Narcotics Anonymous Bucks County Clean Sheet Winter Edition : January, February, and March 2011 Inside this issue: Guidelines for Submitting to BCCS. 2 How to find help? 3 Step One 4 Step Two 5 Step Three 6 1980 s Valentine s 7 Day Dance Flyer Steps One, Two, & Three Your Foundation Poems 8 9 Primary Priority/ Home Group 10-11 Sponsorship 12-13 Answers last issue/ Newcomer X-Word 14-15 Next Issue 16 Chair Ryan B. Co-Chair Jennifer B bccleansheet@yahoo.com
Editor Notes is one suggestion... Contribute bccleansheet@yahoo.com
Eastern Pennsylvania Regional Narcotics Anonymous www.eparna.org
Step three : We made a decision to our wills and lives over to care of God as we understood him. Having worked a thorough first step, it was quite clear that my thinking was not quite right. I was an addict and couldn t successfully use drugs. No matter what I tried the results were always the same pain and desperation. Therefore I couldn t rely on my thinking or actions. The second step meant to me that I had none of the answers. It allowed me to listen for the answers from a power greater than myself. These answers came from many different places. I read a lot, prayed a lot, asked a lot of questions and went to many meetings where I listened as best I could. While all the questions were not answered some were. This positioned me to enter into my third step with some faith. The third step for me is of action and commitment. It was about continuing to work the program, to the best of my ability and trusting the things learned in the previous steps. I believed that the God of my understanding had somehow placed me in the program of NA without any effort from me and did not want me to live the life of misery I had been living. Faith that all was going to be ok as long as I didn t pick up. Things were starting to change. It had been some time since there was the obsession to use drugs. My spirit had an awakening of sorts. No longer was the need to control everything. My needs were being met. All I had to do was wake up, dress up, show up for life and stay in my lane. Take my will and my life, guide me in my recovery, show me how to live
Despair to Hope
An Addict s Experience. Whenever I find myself in a meeting where the topic is on home group, I always hear at least one addict say, I have the best home group in the world! Or something along those lines, it never fails. The statement makes me snicker to myself in disagreement every time, probably because I ve never heard any of my fellow home group members say it. Or simply because the world is very large and contrary to popular opinion, does stretch a bit beyond the borders of bucks county. A lot of meetings out there people but seriously. I remember as I was leaving rehab one of the staff yelled out to me, Get a coffee commitment! I had no clue what that meant but still took it as an order. I would no longer be in the safe haven of a facility and realized the gravity of my situation. I t was crucial that I follow some direction other than my own if I wanted to stay clean. At the time I didn t know it, but this order that was given to me was laying the groundwork. A step towards building a foundation in my recovery. With great urgency I sought out a home group and sponsor. Within two weeks I had both. An hour before the meeting began I would show up. My sponsor showed me how to make the coffee and set up the room. For the first time in a long while I was being of service rather than serving myself. As time went on I began to develop relationships with the other members of my group. They knew me and I them. If I was in a funk I couldn t disappear into quiet isolation like I could in other meetings, they knew, and wouldn t allow it. I began to feel comfortable among them and could speak about whatever was on my mind. They gave me direction when I was lost and continue to do so. Honestly, I don t know where I d be without them. My home group is where I feel safe and comfy. It keeps me grounded in service and the fellowship. I unlock the doors and setup the room so that recovering addicts have a place to meet. Is it the best home group in the world? I don t know but it s the best I ve found. They are my N.A. family. if you don t have one, do yourself a favor and find one. If yours feels like home your in the right place.
I am an addict named ******. My first experience with sponsorship was before I was even clean. One night I sat in an NA meeting with my sister next to me. She didn t trust I would really go if I was alone. During the meeting amore experienced member sat at the front circle table next to a second women who was telling her story. I remember trying to focus in on what the woman talking was saying but my head was so loud the words sounded like an echoing voice inside a tunnel. My sister remained next to me reading our Basic Text. I didn t know what she was reading then as I had never gotten one. The break happened and my sister told me how the book talked a lot about sponsorship. My sister told me to go ask the woman at the front of the room to be my sponsor. I know that I believed I had a drug problem but I didn t know how NA or a sponsor would help m with that. Who or what could help a hopeless drug addict like me. For whatever reason I did as I was told. The conversation was a blur. My head was so loud and I felt like I was in a fog. The woman gave me her phone number folded up on a little yellow post it. The meeting got called back to order. I sat back down in the hard, orange plastic chair and waited for the meeting to end. I was so afraid that someone would talk to me or figure out I wasn t as okay as I pretended to be. At the end I told my sister I needed to have a cigarette and ran downstairs. When my sister without a drug problem finished working my program and asking help for me, we left. I waited in my usual spot behind a tree against the wall, hiding. When I got home I unfolded the yellow square of paper. Someone actually trusted me with their phone number and I was shocked. I traced over the letters and number with my finger. For some reason I felt better just having it in my hand. I understand now that feeling of better was really hope. Hope had become such a forgotten feeling I didn t know what it was anymore. Over the next few weeks I went to meetings sporadically. When I did it was only to be with my boyfriend and I was usually paying more attention to him then the meeting. As it happens without a sponsor, commitment to a home group and regular meeting attendance, I used. After a hard bottom which almost killed me I ended up in yet another psychiatric facility. My sister who refused to visit me sent a Basic Text and the little square of paper. A letter inside simply said read it. Read it I did, everyday, all day. I remember starting with the personal stories. After each story I would put a dot in the table of contents next to each story I related to. Later I realized there was a dot next to every story. When I got home I d love to say I ran to the phone to call the woman I had asked to be my sponsor but that wasn t part of my process apparently. I didn t have the understanding yet of the importance of a sponsor, home group and regular meeting attendance. Instead I called the boyfriend I thought I had waiting for me. That was our routine. After one of went on a run and came home we always called each other to go to a meeting and try to be clean again. When someone answered I was told he had disappeared a few weeks prior and no one knew where he was. It was decision time, use or stay clean. I didn t know to use the phone lists or better yet call my sponsor..
. I white knuckled it through the night and into the next afternoon. The next day I knew there was a meeting at 8pm in Morrisville. At 5pm I left my house and got there 20 minutes later. Just sitting outside of the meeting place made me feel safer. I tried to read my Basic Text but my head was racing I was all around people and places to use. I knew that if I got up from under the tree I was sitting under I would use. Finally at 7pm a home group member came to open the doors. He called me by name and asked me if I was done. I told him I didn t know but I wanted to be. He told me that was all I needed. We went inside and talked while I helped set up the meeting. For the first time I heard get a sponsor, home group and go to a meeting everyday. I didn t have anymore excuses. They were suggestions but I made them requirements. I was told to find a woman at a meeting and ask her to sponsor me. When I asked what if she says no? I was told ask someone else. At the next meeting I went to I asked a woman at break to be my sponsor. For the first time I heard what she said, call me everyday and don t use under any and all circumstances. Finally I was ready to be clean. I was ready to be clean because I was ready to do the work to be. After building a foundation at six months clean I was put on the 1 st step. I was told without a foundation to keep me clean the steps wouldn t do me any good. Over he next few years my recovery was not perfect. I made a lot of mistakes. However, I went to my home group and was of service. Everyday I called my sponsor and went to a meeting. I was taught to never lie to my sponsor or fellowship. My sponsor changed but I made sure I had one. The women who were once terrifying or my enemy became my guides through recovery. I was taught to take suggestion, reach out and let people know who I was. At times I took honesty to far but I never lied about how I was living. I continued to change and stay clean no matter what. At the times I was indifferent to the program my sponsor and the fellowship carried me through. There were a of time I fought the personality change I was desperately in need of to stay clean long term. When I was humbled and ready to leave my sponsor was there too. Being sponsored has taught me how to live life on life s terms. Eventually I was told to sponsor. I have never been popular in NA and don t need to be. The women in my life have never be soft when it comes to recovery and it was told to me not suggested. Someone times women ask me to sponsor them and sometimes they don t. I sponsor as I was sponsored. I sponsor based on experience and never theory or opinion. Being a sponsor is a challenge to my own self-centeredness. When they call I do my best to answer. The hardest part of being a sponsor is for me to allow others their process. I want them to be further than they are or my program to keep them clean. We carry the message, not the addict. I can only offer my experience and trust their higher power will care for them as mine did for me. Sponsoring keeps me diligent in my recovery. We keep what we have only by giving it away.