~BRIEF HISTORY OF NA~
The following document presents basic facts about Narcotics Anonymous,
including a brief account of its history, information about its development and
a description of the fellowship's current structure and demographics.
Development
Narcotics Anonymous sprang in the late 1940s, with meetings first sprouting up in the Los Angeles area of California, USA, in the early Fifties. For many years the society grew very slowly, spreading from Los Angeles to other major North American cities and Australia in the early 1970s. An assembly of local delegates was first established in 1978. In 1983 Narcotics Anonymous published its self-titled basic text, and growth rates have since skyrocketed. Groups formed rapidly in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, the Irish Republic, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In the three years following initial publication of NA's basic text, the number of Narcotics Anonymous groups nearly tripled. Today, Narcotics Anonymous is fairly well established throughout much of Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, with newly formed groups and NA communities scattered through the Indian subcontinent, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
The core of the Narcotics Anonymous recovery program is a series of personal activities known as the Twelve Steps. These "steps" include admitting there is a problem, seeking help, self-appraisal, confidential self-disclosure, making amends where harm has been done, and working with other drug addicts who want to recover. Central to the program is an emphasis on what is referred to as a "spiritual awakening," emphasizing its practical value, not its philosophical or metaphysical import, which has posed very little difficulty in translating the program across cultural boundaries. Narcotics Anonymous itself is nonreligious and encourages each member to cultivate an individual understanding, religious or not, of this "spiritual awakening."
Narcotics Anonymous believes that one of the keys to its success is the therapeutic value of addicts working with other addicts. In meetings, each member shares personal experience with others seeking help, not as professionals but simply as people who have been there themselves and have found a solution. Narcotics Anonymous has no professional therapists, no residential facilities, and no clinics. NA provides no vocational, legal, financial, psychiatric, or medical services. The closest thing to an "NA counselor" is the sponsor, an experienced member who gives informal assistance to a newer member.
EFFECTIVENESS; MEMBERSHIP DEMOGRAPHICS
No comprehensive surveys of Narcotics Anonymous membership have been completed to date, due especially to NA's emphasis on protecting the anonymity of the members. However, it is possible to offer some general, informal observations about the nature of the membership and the effectiveness of the program, observations believed to be reasonably accurate.
Male/female ratio
Of the 5,000 NA members responding to an informal poll taken in 1989:
• 64% were male
• 36% were female.
Socioeconomic background
The socioeconomic strata represented by the NA membership varies from country to country. Most national movements are founded by members of one particular social or economic class, but as their outreach to the entire range of the drug-addicted population in each country becomes more effective, the membership becomes more broadly representative of all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Age
Of the 5,000 NA members responding to an informal poll taken in 1989:
• 11% were under 20
• 37% were between 20 and 30
• 48% were between 30 and 45
• 4% were over 45
Religious backgrounds
All religious backgrounds are represented among NA members. In a given national movement, the membership generally reflects the diversity or homogeneity of the background culture.
Rate of growth
Because no attendance records are kept, it is impossible even to estimate what percentage of those who come to Narcotics Anonymous ultimately achieve long-term abstinence. The only sure indicator of the program's success is the rapid growth in the number of registered Narcotics Anonymous meetings in recent decades and the rapid spread of Narcotics Anonymous outside North America. In 1978, there were fewer than 200 registered groups in three countries. In 1983, more than a dozen countries had 2,966 meetings. In 1994, we knew of groups holding 19,822 weekly meetings in seventy countries. As of 1999, there were groups holding more than 27,000 weekly meetings in some 103 countries.