Narcotics Anonymous Hawaii

11/01/2025

The geometric simplicity of our symbol means that it can pop up in places where you least expect it. These “found” symbols can be a powerful reminder that NA is everywhere. If you spot an NA symbol “in the wild,” share it with us at na.org/wcna “Share Your Photos.”

10/02/2025

Just for Today - October 02, 2025

Keeping faith

"We grasp the limitless strength provided for us through our daily prayer and surrender as long as we keep faith and renew it." - Basic Text, p. 46

There are two parts to recovery: getting clean, and staying clean. Getting clean is comparatively easy because we only have to do it once. Staying clean is more difficult, requiring attention every day of our lives. Yet both draw their power from faith.

We got clean on faith. We admitted that addiction was more powerful than we were, and we stopped trying to fight it on our own. We turned the battle over to a Power greater than ourselves, and that Higher Power got us clean. We stay clean each day the same way: on faith. Just for today, we surrender. Life may be too big for us to tackle on our own power. When it is, we seek a Power greater than ourselves. We pray, asking our Higher Power for direction and the strength to follow it. By exercising and renewing our faith on a daily basis, we tap the resources we need to live clean, full lives.

There is limitless strength available to us whenever we need it. To grasp it, all we need to do is keep faith in the Higher Power that got us clean and keeps us clean.
Just for Today: Faith got me clean, and faith will keep me clean. Today, I will keep faith with my Higher Power. I will renew my surrender and pray for knowledge and strength.

10/02/2025

October 01, 2025 - Compassion as Contrary Action

"Our instinct is to meet disease with disease, but when we meet it with love and compassion instead, we create an opportunity for recovery." - Guiding Principles, Tradition One, "For Members"

As harmonious as we may wish Narcotics Anonymous to be, there are times when another member's behavior really gets under our skin and seems to demand that we respond in kind. Maybe they tear into us verbally or try to goad us into a physical altercation. A member's actions can place our meeting's location in danger. We've also seen members try to undermine a group decision, and when it doesn't go their way, take to social media to bad-mouth NA. And what about members who act in these ways but never make amends for their behavior? How dare they mess with our serenity?!

Our first impulses will likely be to respond to another's resentment, selfishness, or accusations--with our own. We can, however, cool our own fury--and consider its source. Meeting another's disease with compassion means that we suspend judgment. We try to separate the person from their disease. Maybe they're going through a rough time. Maybe we unintentionally disrespected them, and they don't know how to express their pain in another way. Maybe they are afraid of being wrong and looking uncool in the face of controversy. Maybe they're just misinformed. And maybe we're more alike than we care to admit. Bingo! At the end of the day, we are all recovering as best we can.

Having compassion for another doesn't mean we ignore issues that arise. With unity as a priority, we end up practicing a lot more acceptance than our disease would otherwise have it. We may not understand where someone is coming from, but we can recognize the feelings and relate. Ideally, our response will consider what's best for the common good. With practice, we spend a little less energy contemplating how we might meet disease with disease. We learn the benefits of responding with compassion instead.

Next time someone flips out on me or the group, I'll test out meeting them with compassion instead of my ego. What's best for the group is best for my recovery.

Copyright (c) 2007-2025, NA World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved

09/24/2025

Just for Today - September 23, 2025

Dealing with gossip

"In accordance with the principles of recovery, we try not to judge, stereotype, or moralize with each other." - Basic Text, p. 11

Let's face it: In Narcotics Anonymous, we live in a glass house of sorts. Our fellow members know more about our personal lives than anyone has ever known before. They know who we spend our time with, where we work, what step we're on, how many children we have, and so forth. And what our fellow members don't know, they will probably imagine.

We may be unhappy when others gossip about us. But if we withdraw from the fellowship and isolate ourselves to avoid gossip, we also rob ourselves of the love, friendship, and unparalleled experience with recovery that our fellow members have to offer. A better way to deal with gossip is to simply accept the way things are and the way we are, and live our lives according to principles. The more secure we become with our personal program, the decisions we make, and the guidance we receive from a loving God, the less the opinions of others will concern us.
Just for Today: I am committed to being involved in the NA Fellowship. The opinions of others will not affect my commitment to recovery.

09/05/2025

09/04/2025

The Twelve Steps are the solution

Today, the first step toward self-acceptance is acceptance of our addiction. We must accept our disease and all the troubles that it brings us before we can accept ourselves as human beings.

The next thing we need to help us toward self-acceptance is belief in a Power greater than ourselves who can restore us to sanity. We do not need to believe in any particular person’s concept of that Higher Power, but we do need to believe in a concept that works for us. A spiritual understanding of self-acceptance is knowing that it is all right to find ourselves in pain, to have made mistakes, and to know that we are not perfect.

The most effective means of achieving self-acceptance is through applying the Twelve Steps of recovery. Now that we have come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we can depend upon His strength to give us the courage to honestly examine our defects and our assets. Although it is sometimes painful and may not seem to lead to self-acceptance, it is necessary to get in touch with our feelings. We wish to build a solid foundation of recovery, and therefore need to examine our actions and motivations and begin changing those things that are unacceptable.

Our defects are part of us and will only be removed when we practice living the NA program. Our assets are gifts from our Higher Power, and as we learn to utilize them fully, our self-acceptance grows and our lives improve.

Sometimes we slip into the melodrama of wishing we could be what we think we should be. We may feel overpowered by our self-pity and pride, but by renewing our faith in a Higher Power we are given the hope, courage, and strength to grow.

Self-acceptance permits balance in our recovery. We no longer have to look for the approval of others because we are satisfied with being ourselves. We are free to gratefully emphasize our assets, to humbly move away from our defects, and to become the best recovering addicts we can be. Accepting ourselves as we are means that we are all right, that we are not perfect, but we can improve.

We remember that we have the disease of addiction, and that it takes a long time to achieve self-acceptance on a deep level. No matter how bad our lives have become, we are always accepted in the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous.

Accepting ourselves as we are resolves the problem of expecting human perfection. When we accept ourselves, we can accept others into our lives, unconditionally, probably for the first time. Our friendships become deep and we experience the warmth and caring which results from addicts sharing recovery and a new life.

IP #19, Self-Acceptance - The problem - The lack of self-acceptance is a problem for many recovering addicts. This subtle defect is difficult to identify and often goes unrecognized. Many of us believed that using drugs was our only problem, denying the fact that our lives had become unmanageable. E...

09/04/2025

The Twelfth Step - It Works: How and Why

Consciously asking the God of our understanding to help us in Step Seven was an important development in the awakening of our spirit. That request was tangible evidence of how much we had changed spiritually. This was the point where many of us began to sense the enormous difference that our Higher Power could make in our lives. Because we had asked for and been granted some freedom from having to act on our shortcomings, we finally began to grasp what the miracle of recovery offers us.

Carried along by the promise of continued freedom in our lives, we proceeded, in Step Eight, to make ourselves aware of what we had done to others in our active addiction. Again, we saw how the spiritual preparation of the previous steps made it possible for us to withstand the pain and remorse of listing the people we had harmed. Our willingness to make amends to them all brought us further away from the grip of self-obsession. Our search for recovery was no longer focused on what we could get out of it for ourselves. We saw beyond the confines of our own lives, and our efforts in recovery began to be more generous. We developed the ability to feel empathy for others.

Excerpt From
It Works: How and Why
Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous
This material may be protected by copyright.Excerpt From

08/26/2025

Self-Acceptance

The problem

The lack of self-acceptance is a problem for many recovering addicts. This subtle defect is difficult to identify and often goes unrecognized. Many of us believed that using drugs was our only problem, denying the fact that our lives had become unmanageable. Even after we stop using, this denial can continue to plague us. Many of the problems we experience in ongoing recovery stem from an inability to accept ourselves on a deep level. We may not even realize that this discomfort is the source of our problem, because it is often manifested in other ways. We may find ourselves becoming irritable or judgmental, discontent, depressed, or confused. We may find ourselves trying to change environmental factors in an attempt to satisfy the inner gnawing we feel. In situations such as these our experience has shown that it is best to look inward for the source of our discontent. Very often, we discover that we are harsh critics of ourselves, wallowing in self-loathing and self-rejection.

Before coming to NA, most of us spent our entire lives in self-rejection. We hated ourselves and tried every way we could to become someone different. We wanted to be anyone but who we were. Unable to accept ourselves, we tried to gain the acceptance of others. We wanted other people to give us the love and acceptance we could not give ourselves, but our love and friendship were always conditional. We would do anything for anyone just to gain their acceptance and approval, and then would resent those who wouldn’t respond the way we wanted them to.

Because we could not accept ourselves, we expected to be rejected by others. We would not allow anyone to get close to us for fear that if they really knew us, they would also hate us. To protect ourselves from vulnerability, we would reject others before they had a chance to reject us.
The Twelve Steps are the solution

Today, the first step toward self-acceptance is acceptance of our addiction. We must accept our disease and all the troubles that it brings us before we can accept ourselves as human beings.

The next thing we need to help us toward self-acceptance is belief in a Power greater than ourselves who can restore us to sanity. We do not need to believe in any particular person’s concept of that Higher Power, but we do need to believe in a concept that works for us. A spiritual understanding of self-acceptance is knowing that it is all right to find ourselves in pain, to have made mistakes, and to know that we are not perfect.

The most effective means of achieving self-acceptance is through applying the Twelve Steps of recovery. Now that we have come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we can depend upon His strength to give us the courage to honestly examine our defects and our assets. Although it is sometimes painful and may not seem to lead to self-acceptance, it is necessary to get in touch with our feelings. We wish to build a solid foundation of recovery, and therefore need to examine our actions and motivations and begin changing those things that are unacceptable.

Our defects are part of us and will only be removed when we practice living the NA program. Our assets are gifts from our Higher Power, and as we learn to utilize them fully, our self-acceptance grows and our lives improve.

Sometimes we slip into the melodrama of wishing we could be what we think we should be. We may feel overpowered by our self-pity and pride, but by renewing our faith in a Higher Power we are given the hope, courage, and strength to grow.

Self-acceptance permits balance in our recovery. We no longer have to look for the approval of others because we are satisfied with being ourselves. We are free to gratefully emphasize our assets, to humbly move away from our defects, and to become the best recovering addicts we can be. Accepting ourselves as we are means that we are all right, that we are not perfect, but we can improve.

We remember that we have the disease of addiction, and that it takes a long time to achieve self-acceptance on a deep level. No matter how bad our lives have become, we are always accepted in the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous.

Accepting ourselves as we are resolves the problem of expecting human perfection. When we accept ourselves, we can accept others into our lives, unconditionally, probably for the first time. Our friendships become deep and we experience the warmth and caring which results from addicts sharing recovery and a new life.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know
the difference.

Copyright © 1985 by

Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

All rights reserved

08/25/2025

Just for Today

Tell yourself:

Just for today, my thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without the use of drugs.

Just for today, I will have faith in someone in NA who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery.

Just for today, I will have a program. I will try to follow it to the best of my ability.

Just for today, through NA, I will try to get a better perspective on my life.

Just for today, I will be unafraid. My thoughts will be on my new associations, people who are not using and who have found a new way of life. So long as I follow that way, I have nothing to fear.

When we came into the program of Narcotics Anonymous, we made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of a Higher Power. This surrender relieves the burden of the past and fear of the future. The gift of today is now in proper perspective. We accept and enjoy life as it is right now. When we refuse to accept the reality of today, we are denying our faith in our Higher Power. This can only bring more suffering.

We learn that today is a gift with no guarantees. With this in mind, the insignificance of the past and future, and the importance of our actions today, become real for us. This simplifies our lives.

When we focus our thoughts on today the nightmare of drugs fades away, overshadowed by the dawn of a new reality. We find that, when we are troubled, we can trust our feelings to another recovering addict. In sharing our past with other addicts we discover we are not unique, that we share common bonds. Talking to other NA members, whether to share the trials and tribulations of our day with them or allowing them to share theirs with us, is a way our Higher Power works through us.

We have no need to fear if today we stay clean, close to our Higher Power and our NA friends. God has forgiven us for our past mistakes, and tomorrow is not yet here. Meditation and a personal inventory will help us to gain serenity and guidance throughout this day. We take a few moments out of our daily routine to thank God, as we understand God, for giving us the ability to cope with today.

“Just for today” applies to all areas of our lives, not just abstinence from drugs. Reality has to be dealt with on a daily basis. Many of us feel that God expects no more of us than to do the things that we are able to do today.

Working the program, the Twelve Steps of NA, has given us a new outlook on our lives. Today, we no longer need to make excuses for who we are. Our daily contact with a Higher Power fills the empty places inside that could never be filled before. We find fulfillment in living today. With our Higher Power guiding us we lose the desire to use. Perfection is no longer a goal today; we can achieve adequacy.

It is important to remember that any addict who can stay clean for one day is a miracle. Going to meetings, working the steps, daily meditation, and talking with people in the program are things we do to stay spiritually healthy. Responsible living is possible.

We can replace loneliness and fear with the love of the fellowship and the security of a new way of life. We never have to be alone again. In the fellowship, we have made more true friends than we ever believed possible. Self-pity and resentments are replaced by tolerance and faith. We are given the freedom, serenity, and happiness we so desperately sought.

A lot happens in one day, both negative and positive. If we do not take time to appreciate both, perhaps we will miss something that will help us grow. Our principles for living will guide us in recovery when we use them. We find it necessary to continue to do so on a daily basis.

Copyright © 1983 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

All rights reserved

08/25/2025

What Is the Narcotics Anonymous Program?

NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. This is a program of complete abstinence from all drugs. There is only one requirement for membership, the desire to stop using. We suggest that you keep an open mind and give yourself a break. Our program is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work.

There are no strings attached to NA. We are not affiliated with any other organizations. We have no initiation fees or dues, no pledges to sign, no promises to make to anyone. We are not connected with any political, religious, or law enforcement groups, and are under no surveillance at any time. Anyone may join us regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion, or lack of religion.

We are not interested in what or how much you used or who your connections were, what you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help. The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away. We have learned from our group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly stay clean.

Reprinted from the Little White Booklet, Narcotics Anonymous.
© 1986 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc., PO Box 9999, Van Nuys, CA 91409

ISBN 0-912075-65-1 10/00

08/24/2025

Spiritual Principle A Day - August 23, 2025

Striving for Emotional Maturity

"Emotional maturity is our reward for letting go of anger and resentment." - Living Clean, Chapter 7, "Principles, Practice, and Perspective"

Perhaps we've all encountered circumstances when another member gets on our last nerve. When that happens, sometimes it takes everything in us not to attack them, mock them, shut them down using whatever tactic we can. We may want to bolt from the room because we see how this person--who may or may not have wronged us in some way--enjoys the respect of other members in the group. We want to expose them as a fraud and a hypocrite, but we don't. We say nothing because we know our personal feelings about another member should play no role in how, for instance, our area contributes to the region's Fellowship development efforts.

At other business meetings, we'll have no problem keeping our mouths shut because we'd much rather roll our eyes--and smugly watch the same two members battle it out like they always do over the finer points of coordinating an effective public relations campaign. In those situations, we have to stop ourselves from sharing the eye roll with everyone else in the room, revealing our displeasure with the proceedings. We'd love to break our silence by audibly groaning at how much time they are taking up. A member shared, "The second I start thinking about how I'm the only adult in the room, I know I'm not coming from a place of emotional maturity."

With some practice, we can learn to check ourselves in situations where previously the monster that lives in our head would have burst out in full force in an effort to kill the proceedings. Similarly, we find a way to restrain our inner adolescent, who would snark, scoff, and snipe at members merely for being themselves.

Emotional maturity may not sound like a big enough reward for not acting out on our character defects--but doesn't it make our lives so much more manageable? And peaceful? And isn't that a big part of why we came here in the first place?

I will practice reining in my reactiveness in situations where my personal feelings about other members serve no relevant purpose. Today emotional maturity is a reasonable reward for those efforts.

08/23/2025

Just For Today - August 23, 2025

Decision-making

"Before we got clean, most of our actions were guided by impulse. Today, we are not locked into this type of thinking." - Basic Text, p. 90

Life is a series of decisions, actions, and consequences. When we were using, our decisions were usually driven by our disease, resulting in self-destructive actions and dire consequences. We came to see decision making as a rigged game, one we should play as little as possible.

Given that, many of us have great difficulty learning to make decisions in recovery. Slowly, by working the Twelve Steps, we gain practice in making healthy decisions, ones that give positive results. Where our disease once affected our will and our lives, we ask our Higher Power to care for us. We inventory our values and our actions, check our findings with someone we trust, and ask the God of our understanding to remove our shortcomings. In working the steps we gain freedom from the influence of our disease, and we learn principles of decision making that can guide us in all our affairs.

Today, our decisions and their consequences need not be influenced by our disease. Our faith gives us the courage and direction to make good decisions and the strength to act on them. The result of that kind of decision making is a life worth living.

Just for Today: I will use the principles of the Twelve Steps to make healthy decisions. I will ask my Higher Power for the strength to act on those decisions.