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.
Pain and misery were realities in our using lives. We were unwilling either to accept our living situation or to change what was unacceptable in our lives. We attempted to escape life's pain by taking drugs, but using only compounded our troubles. Our altered sense of reality became a nightmare.
Through living the program of Narcotics Anonymous, we learn that our dreams can replace our nightmares. We grow and change. We acquire the freedom of choice. We are able to give and receive love. We can share honestly about ourselves, no longer magnifying or minimizing the truth. We accept the challenges real life offers us, facing them in a mature, responsible way.
Although recovery does not give us immunity from the realities of life, in the NA Fellowship we can find the support, genuine care, and concern we need to face those realities. We need never hide from reality by using drugs again, for our unity with other recovering addicts gives us strength. Today the support, the care, and the empathy of recovery give us a clean, clear window through which to view, experience, and appreciate reality as it is.
One of the most painful lessons we learn in recovery is that we are each on our own path. No matter how much we want to help, close friends or partners sometimes relapse. Sponsees or other members we've tried to help may choose to get loaded. The same goes for members with significant cleantime whom we admire, and sometimes our sponsor (who's just another addict like we are) will be suffering in the rooms and keeping it to themselves--and will end up using again. The pain we feel in these situations takes many forms: grief, anger, betrayal, confusion, fear for our own recovery.
But we also feel deep compassion for another addict's pain. We try to let that compassion, rather than our pain, drive our actions.
NA members have different ideas about what compassion looks like. Some of us believe that if an addict is using and not coming to meetings, no contact should be made. Tough love. Others reach out to still-using addicts believing it's absolutely necessary to maintain that connection.
In some meetings, an empty chair is set out to represent the still-suffering addict, and--as a sort of collective compassion--we pray that seat gets filled. The most important thing we can do is to stay clean ourselves so that when the time comes, we will be there for any addict who is seeking help. The power of living by example should never be underestimated. Whatever our judgments, we can all agree that addicts should always be welcomed to meetings regardless of how many times they've relapsed, what they look or smell like, or what our history with them has been. As a Fellowship, our job is to practice compassion no matter what.
