Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   January 7                                                   "Recovery"

    "Narcotics Anonymous offers addicts a program of recovery that is more
   than just a life without drugs.  Not only is this way of life better than
   the hell we lived, it is better than any life that we have ever known."

                                                           Basic Text, p. 107

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   Few of us have any interest in "recovering" what we had before we
   started using.  Many of us suffered severely from physical, sexual, and
   emotional abuse.   Getting high and staying high seemed like the only
   possible way to cope with such abuse.  Others suffered in less noticeable
   but equally painful ways before addiction took hold.  We lacked direction
   and purpose.   We were spiritually empty.   We felt isolated, unable to
   empathize with others.  We had none of the things that give life its sense
   and value.  We took drugs in a vain attempt to fill the emptiness inside
   ourselves.  Most of us wouldn't want to "recover" what we used to
   have.

   Ultimately, the recovery we find in NA is something different: a chance at
   a new life.   We've been given tools to clear the wreckage from our
   lives.  We've been given support in courageously setting forth on a new
   path.  And we've been given the gift of conscious contact with a Power
   greater than ourselves, providing us with the inner strength and direction
   we so sorely lacked in the past.

   Recovering?  Yes, in every way.  We're recovering a whole new life,
   better than anything we ever dreamed possible.  We are grateful.

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   Just for today:  I've recovered something I never had, something I never
   imagined possible: the life of a recovering addict.   Thank you, Higher
   Power, in more than words can say.