Tag Archives: Narcotics Anonymous

My revelation from the past week

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I was encouraged by Michiko’s bold, vulnerable, faithful writing. So I asked her to appear as a “guest writer” on my blog this week. Here is her revelation:

It’s easy to look at the world right now and think that maybe there is no God.

On a personal level, as I’ve watched my son descend into addiction, I’ve at times wondered what God was doing.  Where was Jesus – when was he going to wake up and talk to him and bring him out of the hell he, and I were in?

Now that he’s going to NA regularly, I’ve started going with him.

Yesterday I was witness to the kind of love that I only see at Circle.  One young woman freely admitted her brokenness.  She was in full relapse, of food disorder, substance abuse disorder, and starting on the self-harm scale.  She also said she was apathetic.  She didn’t care.

One by one, the group acted as one.  It was one huge encouragement through many voices — One saying “You’ve done great to be here.” Another saying, “Push through; you’ll be OK.” Another saying, “We love you and are here for you.”

The diversity was amazing — every walk of life: burkas and backpacks, ties and sweat suits, the un-educated and the over-educated, all equalized by addiction.

It made me think that God is indeed at work here.

Consider that the work of the devil is to tear us down — to make us think we can do it all on our own, that we don’t need anyone, that we should be individuals who SUCCEED!, that we should push ourselves into some obscene success model that’s all about only us.  We are good to the extent that we “overcome” our weaknesses.  If we are weak, we are bad.  If we need others, we are bad, even “co-dependent.”

The brokenness of that message is revealed in that most of us fail to achieves its demands.  And the devil, as crafty as he is, then provides an instant-gratification scheme for the sadness and failure that we feel: smoke this, sleep with this person, drink this, shoot this…you’ll feel better.

So first we follow the broken message and then we get into life-breaking substances that keep us in hell.

Interestingly, in this very broken place, after we’ve failed, something in us knows there’s more.  And we try to find help and eventually land in a place like N.A.

By the time we’ve gotten there, all the stuff the devil has urged us to do, we’ve failed at.  So we no longer care about the world or what it thinks.  We have been broken by a broken model.  The individualist, do-it-on-your-own, be perfect, be strong, don’t-rely-on-anyone, its-all-about-the-money model has failed us.

So we walk into N.A. and everyone else is having the same realization. Its as if we’ve emerged from a battleground, taken off our heavy armor and said, “Dammit, that’s not my freaking war anymore.”

In N.A., addiction, which I guess the devil thought was his great tool, has now become God’s revelation.

Because what happens is that the identity of addict transcends all the names, categories and cultures that the broken world tells us we have to adopt.  In that transcendence, people start to work on relationships.  They realize that they need to work on relationship with others every day.  They realize that relationship with others is good medicine.  They realize that it’s OK to not be perfectly strong, that God never said we had to be.

The enemy said, “Rely on yourself only.  Don’t be co-dependent.”

God said that we should rely on him.  It’s OK to depend on others.

The enemy said, “Get a big house for yourself. Have your own things.  Let other people do their own thing. Don’t get too close or tell them what to do.”

God said we should live in community.  Our community should be about how we can live lives of love, sharing, and relationship with God and others.

The enemy said, “Figure out what’s wrong with you.  Fix it on your own.  You have to be calm and logical and rational and be successful and make money.  Take a substance if you’re not that way so you can be that way.”

God said we are always going to be broken.  Nobody is without sin.  He can heal us —  and its free!

The enemy said, “Be successful.  Get a degree.  Get a good job. Be as outwardly successful as you can.”

God said live a life as a body wholly filled with the light of Christ.   Does he even say be successful?  I don’t think so.  I think He says, “Rely on me. I’ll supply you with what you need.”

So on a societal level, trying to kick addiction kicks you out of the devil’s mainstream, but broken and ready to be healed.  It brings people back into community and levels the playing field.  There is no playing field; there’s just relationship — first with God, then others.    That is what I think God wants for us – simply live in community, have your relationship with God, and reflect that relationship with others.

Its hard to think that this is probably the way humans should be living because we are so far away from that.  When we look at tribes deep in the Amazon, or something, they pretty much all live this way.  They do things with each other, all day, everyday. They are aware of the group.  They are aware of the Holy Spirit in the group. They are not perfect. They usually don’t force any kind of perfection at all.

My son goes to an N.A. meeting every day, sometimes twice a day.  I understand it.  It’s really comforting to be open with people, to be broken and loved at the same time, to not have to do it all, to allow just being content to be a life goal.

I’m comforted and trusting the Plan.

Why I Love (but might not altogether like) Narcotics Anonymous

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In 2010 the Philadelphia Weekly gave a shout out to the NA group that meets in our building. The headline: Best Place to Embrace Punch-Drunk Love.

The shout out: “We can’t think of many Narcotics Anonymous meetings that are more enjoyable to hang out at on a Friday night than the neighborhood bar. The Eleventh Hour, however, which convenes at the South Philly Circle of Hope church, is just that. Every Friday at about 10:45 p.m., the same sort of tattooed and bike-obsessed hipsters you may have gotten drunk with congregate outside the church’s front door. The meeting itself happens in a wide-open gallery-like space that’s illuminated by dozens of flickering votive candles, and after most meetings a small group retires to the nearby Melrose Diner [now they can go to Broad St. which is run by the Melrose people]. The Eleventh Hour, by the way, is known in N.A. parlance as an “open meeting,” which means that even non-addicts are welcome to attend. It might be something to consider when you’re making your wild-night weekend plans.”

Impressed by the meeting, myself

I had no wild-night plans one Friday so I finally got to a meeting. I was impressed. I was moved. I want to be friends.

stop cheating
It seemed like a very large attendance for Friday night at 11pm: about seventy people! As soon as I walked in two of them hugged me. Many others entered to the same unfettered affection. The chairperson was orderly and friendly. All the basic Narcotics Anonymous statements were laminated and various people read the 12 Traditions, How it Works (the 12 steps) and other material. A woman made a rather long, articulate speech to tell her story. People were moved by what she said and responded enthusiastically with their own stories. There was lots of honesty and vulnerability. The love, generosity, affirmation and openness in the room was impressive. The fact that they have home groups, took an offering and called for commitment was also impressive. I was impressed that we were having church without Jesus! – at least Circle of Hopish church.

For some reason I thought the AA, NA, Al-Anon, OA, etc. groups were trying to not be too religious. I was not paying attention. While I was planting a church, they were planting a church, too. They were planting a spiritual movement! Not long ago a convict went to court to prove that NA was religious. A circuit court judge reversed a lower court ruling and said, “The state has impermissibly coerced inmates to participate in a religious program” by forcing drug addicts to attend NA meetings in prison. The court says they are religious — must be true, right?

Imperfection spirituality

I love how the Narcotics Anonymous people act and I love the results of their religious movement, but I am not sure I like what they think (at least what people say they think). I recently caught up on the development of AA spirituality by reading a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection. The good thing about this spirituality is that it faces up to everyone’s inability to live up to the societal image of the perfect person who is self-controlled, self-sufficient, and a paragon of physical and emotional health. They have unmasked the demand that everyone be a person who can rapidly accumulate material possessions while simultaneously increasing mastery of the world around him or her. They rightly say that such people try to “play God.” The authors say that “trying to be perfect is the most tragic human mistake.” That sounds like a sound bite from a few many of my speeches, doesn’t it? Maybe we should call the PM the “Seventh Hour.”

na convention
NA World Convention Aug 29-Sep 1, 2013, Philadelphia

Accepting imperfection is possibly the greatest truth behind NA spirituality. We need a “higher power.” But postmodern philosophy, like that behind AA and NA, often seems to unwittingly substitute something like “imperfection” and the philosophy of it as a new anti-coercive coercion. They put it down in twelve steps and convince you to “follow them or you’ll relapse!” (and they were just trying to get away from “don’t sin or you’ll go to hell!”). Their depersonalization of spirituality (“God” is a “higher power;” everything is in quotation marks waiting for you to decide what the words really mean to you) turns “spirituality” into another modernistic ideology without admitting it.

Basic Christianity

Besides, how did someone miss that accepting one’s imperfection was basic to Christianity? It’s not like this is a new spirituality. What’s more, Anabaptist groups from the 1500s could be considered early adopters of what NA calls the “spirituality of imperfection,” rejecting the proto-modernism of the reformation, living in what amounts to 12-step groups, and forming a theology complete with an emphasis on what amounts to steps three (We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him) , seven (We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings), and eight (We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all). It looks like NA finally caught up with the Anabaptist  reaction against European Christianity, which became as controlling as the empire it replaced. I’m not trying to do the book justice, but that’s some of why I can’t say I altogether like what’s going on.

That being quibbled, the point about imperfection remains a good one and seemed useful to the participants. They could tell stories about how releasing control was a daily, good struggle. The meeting I attended reflected much of the best of what NA spirituality is all about. It was emotional, relational and openly spiritual without being oppressive. There was a recognition, it seemed, that there would be no “magic,” but that there was the potential for “miracle.” There was potential, as Jung wrote to Bill W. that “Spirit could overcome spirits” (that is, alcohol). The miracle was happening in all those stories they told. The Narcotics Anonymous meeting focuses on “story” just like our cells do (and just like the Bible does!). The storytelling creates community, builds mentalizing and gives a context for experiencing recovery, just like it makes a place for us to grow up in Christ. Our transformation point is coming to know Jesus, theirs is entering a commitment to sobriety. But we are all talking about what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.

I love that, as the authors of the book say, “the language of recovery that is storytelling involves not dogma, or commandment, not things to be done or truths to be believed, not theory, conjecture, argument, analysis, or explanation, but a way of conversation shared by those who identify with their own imperfection.” That is very Christian. And it is very Circle of Hope. We are always bent on conveying an experience rather than merely teaching concepts. I think the risen Lord is very interested in filling us with the Spirit so we are experiencing the grace of God expressed to us in Jesus. Lots of people in our NA group seem to be right there, too. I love that. I am not sure I like the movement’s attempts to muddy that up and leave Jesus out. But let’s be friends.

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