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, Manhattan 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.
The Twelfth Tradition reminds us of the importance of putting "principles before personalities." In recovery meetings, this might be paraphrased, "don't shoot the messenger." We often get the message confused with the messenger, and negate what someone shares at a meeting because we have personality conflicts with the person speaking.
If we are having problems with what certain people have to share at meetings, we might want to seek the guidance of our sponsor. Our sponsor can help us concentrate on what's being said rather than who's saying it. Our sponsor can also help us address the resentments that may be keeping us from acknowledging the value of some particular person's recovery experience. It is surprising how much more we can get out of meetings when we allow ourselves to do as our Twelfth Tradition suggests, focusing on recovery principles rather than personalities.
Being new in NA is a crash course in hope. At first, our hope only needs to last as long as the distance to our phone. When that obsession to use clouds our commitment to staying clean today, will we call a new friend in NA or our dealer? We hope for the former, but most of us, in early days, have reservations. Do we even want to stop using? Can we? In a meeting, someone shares, "HOPE is an acronym for Hold On, Pain Ends." Yikes, more like Hell On Planet Earth!
Others of us are sure that we're done, done, done with using forever and ever and ever. But then we're told by someone to slow our roll, as it's "just for today" around here. If that's the case, do we even dare to hope for a better life beyond the one we can see for tomorrow?
Soon we hear, and eventually absorb, the idea that abstinence does not equal recovery. "Our disease doesn't just manifest physically in our reliance on drugs and messed-up behaviors," an NA member clarifies. "It's mental, emotional, and spiritual, too. So, we need solutions that touch all of it. When we stop using, it's merely the start of our recovery."
Our HOPE evolves to a deeper version: Hearing Other People's Experience. We transition from merely wanting some short-term relief from our obsessions and destructive behaviors to desiring significant change in other areas of our lives that we believe might be possible, based on observations of other members' long-term experiences. They did the work. So can I.
We don't passively hope for a meaningful recovery beyond abstinence. We treat our addiction with the program and principles of NA. We learn to let go of our self-obsession and embrace humility through working Steps. Application of the Traditions in our lives leads us to contribute to the greater good of NA and our communities. HOPE becomes Helping Other People Everyday.
