Welcome to the Rappahannock
Area of Narcotics Anonymous home page. We love you and accept you with open arms. We are proud to serve our fellowship and
to be allowed to inform the public about our area and the recovery within it. Please have a look around. Check out the Family
Links page for Other areas pages. Also, Swing by the History page to read about our specific area of this fellowship, the
Rappahannock Area. We would like to take this time to thank you for your interest and would love to extend this message
to you: Our message is HOPE. Our promise is FREEDOM from active addiction. In Narcotics
Anonymous you are Never Alone.
Just for Today you NEVER have to use again.
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? N.A. 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 N.A. 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. How it Works 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. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that
our lives had become unmanageable. We
came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him. We
made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects
of character. We humbly
asked Him to remove our shortcomings. We
made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except
when to do so would injure them or others. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 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. 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.
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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.
When at the End of the Road When At the end of the road we find that we can no longer function as
a human being, either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma. What is there left to do? There seems to be this
alternative; either go on as best we can to the bitter end - jails, institutions or death - or find a new way to live. In
years gone by very few addicts ever had this last choice. Those who are addicted today are more fortunate. For the first time
in mans entire history, a simple way has been proving itself in the lives of many addicts. It is available to us all, This
is a simple spiritual - not religious - program known as Narcotics Anonymous.
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