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.
Some days it doesn't pay to turn on the news, we hear so many stories about violence and mayhem. When we used, many of us grew accustomed to violence. Through the fog of our addiction, we rarely got too disturbed by the state of the world. When we are clean, however, many of us find we are particularly sensitive to the world around us. As recovering people, what can we do to make it a better place?
When we find ourselves disturbed by the turmoil of our world, we can find comfort in prayer and meditation. When it seems like everything is turned upside down, our contact with our Higher Power can be our calm in the midst of any storm. When we are centered on our spiritual path, we can respond to our fears with peace. And by living peaceably ourselves, we invite a spirit of peace to enter our world. As recovering people, we can affect positive change by doing our best to practice the principles of our program.
Our literature describes how the Second Step helps us to fill the gap created when we admit our powerlessness in Step One. If we are powerless over our disease, what can we do about it? For many of us, simply seeing there are other addicts like us who have lost the desire to use is enough to open our minds to the possibility that something might be able to help us, too--even if we don't know what that something might be.
The catch to accepting help from a power greater than ourselves is that we have to stop exerting our own power first. Practicing powerlessness over our disease means that we stop trying to manage and control it. So many of us have shared about trying to limit our using, hiding our stash from ourselves, using only certain substances or on certain days of the week, and many other ways of trying to be clever or tricky enough to outsmart our addiction. If anyone had success with those types of tricks, they're probably not NA members. (Yet?)
That's the way it is with addiction. If we try to overpower or outmaneuver our disease, we're bound to fail. It might not even happen right away, but eventually we find ourselves surrounded by unmanageability, wondering what happened to our well-laid plans. Rather than exerting great control over ourselves to behave in a highly predictable and consistent manner, we let go of the illusion of control and open ourselves to a power from elsewhere. Unlimited examples of experience, strength, and hope are available to us when we share with other addicts in recovery.
