COUC 691 Week 5 Experiential Paper 2: NA Example

Experiential Paper 2: A Candlelight Meeting and a Noon Clubhouse Meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, and the Language of Recovery

Choosing and Preparing for the Meetings

For the second experiential paper I attended two open Narcotics Anonymous meetings in Lubbock, Texas, chosen to differ as much as possible. The first was a candlelight meeting that began at ten o'clock on a Thursday night in a church fellowship room, with the overhead lights off and a single candle on the table. The second was a noon meeting on a Monday at a recovery clubhouse, a small building where several twelve-step groups meet throughout the day. I followed the same plan as with the AA meetings: arrive early, introduce myself as a counseling student if asked, decline to share and write notes only afterward. No member is described here in a way that could identify anyone, and the moments reported are combined and altered.

The Candlelight Meeting

About fifteen people sat in a circle of chairs around the candle. The chair asked members to read the opening readings, each passing a laminated card to the next person: "Who Is an Addict?", "What Is the Narcotics Anonymous Program?", "Why Are We Here?" and "How It Works." In the dim light, the voices seemed to carry more weight than they would have in a bright room. The chair then read the day's entry from the Just for Today meditation book and invited members to share on it.

The topic that night was honesty. Members spoke one at a time without interruption, and every share began the same way: a first name and the words "I'm an addict." A woman said she had spent years lying even when the truth would have been easier. A man said the first honest thing he had said in a decade was at an NA meeting. No one gave advice or responded directly to anyone else; the practice is to share one's own experience rather than to comment on another member's. The meeting ended with members standing, arms around one another's shoulders, reciting the Serenity Prayer and saying, "Keep coming back."

The Clubhouse Meeting

The noon meeting felt like a different organization. About thirty people filled a room with mismatched couches and a coffee machine, and many wore work uniforms or carried lunch. The readings were the same, but they were read quickly, and the format was a topic discussion. The chair, a young man, chose the topic of the first year, and members shared about what had surprised them.

The keytag ceremony that closed the meeting was the clearest picture of NA's emphasis on clean time. The chair held up a white keytag and explained that it was for anyone who wanted to try the program, and that taking it meant surrender, not failure. Then came orange for 30 days, green for 60, red for 90 and so on, with applause for each person who came forward. One man took his third white keytag in a year, and members clapped as loudly as for anyone else. Several members spoke afterward about being on medication for opioid use disorder, and one said a sponsor had told her that her clean time was hers to count with her doctor.

Integrating the Experiences: Language and Identity

The introduction "I'm an addict" troubled me at first. The course has taught me to use person-first language, and research suggests why. Kelly and Westerhoff (2010) asked 516 clinicians at two mental health conferences to read the same vignette, randomly varying a single phrase: in one version the man described was called a substance abuser, in the other he was said to have a substance use disorder. The first version led even these highly trained professionals to see him as more culpable and more deserving of punitive measures. The words we use can shape how we judge people.

Yet the members I heard did not seem to experience the word as a judgment. NA's literature describes addiction as a disease that affects people regardless of the drug used, and the self-introduction functions as a statement of belonging to a fellowship of people with the same problem (Narcotics Anonymous World Services, 2008). A label that others impose is not the same as an identity a person claims, and the members seemed to be doing the second: naming the problem in order to face it among people who share it. I concluded that I should respect the language members use for themselves while using person-first language in my own clinical writing and conversation.

Integrating the Experiences: Clean Time and Participation

The keytags made the passage of time visible, much as AA's coins had. Toumbourou et al. (2002) studied new NA members in Victoria, Australia, interviewing 91 people early in their membership and reinterviewing 62 of them a year later. Greater participation over the year, measured by service roles, step work and stable meeting attendance, was associated with lower hazardous alcohol use and higher emotional support, and stable attendance and step work continued to predict those improvements after other factors were controlled. Members with less prior treatment were more likely to participate. For counselors, the study suggests that encouraging steady attendance and step work, not just a first visit, is where the benefit lies.

The man with his third white keytag also illustrated that participation and relapse can coexist. The room's response, applause rather than disappointment, reflected an understanding that returning is itself an act of recovery.

Integrating the Experiences: Pain and Self-Medication

Many of the stories I heard at both meetings involved using drugs to cope with feelings: grief, shame, anxiety, the memory of abuse. Khantzian (1997) proposes that people with substance use disorders discover that particular drugs relieve particular painful states, and that this happens in the context of broader difficulties regulating emotions, self-esteem, relationships and self-care. He acknowledges that diagnostic studies give mixed support for the hypothesis, but argues that research focused on subjective distress more consistently shows that suffering drives using, dependence and relapse.

That perspective helps explain why NA's emphasis on honesty and shared feelings may be therapeutic. Members practice naming emotions in a room of people who understand. For a counselor, it means that treating the addiction without treating the pain underneath is likely to fail. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) emphasize assessment of co-occurring conditions for this reason.

Comparing NA With AA

The NA meetings resembled the AA meetings in structure: readings, sharing, prayer and markers of time. But NA felt younger and more varied in the drugs members described, and its focus on addiction itself rather than a particular substance made room for people who had used everything from alcohol to methamphetamine to heroin. The open discussion of medication at the clubhouse meeting stood out. I also noticed that NA's readings were more prominent; at both meetings, members read several cards before sharing began, and many members could recite them along with the reader. The AA meetings had leaned on a single book; the NA meetings leaned on short readings repeated every time, which gave even a first-time visitor a sense of the program's shape within ten minutes.

The two fellowships also differed in how they talked about the drug itself. At the AA meetings, alcohol was named constantly. At the NA meetings, members rarely dwelt on particular drugs; when someone began describing a drug in detail, the chair gently reminded the room that NA focuses on recovery from the disease of addiction rather than on what anyone used. That convention seemed designed to keep anyone from feeling that their drug made them different.

My Own Reactions

I was more uncomfortable at the candlelight meeting than at either AA meeting, and I have tried to understand why. Part of it was the darkness and the silence between shares, which left me alone with my thoughts. Part of it was that several stories involved needles, overdoses and prison, which are further from my own life than the stories of drinking I heard at AA. I noticed a temptation to see these members as more damaged than the AA members, and I recognized that temptation as exactly the kind of judgment the research on stigma describes. By the end of the clubhouse meeting, watching members joke with one another while eating lunch, the distance had narrowed. Those same people go to work, raise children and sit on church pews. That shift is probably the most important thing the assignment did for me.

Implications for Counseling

The visits will change my referrals in three ways. First, I will prepare clients for the self-introduction, explaining that they can simply give their name if they are not ready to say more. Second, I will tell clients about keytags and encourage them to take a white one, framing it as a beginning. Third, for clients on medication for opioid use disorder, I will help them find meetings where they will be welcomed, and I will talk with them about how to handle comments that suggest medication is not real recovery. Miller and Rollnick (2013) describe planning as a collaborative process that follows a client's commitment, and referral to NA can be part of that plan rather than an order. I also want to visit more NA meetings in my area so that I can recommend particular groups, since my two meetings showed how much the feel of a meeting depends on its time, place and members.

A Christian Perspective

Isaiah 42:3 pictures a servant gentle enough to leave a cracked reed standing and a smoldering wick still lit (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Sitting in the candlelight meeting, I thought of that verse. The people in the room were bruised, and the fellowship's patience with them, applauding a third white keytag as warmly as a year's clean time, reflected a gentleness I want to bring to counseling.

Conclusion

A candlelight meeting and a noon clubhouse meeting showed me two faces of Narcotics Anonymous, one quiet and reflective, the other busy and practical, united by readings, honesty and a fierce welcome for newcomers. Research on language, on participation and on self-medication helped me understand what I saw. I will refer clients to NA with better preparation, more respect for the language members choose and more attention to the pain beneath the using.

References

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

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

Kelly, J. F., & Westerhoff, C. M. (2010). Does it matter how we refer to individuals with substance-related conditions? A randomized study of two commonly used terms. International Journal of Drug Policy, 21(3), 202-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2009.10.010

Khantzian, E. J. (1997). The self-medication hypothesis of substance use disorders: A reconsideration and recent applications. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 4(5), 231-244. https://doi.org/10.3109/10673229709030550

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

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

Toumbourou, J. W., Hamilton, M., U'Ren, A., Stevens-Jones, P., & Storey, G. (2002). Narcotics Anonymous participation and changes in substance use and social support. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 23(1), 61-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0740-5472(02)00243-X