CEFS 691 Week 5 Experiential Paper 2: NA Example

Experiential Paper 2: Two Open Narcotics Anonymous Meetings and the Recovery Community Many Clients Overlook

Purpose and Preparation

Many of the clients I expect to see in a community agency will be addicted to opioids, stimulants or other drugs rather than alcohol, and NA is the mutual-help fellowship most likely to speak to their experience. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) emphasize that counselors should understand the community resources available to clients, and NA is one of the largest. As with the AA visits, I attended two open meetings, arrived early, told the chairperson that I was in a counseling program, waited to be told that observers were welcome, and wrote nothing down until I was back in my car. I describe members only in general terms.

The First Meeting: An Evening Discussion Meeting

The first meeting met on a Thursday evening in a community center near a bus line. About thirty people attended, more of them in their twenties and thirties than at the AA meetings I had visited. The meeting opened with the Serenity Prayer and readings from NA's literature, including "Who Is an Addict?" and "Why Are We Here?" (Narcotics Anonymous World Services, 2008). I noticed at once that members introduced themselves as addicts rather than by a specific drug, which reflects NA's focus on the disease of addiction rather than any one substance.

The topic was "living clean." Members spoke about the first months without drugs, about cutting off old friends, and about returning to families who had stopped trusting them. Several mentioned jail, overdoses and losing friends to fentanyl, and the room grew very quiet when a young woman described finding a friend who had overdosed. Others spoke about practical struggles, such as finding work with a criminal record. Near the end, members announced clean-time milestones, and keytags were given for thirty days, sixty days and one year, each received with applause.

The Second Meeting: A Weekend Speaker Meeting

On Sunday afternoon I went to the second meeting, held downstairs in a church, which began with the identical readings. A man who had been clean for twelve years told his story. He had begun with prescription pain medication after an injury, moved to heroin when the pills became too expensive, and spent years cycling through treatment and relapse. He credited his recovery to a sponsor who called him every day for his first ninety days, to working the Steps and to service, which for him meant carrying meetings into a local jail. He spoke openly about a relapse after several years clean and about returning to meetings the next day, saying that the fellowship had taught him that relapse did not have to be the end.

What the Readings Added

The module's readings helped me interpret what I heard. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) describe addiction as affecting every area of a person's life, from relationships and work to legal standing and health, and the members' stories touched each of those areas. Their account of relapse as a common part of recovery rather than a final failure matched the Sunday speaker's story closely. The NA literature makes a similar point in its own words, describing recovery as a daily practice and the fellowship as a place where members help one another stay clean one day at a time (Narcotics Anonymous World Services, 2008). Reading the textbook after the meetings made its descriptions feel less like theory and more like portraits of people I had just met.

Comparing NA and AA

The NA meetings shared AA's structure and Steps, but they spoke more directly to the losses and legal consequences that come with illegal drug use. The two fellowships hold in common the Steps, sponsors, service roles and the rule that members share their own story without commenting on anyone else's. NA's language of "addiction" and "clean time" rather than "alcoholism" and "sobriety" made the meetings more inclusive of people whose primary substance is not alcohol. The members I heard were younger on average, the stories involved more legal trouble and more deaths of friends, and the practical concerns of housing and employment came up more often. At the same time, the warmth of the welcome and the celebration of milestones felt very much like AA.

Integration With Research

Research on NA is less extensive than research on AA, but it supports what I observed. Galanter et al. (2013) surveyed 396 members at ten NA meetings in three states and found that their principal drug problems included cocaine, heroin, other opiates and methamphetamine, that most had received prior treatment, that respondents had been abstinent for an average of 5.7 years and that nearly half had served as sponsors. Ninety-four percent described themselves as spiritual, while fewer than a third described themselves as religious. The long abstinence and high rate of sponsorship fit the speaker's account of a sponsor's daily calls and his own later service.

White et al. (2016) argued that NA is rarely mentioned in public, professional and policy responses to the opioid crisis, compared misconceptions about NA with research findings, and concluded that NA is an underused resource. The number of members in their twenties and thirties at the Thursday meeting, many of them in recovery from opioids, made that conclusion concrete. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) describe recovery as a long-term process that extends well beyond formal treatment, and NA offers support for that process without cost and in many communities.

A Question About Medication

One issue I had read about came up indirectly at the Sunday meeting. A woman mentioned that she took medication for opioid use disorder and that she had felt judged at another meeting she once attended. The members around her responded warmly, but her comment showed that clients on medication may meet very different receptions depending on the group. White et al. (2016) note that misconceptions about NA's views circulate widely, and that NA's place in opioid recovery deserves more attention than it receives. For a counselor, the practical lesson is to know local meetings well enough to recommend ones where clients receiving medication are welcomed, and to prepare clients for the possibility of an uncomfortable comment without letting it end their involvement.

My Own Reactions

I was more affected by these meetings than by the AA meetings. The open discussion of overdoses, and the number of young people in the room, made the opioid crisis feel personal in a way statistics do not. I also noticed my own assumptions. I had expected members with long criminal histories to seem hardened, and instead I heard humility, humor and a fierce loyalty to one another. That challenged a bias I had not recognized, and it is one I will need to watch for in counseling, where clients with records may already expect to be judged.

Limits of These Observations

Two meetings in one region cannot represent NA as a whole, and as an observer I heard only what members chose to share publicly. The members who attend open meetings in a community center or a church may differ from those in other settings, and the survey research on NA, though valuable, relies on members willing to complete questionnaires. My impressions should therefore be read as a beginning rather than a conclusion, to be tested against more visits and the experience of clients.

Implications for Counseling

These visits will change my practice in three ways. First, I will refer clients who use drugs other than alcohol to NA as readily as I refer drinkers to AA, and I will explain the differences between the fellowships so clients can choose. Second, I will prepare clients for the emotional weight of meetings where overdose and loss are discussed openly, and check in with them afterward. Third, I will use the motivational interviewing approach described by Miller and Rollnick (2013), which this module's reading extends to planning for change, to explore a client's ambivalence about attending, especially if the client worries about being judged for a criminal record or for using medication for opioid use disorder, and I will help them find a meeting where they feel welcome.

Personal Reflection

The most powerful moment for me was the speaker's account of returning to a meeting the day after a relapse. It reminded me of the father in Jesus' parable who saw his son while he was still a long way off and ran to embrace him (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 15:20). The fellowship I saw practiced that kind of welcome. As a counselor, I want my office to offer the same: a place where a client who has stumbled can return without shame and begin again.

References

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, M. D. (2016). Foundations of addictions counseling (3rd ed.). Pearson.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Galanter, M., Dermatis, H., Post, S., & Santucci, C. (2013). Abstinence from drugs of abuse in community-based members of Narcotics Anonymous. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 74(2), 349-352. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsad.2013.74.349

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Narcotics Anonymous World Services. (2008). Narcotics Anonymous (6th ed.).

White, W. L., Galanter, M., Humphreys, K., & Kelly, J. F. (2016). The paucity of attention to Narcotics Anonymous in current public, professional, and policy responses to rising opioid addiction. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 34(4), 437-462. https://doi.org/10.1080/07347324.2016.1217712