The Bay Cities Area of Narcotics Anonymous serves as a vital resource for individuals and families affected by addiction throughout the coastal South Bay region of Los Angeles County. By coordinating local NA groups, maintaining accurate meeting information, and supporting area-wide service efforts, the Bay Cities Area helps ensure that anyone seeking recovery can easily find help. The area supports meetings in these communities Carson, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, Long Beach, Redondo Beach, San Pedro, Signal Hill, Torrance, Torrrance, Wilmington, strengthening connections between members, promoting unity, and fostering a safe, consistent message of recovery for the broader community.
We've asked someone to sponsor us, and the reasons we have for asking that particular person are as many as the grains of sand on a beach. Perhaps we heard them share at a speaker meeting and thought they were funny or inspiring. Perhaps we thought they had a great car and we would get one by working the same program they work. Or maybe we live in a small town and they were the only person who had the time available to help.
Whatever our initial reasons for getting the sponsor we have, we're sure to find that our reasons for keeping them are quite different. Suddenly they'll amaze us with some stunning insight, making us wonder whether they've been sneaking peeks at our Fourth Step. Or maybe we're going through some sort of life crisis, and their experience with the same problem helps us in ways we never dreamed possible. We call them in pain, and they come up with a special combination of caring words that provide genuine comfort.
None of these remarkable feats on the part of our sponsor are mere coincidence. They've simply walked the same path before us. A Higher Power has placed that one special person in our lives, and we are grateful for their presence.
One way to define solidarity is standing together with others. The Seventh Tradition explains that one of the ways we do this is by taking care of NA together, in our own way. Declining outside contributions is bold--it means we rely on each other to step up and take responsibility for NA. The vitality of our groups and service bodies fully depends on the resources we contribute.
The bonds we share with other recovering addicts are unique; we have addiction and recovery in common, and yet sometimes we have very little else that connects us. Still, we are joined together in solidarity through the NA program. We don't recover alone, and every one of us received the message of recovery as a result of what other addicts gave to NA before we showed up. Practicing solidarity in NA is not just a feeling of commitment to our own group or local services. We stand in solidarity with those who aren't here yet--we stand for still-suffering addicts everywhere--when we take action to make sure they have a chance to experience our message in their own language and culture, just as we have.
In our groups, that means doing what we can to ensure the meetings remain open to anyone with a desire to stop using. Solidarity with our local service bodies means we support the efforts to ensure that local addicts can find NA. We practice solidarity with NA beyond our community by paying attention to the services that make our message more widely available and by contributing what we can to help fulfill the needs of all our services.
