A Thank you to my NA family!

  

     I was reading in my NA text tonight and it brought me to a few passages that describe exactly how I feel about Narcotics Anonymous!  It is in the back of the book where "Members share about reaching the end of the road and surrendering.  Their paths to find recovery differed, but they all found that in coming to NA, they have come home." *  I found the same.  I wanted to share sentiments from this member which touched me and seemed to speak from my own heart.  The chapter is properly titled "Coming Home".

    "...I don't remember what was said [that night], even though several people spoke to me.  I know I cried.  I remember the warmth I felt when i was with those people.  I felt I shared something with them.  I felt I belonged, that I belonged to them.  I had never felt anything like that.  I had always felt different with everybody, even my family.  It was hard to stay clean those first weeks.  Each day seemed to go on endlessly until the next meeting.  When I stopped using, it was as if I had been in a deep, dark cave for years and suddenly I stood in full sunlight.  My eyes had to adjust to light that sometimes hurt terribly.  Everything, good and bad, became more intense.  Living without anesthesia, I did not understand the feelings that would suddenly surface.  Sometimes I thought I was going crazy.  I would be immensely sad without reason, sometimes for days.  Other addicts who remembered their own struggle assured me that everything would be fine.  I did not have to understand everything immediately.  There would always be someone to fall back on.  I was safe.  I kept coming back, and it got easier.  The obsession disappeared."**

     The first NA & AA meetings I went to made me feel THE EXACT same as the reading above.  The people at those meetings in Prairie Du Chien, WI, made me feel so at home.  Immediately I felt closer to them than I did to some of my own family members and for the first time in A LONG TIME, I didn't feel alone anymore.  When I attended the last meeting (for me) in PDC, I shared a short story from my favorite television series The West Wing.  In the episode, my favorite character is struggling with PTSD after recovering from a gun shot wound.  His boss, the Chief of Staff for the president was an alcoholic in recovery and in showing him support in his own kind of recovery,  This is the story he told

, " There was this guy walking down the street and he falls into a hole and he can't get back out.  He looks up as a doctor walks by, he says, "Doctor Doctor I am stuck down here in this hole and I can't get out".  The doctor writes a prescription and throws it down into the hole and keeps walking.  Then a priest walks by, the mans says "Father, Father I am stuck down here in this hole and I can't get out."  The priest writes down a prayer and throws it down into the hole and keeps walking.  Then a friend walks by.  The man yells "Hey Hey I am stuck down here in this hole and I can't get out!"  The friend looks down and then jumps down into the hole!  The man says "What the hell are you doing?  Now we are both stuck down here! and the friend replies, " I know, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out!".  

     To my family at those meetings ... That is what you did for me!  Thank you!


  
* Pg. 155 Narcotics Anonymous Blue Text
* Pgs. 203 & 204 Narcotics Anonymous Blue Text