of our innermost thoughts and feelings with another human being. Many of us long for the warmth and companionship intimacy brings, but those things don’t come without effort. In our addiction, we learned to guard ourselves from others lest they threaten our using. In recovery, we learn how to trust others. Intimacy requires us to lower our defenses. To feel the closeness intimacy brings, we must allow others to get close to us—the real us.
If we are to share our innermost selves with others, we must first have an idea of what those innermost selves are truly like. We regularly examine our lives to find out who we really are, what we really want, and how we really feel. Then, based on our regular inventories of ourselves, we must be as completely and consistently honest with our friends as we can be.
Intimacy is a part of life, and therefore a part of living clean—and intimacy, like everything in recovery, has its price. The painstaking self-scrutiny intimacy calls for can be hard work. And the total honesty of intimacy often brings its own complications. But the freedom from isolation and loneliness that intimacy brings is well worth the effort.
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Just for today:I seek the freedom from isolation and loneliness that intimacy brings. Today, I will get to know “the real me” by taking a personal inventory, and I will practice being completely honest with another person.
“We reevaluate our old ideas so we can become acquainted with the new ideas that lead to a new way of life.”
Basic Text, p. 94
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Learning to live a new way of life can be difficult. Sometimes, when the going gets especially hard, we’re tempted to follow the path of least resistance and live by our old ideas again. We forget that our old ideas were killing us. To live a new way of life, we need to open our minds to new ideas.
Working the steps, attending meetings, sharing with others, trusting a sponsor—these suggestions may meet our resistance, even our rebellion. The NA program requires effort, but each step in the program brings us closer to becoming the kinds of people we truly want to be. We want to change, to grow, to become something more than we are today. To do that, we open our minds, try on the new ideas we’ve found in NA, and learn to live a new way of life.
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Just for today:I will open my mind to new ideas and learn to live my life in a new way.
