Ann

Do You Need Nar-Anon?

1. Do you find yourself making excuses, lying, or covering up for your addict?
2. Do you have reason not to trust the addict in your life?
3. Is it becoming difficult for you to believe his/her explanations?
4. Do you lie awake worrying about the addict in your life?
5. Is this person missing school often without your knowledge?
6. Is this person missing work and the bills piling up?
7. Are the savings mysteriously missing?
8. Are the unanswered questions causing hostility and undermining your relationship or marriage?
9. Are you asking yourself. "What's Wrong?" and "Is it my fault?"
10. Are your suspicions turning you into a detective and are you afraid of what you might find out?
11. Are normal family disagreements becoming hostile and violent?
12. Are you cancelling social functions with vague excuses?
13. Are you becoming increasingly reluctant to invite friends to your home?
14. Is concern for your spouse, child or friend causing you headaches, a knotty stomach and extreme anxiety?
15. Is your spouse, child or friend easily irritated by minute matters? Does your whole life seem a nightmare?
16. Are you unable to discuss the situation with friends or relatives because of the embarrassment?
17. Are your attempts at control frustrating?
18. Do you over compensate and try not to make waves?
19. Do you keep trying to make things better and nothing helps?
20. Is the lifestyle of this person changing? Do you ever think they may be using drugs?

If you have answered YES to four or more of these questions, NAR-ANON may be able to give you the answers you are looking for.

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What is Nar-Anon?

1. Nar-Anon is for your recovery. We learn to focus on ourselves, not on the addict.
2. Nar-Anon is a spiritual program, not a religious one. We accept the idea that there is a higher power that is bigger and wiser than us, that we can turn to for help.
3. Nar-Anon welcomes and gives comfort to newcomers. Newcomers receive a special packet of materials and phone list at their first meeting.
4. Nar-Anon knows that drug addiction is a disease (the American Medical Association recognized drug addiction as a disease in 1955.) The disease is progressive and incurable. Nar-Anon helps relatives and friends of addicts whether or not the addict continues to use.
5. Nar-Anon knows we are not responsible for the drug addiction. We did not cause it, we cannot control it, and we cannot cure it. If we do not learn how to cope with drug addiction, we will contribute to the disease.
6. Nar-Anon members learn to detach from the addict but we continue to love them. We mind our own business.
7. Nar-Anon does not give advice. We share our experience, strength, and hope. Our common bond is that we all know someone whose drug abuse bothers us. Sooner or later we each hear our own story and learn to laugh again. We know it will get better.
8. Most Nar-Anon groups in Toronto District use Al-Anon's One Day at a Time book. When we read it, we substitute drugs for alcohol, addict for alcoholic. We cannot change the past or predict the future. We learn to live -- Just for Today.
9. The Nar-Anon program is based on its twelve steps and twelve traditions, its slogans, and the serenity prayer.
10. Nar-Anon is a living program. We learn to change our attitudes. This cannot be done in a day or a week or a month. We keep coming back; we want to keep our own recoveries.
11. Nar-Anon provides a path to serenity and peace of mind even if the drug situation does not change.
12. Nar-Anon believes in sponsors. A sponsor is someone in a Nar-Anon group with whom a member identifies and develops rapport. We discuss personal problems with our sponsors between meetings.

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The 12 Steps of Nar-Anon

1. We admitted we were powerless over the addict, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

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The 12 Traditions of Nar-Anon

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends on unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The relatives of addicts, when gathered for mutual aid, may call themselves a Nar-Anon Family Group, provided that as a group, they have no other affiliation. The only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of addiction in a relative or friend.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other Nar-Anon Family Groups, or N.A. as a whole.
5. Each Nar-Anon Family Group has but one purpose: to help families of addicts. We do this by practicing the Twelve Steps of Nar-Anon ourselves, by encouraging and understanding our addicted relatives, and by welcoming and giving comfort to families of addicts.
6. Our Family Groups ought never to endorse, finance or lend our name to any outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim; but although a separate entity, we should always cooperate with Narcotics Anonymous.
7. Every group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Nar-Anon Twelfth Step work should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. Our groups, as such ought never to be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. The Nar-Anon Family Groups have no opinion on outside issues; hence our name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all N.A members.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.

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