Narcotics Anonymous values relationships with those in government, faith-based organizations, healthcare, education, and helping professions. These collaborations have proven to be mutually beneficial for NA, its partners, and most importantly, those with substance use disorders.
A Global Community of Addiction Recovery
Narcotics Anonymous sprang from the Alcoholics Anonymous program of the late 1940s, with meetings first emerging in the Los Angeles area of California, USA, in the early Fifties. The NA program started as a small US movement that has grown into one of the world’s oldest and largest organizations of its type.
Today, Narcotics Anonymous is well established throughout much of the Americas, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Newly formed groups and NA communities are now scattered throughout the Indian subcontinent, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Today, NA members hold more than 67,000 meetings weekly in 131 countries. Narcotics Anonymous books and information pamphlets are currently available in 49 languages.
For more information about our program, we invite you to review some of the items described below.
Links to helpful publications about Narcotics Anonymous
- An Introduction to NA Meetings: Offers a welcoming introduction and explains practices unfamiliar to those at their first meetings and provides tips for groups to preserve an atmosphere of recovery.
- For Those in Treatment: In this pamphlet, we offer some suggestions and a basic plan of action to help recovering addicts in the transition from treatment, to continuing recovery in Narcotics Anonymous.
- Narcotics Anonymous and Persons Receiving Medication-Assisted Treatment: This pamphlet is intended for professionals who prescribe medication to treat drug addiction.
- NA: A Resource in Your Community: This pamphlet provides information about local NA services that may be available such as public service announcements, phone helplines, literature sales, and NA presentations for health fairs, schools and professional conferences.
- In Times of Illness: This relied-upon booklet was recently revised to reflect members’ experiences with challenges such as mental health issues, chronic illness and pain, and supporting members with illnesses.
- NA Groups and Medication: Our Twelve Traditions remind us that medication use is a member’s personal decision and is an outside issue for NA groups. This piece is intended for groups as they consider this issue. It does not address members’ personal decisions, nor does it try to change members’ opinions about medication. Groups are often better able to carry the message and welcome everyone when members come together to discuss this issue.
- By Young Addicts, For Young Addicts: This pamphlet was developed by young members of Narcotics Anonymous to illustrate the fact that young addicts around the world, speaking many different languages, are getting and staying clean in NA.
- Information about NA: Includes facts about the history of NA, organizational philosophy, and membership demographics.
- Membership Survey: Contains the results of a biennial survey of NA members.
Professionals may refer to:
Connecting Your Clients with Members of Narcotics Anonymous
If your clients are being released from an addiction program in a correctional or treatment facility, and you want them to attend Narcotics Anonymous after release, the NA Recovery Envoys can match your clients with an NA member to assist them in getting to their first few meetings and help them become acquainted with other NA members and groups in their release area. To make this happen check out the Recovery Envoy page and assist your clients with completing the request form prior to their release.
NA for Your Clients at Your Facility
- If you are seeking more information about Narcotics Anonymous in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, feel free to contact our Public Relations subcommittee. If needed, we can schedule a presentation for you and your colleagues.
- Narcotics Anonymous facilitates meetings in jails, prisons, hospitals and other institutions, where clients are not allowed access to public meetings. If you are seeking to have Narcotics Anonymous meetings brought into your facility, feel free to contact our Hospitals & Institutions subcommittee.
- You and your clients are welcome at all of our open meetings. Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have regarding bringing or sending your clients to meetings of Narcotics Anonymous.