dalin
01-24-2008, 01:21 AM
Allentown Tape 1 1990 - Opening
History Literature Addathon 1990
Allentown, Pa
Tape One
Opening
Hello Family, my name is Greatful Dave, and I am an addict. Hi Family. Tonight I am (Hold it down John). Tonight I am going to try to stimulate some questions in your minds so that you can ask some of the people that are going to be here a little bit later, to further elaborate on them. I have been called many things; one is an NA Historian and a policy expert. I have done a lot of research that has contributed to some of our longer-term members talks on the history of this fellowship.
I am going to go before pre 50’s and just to say that the book of Organizations List of 1942 of Lexington, Ky. The formation of an organization called Narcotics Anonymous, and it does not bear any resemblance to the fellowship that started in Southern California.
There were a number of attempts to do something called Narcotics Anonymous in various forms, in Cleveland, in NYC, in Lexington and all of those efforts failed. There was a group that met in the Lexington Federal Detox down there and that is the earliest knowledge that anybody has as to the use of the name of Narcotics Anonymous. It was basically a group therapy session for ex dope fiends. They had put out this thing called The Key, which was a magazine, a little newsletter and when you go to look at the minutes of the formation of Narcotics Anonymous, which are here. You will see that it says our purpose has been taken from The Key and for a long time that was hidden because of the general obscurity of our documents of our formation. There was a group that operated in New York that was basically sponsored or helped along by the Salvation Army. They operated there from the mid 1940”s until 1952. At the beginning the formation of Narcotics Anonymous and the San Fernando Valley, California was that they contacted this New York organization and the New York organization said “ Hey man, we’ re doing our own thing and don’t want any part of what it is you’re doing”. So the Narcotics Anonymous that we are all members of evolved independently of that.
When several members and friends of mine were out in California went back to talk to some of the people that were around 20-25 years ago. The story that we were told about the formation of Narcotics Anonymous is, is really interesting. There are several versions of how we got started, but the one that is most number if older members out there was that the H&I coordinator for AA in So. California besieged by a prison warden in So. California and asked “What can you do for these drug addicts”? The person said, “Well there is nothing we can do, you know there different and they don’t recover”. Well thanks to the persistence of this warden, he made the H&I coordinator promise that he would look into trying to do something. So what occurred out of that was he knew of a member that was involved and that was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who was involved with a program called “ Habit forming Drugs” which was trying to help addicts , you know like the ones on the streets. To help them to get clean generally and run them into the AA Meetings. So what happened at the time was this member was kind of hand picked by the H&I coordinator from the AA Fellowship and other members whom this gentleman had knowledge of were picked to form or to try and form something that was independent of Alcoholics Anonymous that would help the addict. That became know as the AA / NA Group. Well that immediately caused some controversy, and this founding one of our founding members Jimmy K. who is now deceased. His wife is still living so I won’t , well you’ll probably hear all that Jimmy Kinnon as we have some tapes and videos and things like that of talks that Jimmy has given. Some of them the formation of our service structures, how that was formed and the discussions, and we will be looking at many things. Anyway, they called it AA / NA and this guy says we cannot use the AA name. Well of course, an uninformed group conscience then voted it down.
They wanted to keep the affiliation with the organization of Alcoholics Anonymous, so this member Jimmy Kinnon wrote them a letter and said, “Look we want to use, and these people want to use the AA name and attach it to NA and call it AA / NA. It was a letter written from the general service offices in New York stating without and gray areas that they would not allow Narcotics Anonymous to use the AA name. So this gentleman was vindicated and the first meeting to form the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, by all the available documents, occurred on August 17, 1953 and the first Recovery Meeting was October 5, 1953. There are copies of the flyer for the first meeting here somewhere. This is not all in order anymore and a copy of the first White Book is here as well. I have all the original literature and stuff at home, but did not realize and I would have had to load up the whole car with stuff to bring it up here. . Here is the sign in sheet for the first Recovery Meeting. There were 17 members who signed in, there may have been more in attendance and here is the flyer “Starting Monday Night October 5, and each Monday hereafter at 8:30. So that is a little bit of interesting stuff about our history. A lot of the meetings at that time, there was like you know people were going to different peoples houses, they carried their coffee cups around with them and they called them “Rabbit Meetings”. That was because at the time addicts were being hassled a lot by the local constabulary, so they had to hide. Addicts were scared to come to the meetings because they felt that the meetings were staked out and they might get busted. That happened in New York. They tried to start NA related, to the So. California fellowship in New York. However, the Rockefeller Laws got them, so it was not until 1982 that the first meeting of Narcotics Anonymous was really allowed to exist freely in New York City. New York City today has at last count 1002 meetings a week, and they account for 1/20th of the total population of Narcotics Anonymous. So it has come along way, the power and the message of Narcotics Anonymous is what is most interesting to most of us I suppose. In 1953 to 1956 there was probably at the most 6 meetings that were going at any one time, and in 1959 for a period of about 5 months there were no regular NA Meetings held anywhere in the world. What happened was according to Jimmy Kinnon , one of his tapes was that Narcotics Anonymous had become affiliated with a treatment center and had become a “one man rule”. They were not following the Traditions and so Jimmy K and a few other people decided that they were going to start it back up and get together and carry on and Jimmy K was the only contact knows around the country for Narcotics Anonymous for almost 32 years. He answered the phone and used all his money to Xerox literature talked to people on the phone night and day. He never wanted to be a Bill Wilson or a founder. He believed that he was just an instrument being used as apart of an idea in his service was service to God, and was service to the principles and it didn’t matter to him . There were many stories of Jimmy K and a newcomer and a coffee pot for years. He would always go and find somebody and bring them into a meeting for years, and it was not until about 1956 that the first Narcotics Anonymous literature was printed. That was odd, odd reading version of what we call today the White Book. It is very different and unfortunately, I do not have it with me. It is interesting that the printing was done and then Narcotics Anonymous died.
So they started back up in 1959 and then they published another White Book without stories. The Board of Trustees was established in about 1965, and nobody knows for sure why except that it was felt that they needed a larger base from which to make their decisions, and by then the number of meetings had increased by that time to about eight or 9 meetings. In 1966, there were approximately 10 meetings they started. The two family members of the Magdalino family were feuding over wanting to retain the AA literature in the NA Meetings. There was a big resentment that occurred, interesting how growth correlates with conflict and resentments. They took and went up to San Francisco and started some NA Meetings up there, then there was another split, and the San Diego Meetings got started,
Tomorrow late, there will be a guy here who was around for the formation of the fellowship in San Diego who has about 30 years clean. Therefore, we are going on and we are up to about 1970, but in 1968 let me say that there was the “Voice of NA” newsletter printed and basically that was just to tell stories, share on events and it was published locally. I have copies of that at home and I am sorry I am just not real prepared. I do have copies of every World Service Conference, the minutes and fellowship reports, all the reports and literature up until 1985; I have the rest at home. I just brought this here with me because it is history and most of us know what happened from ’85 on, professional contracts and junk like that.
At any rate, they decided to o-pen an office so the general service organization, they called the GSO and that was basically, what they had been doing the same old thing for years and years. Jimmy K had been answering the phones, putting out literature, detoxing members and new people from “Cry Help” and other detox and treatment facilities from around the valley, to help out and put things together.
So in 1970 we are up to about 20 meetings a week. Now, where were you in 1970? I know where I was, I was full blown on the streets of Haight Ashbury. So it is interesting that in 1970 that we only had about 20 meetings in the whole world. I guess this is significant because as we start to come up over the next 15 years we will see some interesting things that historically may just be a historical event, maybe no spiritual significance to it, but just the beginning of literature. Well along about 1970 or 1971 there started to be what they called a Trustee Literature Committee, where they started to write which was really a very small venture. They started to write literature with the folks who hung around the office. The office was run out of Jimmy K’s. house for years and years right up until 1982, late ’82. It was operated out of this mans house. We need to know, we need to know that there was somebody who had the commitment and dedication to Narcotics Anonymous. To sit there for 30 years when nothing was happening. I mean you know we find it hard to sit still for 30 minutes, we find it hard to to stay committed for 30 days. So I think we are looking at what commitment means. Yes, it is a Just for Today program for the rest of our lives. The choice is ours, it has always been ours. So along about this time choices are starting to be made, somebody comes up with a bright idea like let us have a World Convention, so they had a World Convention in LaMarada, California in 1970 and that is at the 20th anniversary or there about…..NoNoNo, yeah we are getting close. The reason I say we are getting close is because we have tapes. We have tapes from the 20th and the 23rd anniversaries of Narcotics Anonymous in which some of the founding members speak and hopefully they will be available for you to either listen to or purchase at some point during the course of this Addathon weekend.
So they had a World Convention, I am sure it was very well attended, like maybe from what I understand. There were about 150 people there at the first World Convention and at the third there were about 300 people tops. Therefore, we are looking at Southern California and Northern California fellowships with no meetings outside of the state of California at this time, and that was that. I mean everyone knew one another; it would be like going to a convention in my home region in West Virginia. You know there are 250 or 300 people and you get to hug everybody. Therefore, everybody knew one another and generally, everyone was participating in each other’s recovery.
So between 1971 and 1975 they formed the 1st. Area Service Committee. They opened a World Service Office on Crenshaw Blvd. that did not last to long. From what I understand, it was just opened for a little while and then it reverted back to Jimmy K’s. house again. So we are talking 1972, there are probably 70 to 80 meetings in the world, and most of those meetings being in Southern California still. Along about 1972- 1973 somebody in Georgia got hold of a White Book and started some meetings down there. This began the fellowship on the East Coast. Same way it happened in Philadelphia. Philadelphia and Atlanta are the oldest East Coast NA fellowships; with interestingly enough I think Spartanburg, South Carolina and Keyport, Pennsylvania. Some other very non descript, oddball off the way places out of the way places got a White Book and started a meeting. Addicts were really hungry for something. AA at the time was not in competition with Narcotics Anonymous. They just said “You don’t share that [Censored] in here boy” or girl and if you want to talk about that, you gotta go, and it is still that way today. In my home state in a lot to the rural places you do not go to an AA meeting, because they tell you “You don’t belong here”. Today there is an alternative, and some good people guide you to that alternative, which is Narcotics Anonymous. However, at the time addicts were kind of floundering around in a sea of nothing. It is as if you do not belong here, well then where do I belong. Well they say addicts do not get better, you are supposed to die, and that was the climate.
Therefore, we have had a struggle, and we have had to really fight for the existence of Narcotics Anonymous all throughout our history. That fight and that struggle are still occurring today in the emerging fellowships around the world. You look in reports from Columbia, Brazil and places like that. Wow, we think about 20,000 meetings and ¾ million addicts in the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous today. You spread that out on a planet of 6 billion people and you get an idea of the work there is to do. There is not anywhere on the face of this earth that the disease of addiction does not exist. Therefore, we really have a lot of work to do in quote, unquote evangelizing the world of Narcotics Anonymous. Therefore, that is why we need members to be connected today.
What was true 30 years ago will be true 30 years from now. We are just part of a legacy, of a wave, we are pawns and God is revealing himself through the principles and through the power and majesty of our 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. In 1975 a member who had almost three years clean or 4 years clean at the time got together with Jimmy K and said “ Well why don’t we have a service structure”? So they started out talking about it and went through all the AA service structure stuff like that and came up with this document here called the NA Tree. This was our first service structure and it is really quite simple, it was quite efficient and quite effective, maybe we need to return to something that simple, it was based on the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.
The difference between our fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous and our evolution as a fellowship is in terms of our service structure. Now I want to make a statement here, that if you look at our Steps and Traditions, all of our steps and all of our traditions are about service. If you look in the front of the Basic Text, you will see what they call a service symbol and it talks about service. When we serve and attract more members, we attract the base of the pyramid, the more we attract the higher the sides, the higher the point of freedom, the higher we are able to go in our own personal recovery.
So our fellowship was found and based upon the 12 Traditions and Principles, our Steps and Traditions are all principles, our Steps and Traditions , out Traditions, our Steps, they all point in one direction, and that’s selfless service. That is reasons for serving other than for self. So our service structure and our fellowship are based on Principles of service.
Conversely, AA was founded as a marketing tool for the publication written by its two founding members that was called the AA Big Book. They started out and their entire organization and service structure was written differently and founded differently. Their fellowship grew as a result of marketing the Big Book. I mean if we are talking about history, we have to talk about history. There were parallel, their gross and things like that, which were going on, but its interesting to see at what point we begin the separation. That was Gods way of possibly making our message of recovery available to more people.
The Traditions were not written for 20 years. They were a fellowship for 20 years without the Traditions. The 12 Concepts of Service were written 12 to 14 years later. So their entire fellowship and their entire structure evolved from a different spirit, a different place, a different growth. I am not making a value judgment, certainly what they do works fine for them. One of the exciting things that come from being a member of Narcotics Anonymous is the creative spirit of God that has always been involved in our development.
We said necessarily that we need to be different, because we need to have a different identification. So people with multiple substance abuse problems and that are all it was at the time, it was not like the disease of addiction and the philosophy of the disease concept that is growing in acceptance of Narcotics Anonymous. It was more or less, as if you know it says in order to do H&I work in Narcotics Anonymous you had to be an alcoholic, a barbiturate addict or a narcotic addict. I mean that is right here. That was the requirement for being able to serve in the fellowship in the beginning. So it is interesting how the refinement of our message is beginning to exhibit itself.
We are finally gathering in numbers larger than ten at a time through the World Service Conference. That first World Service Conference, all the documents and information from that first World Service Conference is right here. That was bigger than the second one because they had the 2nd and 3rd ones in conjunction with the World Convention. They decided that was a mistake that everyone wanted to party, so the World Service Conference got off to a rather shaky start.
In 1977-78, there was a person on the East Coast who will be here probably in the next 40 or 50 minutes that was scratching his head saying, “How come we don’t have a book”? And “Why can’t we have a book”? You know why do we have to keep scratching out the word alcohol in this Large Book (laughter). It is the puzzlement, you know a real puzzlement but the popular school of thought at the time is that addicts could not write. You know, I mean, addicts could not write. Addicts, using addicts, wrote some of our greatest literature. You look at Hemingway and Poe; I mean the list is endless. So the idea that clean addicts could not write is a little bit far fetched.
So at any rate we are getting to the point when there is a stirring in the breast of Narcotics Anonymous, a yearning for an identity. Now that we are seeing that, we cannot mature in the shadows of another fellowship. That we must begin to risk, we must begin to stand on the principles that we have been taught and that we have been listening to in our meetings. Okay and you can imagine the fear, the excitement, and the controversy from the very beginning of Narcotics Anonymous, and controversy is where we grow.
The first step is controversy in me when I walked in here and you told me that I was powerless over a disease called addiction. That I have to change my whole ****ing life. I will tell you that all I thought was conflict (laughter). At my first NA Meeting, there was a fight in the parking lot over the AA Big Book and the Hazelton literature not being in Narcotics Anonymous. I said “What’s this about” and they explained it to me and I said “Alright, Yeah”. So that is how I came to Narcotics Anonymous, in the midst of conflict. Therefore, along about 1976, the conflict began this conflict between the past and growth, the past and the future and it ripped the fellowship apart. Because 99% of the people that were clean at that particular point in the history of Narcotics Anonymous got clean somewhere besides Narcotics Anonymous.
There were not enough meetings for them to do 90 in 90 in Narcotics Anonymous, even to the point of having to drive 75 miles one-way two nights a week to get my 90 in 90.
Today recovery is so convenient, we say, “Oh well there is not a meeting in our neighborhood” (laughter) or “Oh well, it’s where I use to cop, you know people, places and things”. However, it is down in them ghettos in them war zones that the 12th Step is all about. That is where it is about, it is about going out where no one wants to go, and doing the work. That is what Narcotics Anonymous has always been and not anything else is the spirit of Narcotics Anonymous.
Its convenience, being comfortable bothers me. When I begin to get comfortable and people begin to tell me how comfortable, I am and boy, I feel great. When I hear it out in meetings, well I have been sitting around long enough in meetings to know that the people who are comfortable are out the door soon. Because if I am growing, there is always some internal conflict going, because I have to continue to step beyond the limitations of my present reality that is always a source of conflict. We are the creators in the group conscience; we are the creators of our own destiny.
If we rely on the past and are afraid of the future, then we will never grow as a fellowship. We have begun to reach that point in Narcotics Anonymous today. Where our growth in the United States has stabilized, whether people are saying we don’t need to do all the work or we don’t need to be involved in service, you know after all I have a home group and group conscience.
Our attitudes, our viewpoints have shrunk somewhat. When I got clean every single addict that walked through the door was a precious commodity. Every single addict that walks in the door today is still a precious commodity in the sight of God. So this is the spirit, this is the spirit that spelled our growth, the spirit that made people stand up and get punched in a meeting saying” We need our own literature, we need our own book”.
So I want to tell a little bit, but I do not want to take the story away from the guy who is going to be here to tell it. He went to California with three years clean and said, “Hey, Who’s working on the book, Oh Luke what are you doing about the book”? There was a guy there with a bunch of years clean and said “What are you gonna do about the book, what are you gonna do”? One of these days, one of these days, one of you are going to write. So nothing was happening so he hooked up with this other guy and they sat and talked about the book. The next year they came back to the World Convention and this guy that had said “What about the book, what about the book” says “I got 160 pages” and the guy said “I got to go take a shower”, so he said “Well I’ll go with you”…So essentially some little 3 year clean newcomer high on swamp gas from Georgia was basically responsible for a movement that changed the face of the history of Narcotics Anonymous.
Now everybody was participating in one way or another in that movement, but pointing fingers and saying “You guys are out of your minds…you’ll never succeed, you are destined to fail, this is self will”. Se it is the same old song, it is the same old story that has been used capriciously for years. But the text got written. You know how it got written? People had to hitch hike, they had to sell their cars, and they sold their blood to rent the typewriters, to buy the paper, to rent the facility. This was what was going on. Addicts died, addicts left NA saying, “Oh you guys don’t like AA no more, and there is so much controversy, I’m going back to AA”. Hey, you know that is just the way the cookie crumbles, you know what I mean. Some people were willing to stand on what they believed. Rightly or Wrongly you know and I respect people who stand on what they believe and are not blown by the winds of people pleasing and “ If I get someone to like me I’ll get a position” and all that.
I am trying to stimulate, so when these people share over the course of this weekend you will ask some probing questions. You will try to pull (grunting) pull that little extra effort out of yourself and out of the people who are standing at the podium and talking to you.
The 1st World Literature Conference was held in 1979 in Wichita, Kansas, right after the World Convention, and lit. People jumped in the car to get over there. I mean it was really a special time in Narcotics Anonymous.
I got clean about two months after the Basic Text was published, and the spirit of the fellowship at that time and the feeling that was involved in our services and the excitement that was spread far and wide, right across the face of Narcotics Anonymous brings goose bumps and rushes to me today.
So we are looking at the 1st World Literature Conference, we are looking at about 450 meetings in the whole world. Now it is interesting how the growth begins to accelerate at this point. When they got the Grey Book, I do not know if you have ever seen it, but it is like a big old book with numbers down the side and got some funny language in it and stuff like that. But it was the 1st Basic Text. By the time that was approved by review and input happened in Memphis... That Memphis copy was printed and developed and brought to the fellowship, there was 1100 meetings, from 400 in two years to 1100. Okay, we are going to watch, were going to watch this wild explosion of growth in Narcotics Anonymous, because hey maybe because we were starting to stand for something. Maybe we were beginning to breathe excitement and enthusiasm, maybe there were even more people who said” I ain’t going back there, I don’t have to; I can recover in Narcotics Anonymous... Look we have a book” and we have been working on this book. Boy, it was exciting.
Top of the page
So in, 1982 they had done all their work on the review and input, and they came out with this little tiny book about this thick, called the approved copy of the Basic Text. That was the first 10 chapters of the Basic Text, no stories, stories were put together later in the publication that was sent around. But in 1982 at the World Service Conference, they approved the, the approval copy of the Basic Text without stories. The stories were circulated after the 1982 World Service Conference and came in, they did not get a chance to go through the group conscience process but they were included in the publication of the Red Book, which was the Special edition. Interestingly enough in the Grey Book there was some language about the Traditions that was included and in the approval copy, that same language was included. That is what the group voted on and Wow interestingly enough when the Red Book came out their were stories but the language was gone. So that is why we had three editions of the Basic Text in a year. Three editions, the approval copy, the Red Book and the First edition. Before the conf3erence in 1983, they started to print the 2nd. Edition. The first printing of the 2nd Edition was done.
At the World service Conference in ’83, the fellowship showed out in mass. Why did you take that stuff out of the book? The fellowship went, and the conference went
(Deliberate stuttering) (Laughter). So they said let’s put it back in. So the 2nd printing of the 2nd Edition, ok they had paste over, they pasted the original Tradition language back in, in the 4th and 9th Traditions. In the 3rd printing of the 2nd Edition all without paste over. Well guess what, in the year 1983 we had four printings of the Basic Text. We had the 2nd Edition 1, 2, 3, then we had the 3rd and interestingly enough that “weird language was gone again. I mean you know at some point to go hmmmm, why bother. So you know they printed the 3rd Edition for the remainder of the conference. Here then in 1984the 3rd Edition Revised changes were brought to the World Service Conference in form of a proposal be the Trustees to change the stories in the little White Book and to change the language in the little White Book. Okay so that went up for a year to the fellowship, all the groups in Narcotics Anonymous voted on these changes to the White Book. A motion was made {hey its here, its you know what I am telling you is all here}. OK in 1982, they were saying that Phil Perez who was the office Board of Directors chair at the time said, “Gee, there was a printing error”. We have heard that one before. You know between the approval copy and the Red Book and then there is other letters in there from the chairman of the World Service Branches. But the problem, the problem we found ourselves in today with literature is literature is money. The World Service Office did not have any money until we had a book, until we had a book. We did not have any meetings, if we did not have any meetings, people did not get clean. So we got a book. Now so from the book, from ’83 we got today there was 1,100 meetings, today we got maybe 22,000 worldwide. We have grown folks and with growth come growing pains. If you can remember how when you were growing up the knee hurt, or the elbow or something like that you know. We have to look at our fellowship kind of like a growing body. You know part of it grows faster than other parts, just like us, our own personal recovery. In our own personal journey of growing up to be adults. There are growing pains along the way; one thing grows a little faster. My gosh, you have to have a party to introduce your pants to your ankles about once a year. So I mean we must understand that with all of the growth that we are coming to, were going to have some problems. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the program of Narcotics Anonymous, I want to make that abundantly clear. Now the program of Narcotics Anonymous is the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions that is what the program is. The fellowship is a bunch of people you know and service outside of the group is service outside the group.
I think what the people in World Services were so hot about then or hot about today is because today the 4th and 9th Traditions made it very clear that our service boards, committees, offices, conventions, and fundraisers were not Narcotics Anonymous. There were other people that disagreed with that, but the Group Conscience said it was.
So here, we are today all these years later with the 5th Edition of the basic Text, and now current philosophy has it that the 4th Edition was approved, fellowship approved. No, the 4th Edition was not, it was never approved. The World Service Conference said no we do not want the 4th Edition. Not only did they say we do not want the 4th Edition, but they did not approve the 5th Edition either.
So we are talking about a rather checkered history, were talking about a lot of manipulation, were talking about a lot of control, and were talking about a lot of things that occurred in the course of our development that goes on underneath, away in the shadows. That you the general member, the person that goes to meetings do not get a chance to see, a chance to know, why. Ok that is the purpose of what we are doing here tonight, is for the fellowship to know. That is the reason for the history of Narcotics Anonymous, is for the fellowship to know. See because its not reality to say that everything that happens in Narcotics Anonymous is spiritual or hunkey doorey. You know it is just not real.
As an addict I am most comfortable with the truth, you know you take my dope and shoot ya(laughter). You tell me the truth and I can deal, but if you flim flam something up and make it real pretty and it’s more half-truth and innuendo I am not going to be able to deal with it responsibly.
So part of the problem has been we have no accurate history. The good the bad and the ugly. If you were wrong, it is highly unlikely that you are going to a forum such as this and admit that you are wrong. But until this occurs, until the truth is told for everybody there we’re never going to know the good things we did, the mistakes we’ve made , the paths we have walked down and ended up in blind alleys. The World Service Office has been offered all of the archives from the beginning, but they said if you give them to us, they are ours and we will do with them what ever we choose. Cannot do that with our literature you know. So I got right here like back in 1979 when people were begging for a literature to be written.
Here it is 1990, we are just getting started, and it is going to be great. We can sit around the table and listen to all of these old timers point fingers at one another and transcribe it all down, and put it out, and it will be beautiful. Because we will learn from that, and old-timers quote, unquote will grow from that, There are people that were invited to this function that are not showing up here, not showing up because they like to do their deeds in the dark. They don’t want the truth told because it will make then look bad. But I have to deal with the truth in my life you know. Yeah that is right old Grateful Dave went and slapped somebody at the area service, boy he’s real spiritual (laughter). You know I got to learn what I got to learn, and I got to go through what I got to go through, and we got to go through what we got to go through, you know. I have been coming here to this area for five and a half years. I’ve been sitting on the porch down the street and I’ve been talking about Narcotics Anonymous. I have been involved with World Service and service to this fellowship since my second day clean. Second day I was in a group conscience meeting and fifth day clean I was in a regional formation meeting and my fortieth day clean I was in a World P.I Workshop. My seventieth day clean I was in a penthouse with Trustees and the World Convention Group. What is this all about, tell me this, tell me that. So service in Narcotics Anonymous is what it is, because without service we have no spirit. We have no soul, and with no soul we aint going to grow, and people are going to come through our meetings and go “This is a phoney baloney bunch”. You know talking a bunch of good sounding bull****, giving each other thumbs up and saying, “yeah you sound good, right on man”. So we got to get down in the trenches and do some work, we got to try to quit trying to make everything so pretty. We got the truth, the truth is not always pretty but the truth will set us free.
There is a lovely lady that just walked in that is going to do the next section. She use to work at World Service Offices, she knows a lot of the old people. She has lived in California and as God has graced us with her presence here tonight. I have come to know this lady and I know she loves Narcotics Anonymous and I know she is dedicated. I know she is here because she wants the truth to be told.
So I have given you some things to think about and some questions maybe to ask over the course of this weekend and to ask yourself as well as the people who participate here. . But it all begins and ends in the Home Group and we are at the midnight hour and I have talked a lot. I could talk a lot more (laughter) and not repeat myself. Well I do not think that would be real fair. I will say you know it is one thing to listen to people who sound good you know and I know how to sound good, but what I am interested in seeing in my life is people that live good. People whose mouth lines up with their feet. If they tell you they are going to do something, you see them doing it. You know it is great to sit on the sidelines and point fingers but it is useless. Controversy is apart of life, a division of cells, the formation of the universe, conflict, conflagration. So I am looking forward to a weekend that will stimulate my desire to know. I have never been one that shrank from conflict, hopefully our fellowship will not and we will do the job, telling our history. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because you cannot edit history and you cannot change history. We only hear one thing in our NA Media, what the NA Media wants us to hear….Good Night
(Applause)
Please, please, we got time for a few questions. You will have to come to the microphone. We will not entertain any questions that are not addressed in line at the microphone. That will be rigor of the course over the entire weekend. I would like to say that I became a repository for information like a computer chip with about three years clean. I knew everything and could repeat it. You know but what I learned today was just stuff that I learned and stuff I can repeat. But I have done research on it. So kind of like with the Steps, the steps became something that came alive to me when I quit trying to sound good with them and tried to learn to live them. So let us have our future in Narcotics Anonymous. Are there any questions to the microphone?
Q: Hi, my name is Greg. (Hi, Greg) I found it interesting you were talking about the qualifications of service. Is there any history as to the efforts of the name change? To be changed when the progress became all in the addiction and the disease of addiction. As opposed to just narcotics in NA.
A: Yeah, several attempts have been made to alter the name of the Fellowship. But the name of the fellowship has so much history that there has not been any real serious or what you would say successful attempts to change the name. There have been splintered groups called Drugs Anonymous, Pills Anonymous in New York but they were not necessarily a splintered group of Narcotics Anonymous. They existed before the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous was able to be in public in New York. As soon as Narcotics Anonymous came busting in the World Convention there these other groups began to decline in membership and respect. Basically because they were so similar in their substance specific or symptomatic approach to recovery. Where Narcotics Anonymous approach top recovery is a holistic approach deals with the whole person rather than the symtomology and that makes our fellowship an evolving message unique today. It was not that way when we started out, it was very drug oriented. Did I get it all? There were addicts anonymous that was started a few times. It started out in Philadelphia with some disgruntled Narcotics Anonymous members. I know there have been other attempts as there was an addict in California, a couple of other attempts you know.
The question was, was there any attempts to form another fellowship. To change the name of Narcotics Anonymous to be more consistent with the approach to recovery. To be from the disease of addiction. In the past, there were some attempts to do that but there were not for that particular reason. Maybe in the future there will be other attempts that will be done for that reason. To more accurately reflect the exact principles in our steps and traditions. I do not know if I will be supportive of that, you know. I know too much about this fellowship and the evolution of this fellowship is exciting enough.
Q. I am an addict named Lawrence ( Hi Lawrence )…My question was that in your research have you run into or run across with any meetings or something’s that going sort of along as a meeting. As in ( ANDA) meetings? It is kind of like an AA / NA meeting. Have you run across an of that in your research.
A ;( laughter) As a matter of fact I have. Recently yet if you go in the northeast corridor in the large metropolitan areas you will find that (ANDA) is for the most part in these large metropolitan areas, except for a few of the old groups are very much ( ANDA) what we can call (ANDA) fellowships. And an also (laughter) in California and in some places in the northeast corridor and around in the larger metropolitan areas, Minnesota for example Narcotics Anonymous is an (ANDA) fellowship. That I think well points up rather clearly the phenomena of the message of the recovery in Narcotics Anonymous being more or less a southeastern, Southeastern United States and Midwestern effort. I think partially evolved because we were sent White Books and there was not a 25-year sober guy hanging and saying “Well look this is really the way it is kid”. We had to figure out what recovery from addiction was and what the desire to stop using meant. Because we were rejected by Alcoholics Anonymous, but there are rows of competition between the fellowship on the East Coast. That said hey there ain’t no recovery over there, you got to come over here. We got into it too, we got into it too now, were not little” well you cannot go over there, sober hmm hmm hmm(laughter), and in California they just don’t have a clue(laughter) you know and they go wherever they go and it don’t matter…Really.
But it is interesting that the 1st purist movement in the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous started in southern California in the Los Angeles area. There were members whom our next speaker knows that were completely, what we would call today, pure NA members. They talked clean, they only went to NA Meetings, and that is really marvelous. You know we have a heritage of purism in this fellowship.
Q: Who gets the money (laughter)? What are their names and who determines that our money is used to build buildings instead of putting out more books and who determines the cost of our books and our literature?
A: (laughter) Well lets see they have not changed the price of the Basic Text since 1983, so that particular price was set along time ago. Obviously, you and I up until the present have not been able to determine the price of our literature or where the money goes. (sigh) ( ) how to explain this in the short form. Most addicts see World Service as being one entity and their not. We have the World Service Office, which is a corporation that is producers and holders of a fiduciary relationship for our copyrights, which means that they are held in trust. They are the ones that print, publish and distribute our literature. Well that has not always been the case. Before areas, regions and groups printed, developed, and distributed literature and that similar to a grass roots type of thing that is going on today. The money goes to the corporation. Whether the corporation is using that money in a what that we as a fellowship feels is responsible or not is a matter for great study and debate and for conscience both individual and group. But knowledge is the forunner of making a decision. The volunteer service structure has a gross income last year of $280.000.00 , the corporation had an income of 5 million that is basically generated from the sale of our literature in which 43% of all total volume of the sales is sold to outside enterprises. Outside of the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, Hazelden and Comcare purchase their literature at $5.23 for a Basic Text where as the New York Regional Service Office pays forty cents more. So our office is selling the literature 40% to 43% of its funds to outside vendors cheaper than it is selling to the fellowship.
It costs about a quarter of a cent to produce to produce the Triangle of Self Obsession, and it costs you about 13 cents. It costs half a cent to produce a key tag and about 26 cents to produce a tape, twenty cents for a medallion $1.47 for a Basic Text. You get the idea that is where the money goes. We have expanded the World Service Office in the past two years from 18 paid employees in 1987 to a current staff of 48 fulltime employees. Everywhere they go, they go on airplanes, they have credit cards, expense accounts and maybe that is something we want to do and maybe its not. Because our 9th Tradition says that, we may create service boards and committees directly responsible. The flip side we may not create them or we may UN create them or we may modify the relationship of special workers to the service structure. But until you know, know what I mean. It’s the getting bad dope when you were first getting high you know, you thought it was great until you got some good and then you didn’t want anything else. It is like so really the fellowship owns everything. You everybody in this room own the copyrights, they are yours, they are ours, every staple every chair you know. So it is up to us to know what to do with it (Audience laughter) no simple answer to it, no short answers to any of these questions.
Q; How would you suggest that the fellowship at large organize to demand and accounting for monies and direct impact on some changes. That us the fellowship at large would want concerning the areas of copyright, new material, impact of the material, selection of officers and find out what the basic requirement to be a member of this committee is?
A; Well, there is a number of things we can do. Since 1982, we have been going to the World Service Conference as a block asking for dialogue, and accountability. There has not been the accountability or allowance of any substantial or significant dialogue as to the pertinent issues that you raise, the questions you asked.
This World Conference was the worst in memory, I mean depending on where you sit. I mean if you sit on the World Board Committee they got everything they wanted. If you look at the fellowship the news, line the NA Way I mean you know you can see. How the truth and the RSR and people who were at the World Service Conference how the truth has been manipulated to make people who want to engage with such discussion as you put forth in the question appear to be zealots, hitlers out to destroy the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. With no reason to you know, I mean that is what our NA media has been used for. It has been to isolate us from one another. The world Service Conference in here they told us that they said the regions on the east Coast made 150 motions; well we made less than thirty. The actual truth so the point is they aint listening. They want no dialogue, what can we do?
It is called Grass Roots you know, go to your Home Group, discuss these things, make a decision on what it is you would like to do you know. I mean we can try to continue to try to work Quote, unquote within the structure, which I support entirely. But there are other things that we can do that are not necessary entirely within the structure, as we know it. As it exists that, we can do. I see some of that in your bag; you know I mean you want cheaper literature and cheap Basic Text, “Print um that’s all”.
Send a message that we do not like it, they aint going to listen to nothing but the pocketbook. I’ll tell you that they have spent 15 thousand dollars of your money sending legal cease and desist orders around the fellowship in the past thirty days, federal expressing apologies because at $14.00 a pop because of that so you know the hand is on the nuts, if you want to put your hand on and squeeze a little bit maybe we can change something.
Q: Hi I’m an addict, my name is Arlene.(Hi Arlene).. I am confused you said that the 4th and 5th Edition are not WS approved. Am I correct ,ok. What is , why do we use it or I mean is that why we use it. I mean is that why we use it because they didn’t approve it and its what we want?
A: That’s a good question, why do we use literature that was not approved by the entire fellowship. I don’t know, I mean that’s a question to discuss in conscience. If you look and you research the history of the members of the WS Conference you will see that the 4th Edition, because that is why we have a 5th Edition, but they never voted to have another edition of the text. There was a discussion, which is in plain document for everybody to see that substantiates what I say. So what they have done is sold you a book that was professionally edited and made presentable, with a glossary put in tit so it would be palatable for treatment centers. If you take and compare the 4th Edition Revised with that edition, they take out some very controversial statements about recovery from the disease of addiction. And we need to have more money and more literature, and let us do it faster and better, I mean you are asking me, I am telling you, you know. That is a matter for you to go home and say, well look you know. Give us somebody who has the information I mean lots of people can talk, and lots of people talk real good, and are persuasive but if they cant back up what they are talking about don’t listen to them.
(Audience) In the book here, it says that this is NA Conference literature, and it says NA in the NA Way are regular trademarks of the WSO. What is conference approved literature, I mean are all the pamphlets we have, are those all conference approved or WS approved? Some say this, some say that.
A: The WS Conference is a group of 75 votes that may or may not reflect the wishes of the fellowship. The fellowship is the Home Groups and the conference is the conference. We gave the conference approved logo stamps for all our literature from the very beginning when we got a conference. We had literature before see, so you know the question is whether conference approved is fellowship approved, or whether its conference approved, because there is a lot of things that happened on the floor of the WS Conference, that do not coincide with what you and I believe or do in our Home Group. We say that is Group Conscience and move that up. You know a lot of things happen, quick fixes, people think they know what is best for NA, on the floor of the WS Conference and they just act in a lot of people’s views capriciously.
(Audience) I know when I read the Basic Text some of it is not very palatable to me. It is very hard for me to concentrate because I can not relate to a lot of it. You know this is my opinion, when you get into something like this I can relate to something more like this, you know rather than the technical jargon. Even though I am in the medical profession that does not matter, you know. Its still something that I want one on one and I guess that something that comes back to what can we do, you know. Thank you
Q: I want to thank you for the NA History. I heard the tape you did in Florida about the checkered past. Our Basic Text had a few other things , its always nice to learn a few things but you know like again maybe you can give me some history, maybe like why WSO , WSC, or what our service structure has done right, because all I am hearing is what they do wrong. Maybe you can shed some light on that.
A; Well our Service structure from the very beginning has been there basically to answer the telephone. Right now, that is what the WS Office does real well. They answer the telephone real well and they ship literature pretty well, most of the time. They disseminate information and they refer calls to PI and things like that. They do that stuff pretty well, I guess it is the nature of the nature that we all have. It is like when things are working real well we don’t want to fix it, you know. Its not the things that are being done you know that are correct, that need fixing, or maybe even so much discussion. There is a lot of good that has been done by the WS and it is still continuing to be done by the WS. It is not those things that need to be changed.
History Literature Addathon 1990
Allentown, Pa
Tape One
Opening
Hello Family, my name is Greatful Dave, and I am an addict. Hi Family. Tonight I am (Hold it down John). Tonight I am going to try to stimulate some questions in your minds so that you can ask some of the people that are going to be here a little bit later, to further elaborate on them. I have been called many things; one is an NA Historian and a policy expert. I have done a lot of research that has contributed to some of our longer-term members talks on the history of this fellowship.
I am going to go before pre 50’s and just to say that the book of Organizations List of 1942 of Lexington, Ky. The formation of an organization called Narcotics Anonymous, and it does not bear any resemblance to the fellowship that started in Southern California.
There were a number of attempts to do something called Narcotics Anonymous in various forms, in Cleveland, in NYC, in Lexington and all of those efforts failed. There was a group that met in the Lexington Federal Detox down there and that is the earliest knowledge that anybody has as to the use of the name of Narcotics Anonymous. It was basically a group therapy session for ex dope fiends. They had put out this thing called The Key, which was a magazine, a little newsletter and when you go to look at the minutes of the formation of Narcotics Anonymous, which are here. You will see that it says our purpose has been taken from The Key and for a long time that was hidden because of the general obscurity of our documents of our formation. There was a group that operated in New York that was basically sponsored or helped along by the Salvation Army. They operated there from the mid 1940”s until 1952. At the beginning the formation of Narcotics Anonymous and the San Fernando Valley, California was that they contacted this New York organization and the New York organization said “ Hey man, we’ re doing our own thing and don’t want any part of what it is you’re doing”. So the Narcotics Anonymous that we are all members of evolved independently of that.
When several members and friends of mine were out in California went back to talk to some of the people that were around 20-25 years ago. The story that we were told about the formation of Narcotics Anonymous is, is really interesting. There are several versions of how we got started, but the one that is most number if older members out there was that the H&I coordinator for AA in So. California besieged by a prison warden in So. California and asked “What can you do for these drug addicts”? The person said, “Well there is nothing we can do, you know there different and they don’t recover”. Well thanks to the persistence of this warden, he made the H&I coordinator promise that he would look into trying to do something. So what occurred out of that was he knew of a member that was involved and that was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who was involved with a program called “ Habit forming Drugs” which was trying to help addicts , you know like the ones on the streets. To help them to get clean generally and run them into the AA Meetings. So what happened at the time was this member was kind of hand picked by the H&I coordinator from the AA Fellowship and other members whom this gentleman had knowledge of were picked to form or to try and form something that was independent of Alcoholics Anonymous that would help the addict. That became know as the AA / NA Group. Well that immediately caused some controversy, and this founding one of our founding members Jimmy K. who is now deceased. His wife is still living so I won’t , well you’ll probably hear all that Jimmy Kinnon as we have some tapes and videos and things like that of talks that Jimmy has given. Some of them the formation of our service structures, how that was formed and the discussions, and we will be looking at many things. Anyway, they called it AA / NA and this guy says we cannot use the AA name. Well of course, an uninformed group conscience then voted it down.
They wanted to keep the affiliation with the organization of Alcoholics Anonymous, so this member Jimmy Kinnon wrote them a letter and said, “Look we want to use, and these people want to use the AA name and attach it to NA and call it AA / NA. It was a letter written from the general service offices in New York stating without and gray areas that they would not allow Narcotics Anonymous to use the AA name. So this gentleman was vindicated and the first meeting to form the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, by all the available documents, occurred on August 17, 1953 and the first Recovery Meeting was October 5, 1953. There are copies of the flyer for the first meeting here somewhere. This is not all in order anymore and a copy of the first White Book is here as well. I have all the original literature and stuff at home, but did not realize and I would have had to load up the whole car with stuff to bring it up here. . Here is the sign in sheet for the first Recovery Meeting. There were 17 members who signed in, there may have been more in attendance and here is the flyer “Starting Monday Night October 5, and each Monday hereafter at 8:30. So that is a little bit of interesting stuff about our history. A lot of the meetings at that time, there was like you know people were going to different peoples houses, they carried their coffee cups around with them and they called them “Rabbit Meetings”. That was because at the time addicts were being hassled a lot by the local constabulary, so they had to hide. Addicts were scared to come to the meetings because they felt that the meetings were staked out and they might get busted. That happened in New York. They tried to start NA related, to the So. California fellowship in New York. However, the Rockefeller Laws got them, so it was not until 1982 that the first meeting of Narcotics Anonymous was really allowed to exist freely in New York City. New York City today has at last count 1002 meetings a week, and they account for 1/20th of the total population of Narcotics Anonymous. So it has come along way, the power and the message of Narcotics Anonymous is what is most interesting to most of us I suppose. In 1953 to 1956 there was probably at the most 6 meetings that were going at any one time, and in 1959 for a period of about 5 months there were no regular NA Meetings held anywhere in the world. What happened was according to Jimmy Kinnon , one of his tapes was that Narcotics Anonymous had become affiliated with a treatment center and had become a “one man rule”. They were not following the Traditions and so Jimmy K and a few other people decided that they were going to start it back up and get together and carry on and Jimmy K was the only contact knows around the country for Narcotics Anonymous for almost 32 years. He answered the phone and used all his money to Xerox literature talked to people on the phone night and day. He never wanted to be a Bill Wilson or a founder. He believed that he was just an instrument being used as apart of an idea in his service was service to God, and was service to the principles and it didn’t matter to him . There were many stories of Jimmy K and a newcomer and a coffee pot for years. He would always go and find somebody and bring them into a meeting for years, and it was not until about 1956 that the first Narcotics Anonymous literature was printed. That was odd, odd reading version of what we call today the White Book. It is very different and unfortunately, I do not have it with me. It is interesting that the printing was done and then Narcotics Anonymous died.
So they started back up in 1959 and then they published another White Book without stories. The Board of Trustees was established in about 1965, and nobody knows for sure why except that it was felt that they needed a larger base from which to make their decisions, and by then the number of meetings had increased by that time to about eight or 9 meetings. In 1966, there were approximately 10 meetings they started. The two family members of the Magdalino family were feuding over wanting to retain the AA literature in the NA Meetings. There was a big resentment that occurred, interesting how growth correlates with conflict and resentments. They took and went up to San Francisco and started some NA Meetings up there, then there was another split, and the San Diego Meetings got started,
Tomorrow late, there will be a guy here who was around for the formation of the fellowship in San Diego who has about 30 years clean. Therefore, we are going on and we are up to about 1970, but in 1968 let me say that there was the “Voice of NA” newsletter printed and basically that was just to tell stories, share on events and it was published locally. I have copies of that at home and I am sorry I am just not real prepared. I do have copies of every World Service Conference, the minutes and fellowship reports, all the reports and literature up until 1985; I have the rest at home. I just brought this here with me because it is history and most of us know what happened from ’85 on, professional contracts and junk like that.
At any rate, they decided to o-pen an office so the general service organization, they called the GSO and that was basically, what they had been doing the same old thing for years and years. Jimmy K had been answering the phones, putting out literature, detoxing members and new people from “Cry Help” and other detox and treatment facilities from around the valley, to help out and put things together.
So in 1970 we are up to about 20 meetings a week. Now, where were you in 1970? I know where I was, I was full blown on the streets of Haight Ashbury. So it is interesting that in 1970 that we only had about 20 meetings in the whole world. I guess this is significant because as we start to come up over the next 15 years we will see some interesting things that historically may just be a historical event, maybe no spiritual significance to it, but just the beginning of literature. Well along about 1970 or 1971 there started to be what they called a Trustee Literature Committee, where they started to write which was really a very small venture. They started to write literature with the folks who hung around the office. The office was run out of Jimmy K’s. house for years and years right up until 1982, late ’82. It was operated out of this mans house. We need to know, we need to know that there was somebody who had the commitment and dedication to Narcotics Anonymous. To sit there for 30 years when nothing was happening. I mean you know we find it hard to sit still for 30 minutes, we find it hard to to stay committed for 30 days. So I think we are looking at what commitment means. Yes, it is a Just for Today program for the rest of our lives. The choice is ours, it has always been ours. So along about this time choices are starting to be made, somebody comes up with a bright idea like let us have a World Convention, so they had a World Convention in LaMarada, California in 1970 and that is at the 20th anniversary or there about…..NoNoNo, yeah we are getting close. The reason I say we are getting close is because we have tapes. We have tapes from the 20th and the 23rd anniversaries of Narcotics Anonymous in which some of the founding members speak and hopefully they will be available for you to either listen to or purchase at some point during the course of this Addathon weekend.
So they had a World Convention, I am sure it was very well attended, like maybe from what I understand. There were about 150 people there at the first World Convention and at the third there were about 300 people tops. Therefore, we are looking at Southern California and Northern California fellowships with no meetings outside of the state of California at this time, and that was that. I mean everyone knew one another; it would be like going to a convention in my home region in West Virginia. You know there are 250 or 300 people and you get to hug everybody. Therefore, everybody knew one another and generally, everyone was participating in each other’s recovery.
So between 1971 and 1975 they formed the 1st. Area Service Committee. They opened a World Service Office on Crenshaw Blvd. that did not last to long. From what I understand, it was just opened for a little while and then it reverted back to Jimmy K’s. house again. So we are talking 1972, there are probably 70 to 80 meetings in the world, and most of those meetings being in Southern California still. Along about 1972- 1973 somebody in Georgia got hold of a White Book and started some meetings down there. This began the fellowship on the East Coast. Same way it happened in Philadelphia. Philadelphia and Atlanta are the oldest East Coast NA fellowships; with interestingly enough I think Spartanburg, South Carolina and Keyport, Pennsylvania. Some other very non descript, oddball off the way places out of the way places got a White Book and started a meeting. Addicts were really hungry for something. AA at the time was not in competition with Narcotics Anonymous. They just said “You don’t share that [Censored] in here boy” or girl and if you want to talk about that, you gotta go, and it is still that way today. In my home state in a lot to the rural places you do not go to an AA meeting, because they tell you “You don’t belong here”. Today there is an alternative, and some good people guide you to that alternative, which is Narcotics Anonymous. However, at the time addicts were kind of floundering around in a sea of nothing. It is as if you do not belong here, well then where do I belong. Well they say addicts do not get better, you are supposed to die, and that was the climate.
Therefore, we have had a struggle, and we have had to really fight for the existence of Narcotics Anonymous all throughout our history. That fight and that struggle are still occurring today in the emerging fellowships around the world. You look in reports from Columbia, Brazil and places like that. Wow, we think about 20,000 meetings and ¾ million addicts in the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous today. You spread that out on a planet of 6 billion people and you get an idea of the work there is to do. There is not anywhere on the face of this earth that the disease of addiction does not exist. Therefore, we really have a lot of work to do in quote, unquote evangelizing the world of Narcotics Anonymous. Therefore, that is why we need members to be connected today.
What was true 30 years ago will be true 30 years from now. We are just part of a legacy, of a wave, we are pawns and God is revealing himself through the principles and through the power and majesty of our 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. In 1975 a member who had almost three years clean or 4 years clean at the time got together with Jimmy K and said “ Well why don’t we have a service structure”? So they started out talking about it and went through all the AA service structure stuff like that and came up with this document here called the NA Tree. This was our first service structure and it is really quite simple, it was quite efficient and quite effective, maybe we need to return to something that simple, it was based on the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.
The difference between our fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous and our evolution as a fellowship is in terms of our service structure. Now I want to make a statement here, that if you look at our Steps and Traditions, all of our steps and all of our traditions are about service. If you look in the front of the Basic Text, you will see what they call a service symbol and it talks about service. When we serve and attract more members, we attract the base of the pyramid, the more we attract the higher the sides, the higher the point of freedom, the higher we are able to go in our own personal recovery.
So our fellowship was found and based upon the 12 Traditions and Principles, our Steps and Traditions are all principles, our Steps and Traditions , out Traditions, our Steps, they all point in one direction, and that’s selfless service. That is reasons for serving other than for self. So our service structure and our fellowship are based on Principles of service.
Conversely, AA was founded as a marketing tool for the publication written by its two founding members that was called the AA Big Book. They started out and their entire organization and service structure was written differently and founded differently. Their fellowship grew as a result of marketing the Big Book. I mean if we are talking about history, we have to talk about history. There were parallel, their gross and things like that, which were going on, but its interesting to see at what point we begin the separation. That was Gods way of possibly making our message of recovery available to more people.
The Traditions were not written for 20 years. They were a fellowship for 20 years without the Traditions. The 12 Concepts of Service were written 12 to 14 years later. So their entire fellowship and their entire structure evolved from a different spirit, a different place, a different growth. I am not making a value judgment, certainly what they do works fine for them. One of the exciting things that come from being a member of Narcotics Anonymous is the creative spirit of God that has always been involved in our development.
We said necessarily that we need to be different, because we need to have a different identification. So people with multiple substance abuse problems and that are all it was at the time, it was not like the disease of addiction and the philosophy of the disease concept that is growing in acceptance of Narcotics Anonymous. It was more or less, as if you know it says in order to do H&I work in Narcotics Anonymous you had to be an alcoholic, a barbiturate addict or a narcotic addict. I mean that is right here. That was the requirement for being able to serve in the fellowship in the beginning. So it is interesting how the refinement of our message is beginning to exhibit itself.
We are finally gathering in numbers larger than ten at a time through the World Service Conference. That first World Service Conference, all the documents and information from that first World Service Conference is right here. That was bigger than the second one because they had the 2nd and 3rd ones in conjunction with the World Convention. They decided that was a mistake that everyone wanted to party, so the World Service Conference got off to a rather shaky start.
In 1977-78, there was a person on the East Coast who will be here probably in the next 40 or 50 minutes that was scratching his head saying, “How come we don’t have a book”? And “Why can’t we have a book”? You know why do we have to keep scratching out the word alcohol in this Large Book (laughter). It is the puzzlement, you know a real puzzlement but the popular school of thought at the time is that addicts could not write. You know, I mean, addicts could not write. Addicts, using addicts, wrote some of our greatest literature. You look at Hemingway and Poe; I mean the list is endless. So the idea that clean addicts could not write is a little bit far fetched.
So at any rate we are getting to the point when there is a stirring in the breast of Narcotics Anonymous, a yearning for an identity. Now that we are seeing that, we cannot mature in the shadows of another fellowship. That we must begin to risk, we must begin to stand on the principles that we have been taught and that we have been listening to in our meetings. Okay and you can imagine the fear, the excitement, and the controversy from the very beginning of Narcotics Anonymous, and controversy is where we grow.
The first step is controversy in me when I walked in here and you told me that I was powerless over a disease called addiction. That I have to change my whole ****ing life. I will tell you that all I thought was conflict (laughter). At my first NA Meeting, there was a fight in the parking lot over the AA Big Book and the Hazelton literature not being in Narcotics Anonymous. I said “What’s this about” and they explained it to me and I said “Alright, Yeah”. So that is how I came to Narcotics Anonymous, in the midst of conflict. Therefore, along about 1976, the conflict began this conflict between the past and growth, the past and the future and it ripped the fellowship apart. Because 99% of the people that were clean at that particular point in the history of Narcotics Anonymous got clean somewhere besides Narcotics Anonymous.
There were not enough meetings for them to do 90 in 90 in Narcotics Anonymous, even to the point of having to drive 75 miles one-way two nights a week to get my 90 in 90.
Today recovery is so convenient, we say, “Oh well there is not a meeting in our neighborhood” (laughter) or “Oh well, it’s where I use to cop, you know people, places and things”. However, it is down in them ghettos in them war zones that the 12th Step is all about. That is where it is about, it is about going out where no one wants to go, and doing the work. That is what Narcotics Anonymous has always been and not anything else is the spirit of Narcotics Anonymous.
Its convenience, being comfortable bothers me. When I begin to get comfortable and people begin to tell me how comfortable, I am and boy, I feel great. When I hear it out in meetings, well I have been sitting around long enough in meetings to know that the people who are comfortable are out the door soon. Because if I am growing, there is always some internal conflict going, because I have to continue to step beyond the limitations of my present reality that is always a source of conflict. We are the creators in the group conscience; we are the creators of our own destiny.
If we rely on the past and are afraid of the future, then we will never grow as a fellowship. We have begun to reach that point in Narcotics Anonymous today. Where our growth in the United States has stabilized, whether people are saying we don’t need to do all the work or we don’t need to be involved in service, you know after all I have a home group and group conscience.
Our attitudes, our viewpoints have shrunk somewhat. When I got clean every single addict that walked through the door was a precious commodity. Every single addict that walks in the door today is still a precious commodity in the sight of God. So this is the spirit, this is the spirit that spelled our growth, the spirit that made people stand up and get punched in a meeting saying” We need our own literature, we need our own book”.
So I want to tell a little bit, but I do not want to take the story away from the guy who is going to be here to tell it. He went to California with three years clean and said, “Hey, Who’s working on the book, Oh Luke what are you doing about the book”? There was a guy there with a bunch of years clean and said “What are you gonna do about the book, what are you gonna do”? One of these days, one of these days, one of you are going to write. So nothing was happening so he hooked up with this other guy and they sat and talked about the book. The next year they came back to the World Convention and this guy that had said “What about the book, what about the book” says “I got 160 pages” and the guy said “I got to go take a shower”, so he said “Well I’ll go with you”…So essentially some little 3 year clean newcomer high on swamp gas from Georgia was basically responsible for a movement that changed the face of the history of Narcotics Anonymous.
Now everybody was participating in one way or another in that movement, but pointing fingers and saying “You guys are out of your minds…you’ll never succeed, you are destined to fail, this is self will”. Se it is the same old song, it is the same old story that has been used capriciously for years. But the text got written. You know how it got written? People had to hitch hike, they had to sell their cars, and they sold their blood to rent the typewriters, to buy the paper, to rent the facility. This was what was going on. Addicts died, addicts left NA saying, “Oh you guys don’t like AA no more, and there is so much controversy, I’m going back to AA”. Hey, you know that is just the way the cookie crumbles, you know what I mean. Some people were willing to stand on what they believed. Rightly or Wrongly you know and I respect people who stand on what they believe and are not blown by the winds of people pleasing and “ If I get someone to like me I’ll get a position” and all that.
I am trying to stimulate, so when these people share over the course of this weekend you will ask some probing questions. You will try to pull (grunting) pull that little extra effort out of yourself and out of the people who are standing at the podium and talking to you.
The 1st World Literature Conference was held in 1979 in Wichita, Kansas, right after the World Convention, and lit. People jumped in the car to get over there. I mean it was really a special time in Narcotics Anonymous.
I got clean about two months after the Basic Text was published, and the spirit of the fellowship at that time and the feeling that was involved in our services and the excitement that was spread far and wide, right across the face of Narcotics Anonymous brings goose bumps and rushes to me today.
So we are looking at the 1st World Literature Conference, we are looking at about 450 meetings in the whole world. Now it is interesting how the growth begins to accelerate at this point. When they got the Grey Book, I do not know if you have ever seen it, but it is like a big old book with numbers down the side and got some funny language in it and stuff like that. But it was the 1st Basic Text. By the time that was approved by review and input happened in Memphis... That Memphis copy was printed and developed and brought to the fellowship, there was 1100 meetings, from 400 in two years to 1100. Okay, we are going to watch, were going to watch this wild explosion of growth in Narcotics Anonymous, because hey maybe because we were starting to stand for something. Maybe we were beginning to breathe excitement and enthusiasm, maybe there were even more people who said” I ain’t going back there, I don’t have to; I can recover in Narcotics Anonymous... Look we have a book” and we have been working on this book. Boy, it was exciting.
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So in, 1982 they had done all their work on the review and input, and they came out with this little tiny book about this thick, called the approved copy of the Basic Text. That was the first 10 chapters of the Basic Text, no stories, stories were put together later in the publication that was sent around. But in 1982 at the World Service Conference, they approved the, the approval copy of the Basic Text without stories. The stories were circulated after the 1982 World Service Conference and came in, they did not get a chance to go through the group conscience process but they were included in the publication of the Red Book, which was the Special edition. Interestingly enough in the Grey Book there was some language about the Traditions that was included and in the approval copy, that same language was included. That is what the group voted on and Wow interestingly enough when the Red Book came out their were stories but the language was gone. So that is why we had three editions of the Basic Text in a year. Three editions, the approval copy, the Red Book and the First edition. Before the conf3erence in 1983, they started to print the 2nd. Edition. The first printing of the 2nd Edition was done.
At the World service Conference in ’83, the fellowship showed out in mass. Why did you take that stuff out of the book? The fellowship went, and the conference went
(Deliberate stuttering) (Laughter). So they said let’s put it back in. So the 2nd printing of the 2nd Edition, ok they had paste over, they pasted the original Tradition language back in, in the 4th and 9th Traditions. In the 3rd printing of the 2nd Edition all without paste over. Well guess what, in the year 1983 we had four printings of the Basic Text. We had the 2nd Edition 1, 2, 3, then we had the 3rd and interestingly enough that “weird language was gone again. I mean you know at some point to go hmmmm, why bother. So you know they printed the 3rd Edition for the remainder of the conference. Here then in 1984the 3rd Edition Revised changes were brought to the World Service Conference in form of a proposal be the Trustees to change the stories in the little White Book and to change the language in the little White Book. Okay so that went up for a year to the fellowship, all the groups in Narcotics Anonymous voted on these changes to the White Book. A motion was made {hey its here, its you know what I am telling you is all here}. OK in 1982, they were saying that Phil Perez who was the office Board of Directors chair at the time said, “Gee, there was a printing error”. We have heard that one before. You know between the approval copy and the Red Book and then there is other letters in there from the chairman of the World Service Branches. But the problem, the problem we found ourselves in today with literature is literature is money. The World Service Office did not have any money until we had a book, until we had a book. We did not have any meetings, if we did not have any meetings, people did not get clean. So we got a book. Now so from the book, from ’83 we got today there was 1,100 meetings, today we got maybe 22,000 worldwide. We have grown folks and with growth come growing pains. If you can remember how when you were growing up the knee hurt, or the elbow or something like that you know. We have to look at our fellowship kind of like a growing body. You know part of it grows faster than other parts, just like us, our own personal recovery. In our own personal journey of growing up to be adults. There are growing pains along the way; one thing grows a little faster. My gosh, you have to have a party to introduce your pants to your ankles about once a year. So I mean we must understand that with all of the growth that we are coming to, were going to have some problems. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the program of Narcotics Anonymous, I want to make that abundantly clear. Now the program of Narcotics Anonymous is the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions that is what the program is. The fellowship is a bunch of people you know and service outside of the group is service outside the group.
I think what the people in World Services were so hot about then or hot about today is because today the 4th and 9th Traditions made it very clear that our service boards, committees, offices, conventions, and fundraisers were not Narcotics Anonymous. There were other people that disagreed with that, but the Group Conscience said it was.
So here, we are today all these years later with the 5th Edition of the basic Text, and now current philosophy has it that the 4th Edition was approved, fellowship approved. No, the 4th Edition was not, it was never approved. The World Service Conference said no we do not want the 4th Edition. Not only did they say we do not want the 4th Edition, but they did not approve the 5th Edition either.
So we are talking about a rather checkered history, were talking about a lot of manipulation, were talking about a lot of control, and were talking about a lot of things that occurred in the course of our development that goes on underneath, away in the shadows. That you the general member, the person that goes to meetings do not get a chance to see, a chance to know, why. Ok that is the purpose of what we are doing here tonight, is for the fellowship to know. That is the reason for the history of Narcotics Anonymous, is for the fellowship to know. See because its not reality to say that everything that happens in Narcotics Anonymous is spiritual or hunkey doorey. You know it is just not real.
As an addict I am most comfortable with the truth, you know you take my dope and shoot ya(laughter). You tell me the truth and I can deal, but if you flim flam something up and make it real pretty and it’s more half-truth and innuendo I am not going to be able to deal with it responsibly.
So part of the problem has been we have no accurate history. The good the bad and the ugly. If you were wrong, it is highly unlikely that you are going to a forum such as this and admit that you are wrong. But until this occurs, until the truth is told for everybody there we’re never going to know the good things we did, the mistakes we’ve made , the paths we have walked down and ended up in blind alleys. The World Service Office has been offered all of the archives from the beginning, but they said if you give them to us, they are ours and we will do with them what ever we choose. Cannot do that with our literature you know. So I got right here like back in 1979 when people were begging for a literature to be written.
Here it is 1990, we are just getting started, and it is going to be great. We can sit around the table and listen to all of these old timers point fingers at one another and transcribe it all down, and put it out, and it will be beautiful. Because we will learn from that, and old-timers quote, unquote will grow from that, There are people that were invited to this function that are not showing up here, not showing up because they like to do their deeds in the dark. They don’t want the truth told because it will make then look bad. But I have to deal with the truth in my life you know. Yeah that is right old Grateful Dave went and slapped somebody at the area service, boy he’s real spiritual (laughter). You know I got to learn what I got to learn, and I got to go through what I got to go through, and we got to go through what we got to go through, you know. I have been coming here to this area for five and a half years. I’ve been sitting on the porch down the street and I’ve been talking about Narcotics Anonymous. I have been involved with World Service and service to this fellowship since my second day clean. Second day I was in a group conscience meeting and fifth day clean I was in a regional formation meeting and my fortieth day clean I was in a World P.I Workshop. My seventieth day clean I was in a penthouse with Trustees and the World Convention Group. What is this all about, tell me this, tell me that. So service in Narcotics Anonymous is what it is, because without service we have no spirit. We have no soul, and with no soul we aint going to grow, and people are going to come through our meetings and go “This is a phoney baloney bunch”. You know talking a bunch of good sounding bull****, giving each other thumbs up and saying, “yeah you sound good, right on man”. So we got to get down in the trenches and do some work, we got to try to quit trying to make everything so pretty. We got the truth, the truth is not always pretty but the truth will set us free.
There is a lovely lady that just walked in that is going to do the next section. She use to work at World Service Offices, she knows a lot of the old people. She has lived in California and as God has graced us with her presence here tonight. I have come to know this lady and I know she loves Narcotics Anonymous and I know she is dedicated. I know she is here because she wants the truth to be told.
So I have given you some things to think about and some questions maybe to ask over the course of this weekend and to ask yourself as well as the people who participate here. . But it all begins and ends in the Home Group and we are at the midnight hour and I have talked a lot. I could talk a lot more (laughter) and not repeat myself. Well I do not think that would be real fair. I will say you know it is one thing to listen to people who sound good you know and I know how to sound good, but what I am interested in seeing in my life is people that live good. People whose mouth lines up with their feet. If they tell you they are going to do something, you see them doing it. You know it is great to sit on the sidelines and point fingers but it is useless. Controversy is apart of life, a division of cells, the formation of the universe, conflict, conflagration. So I am looking forward to a weekend that will stimulate my desire to know. I have never been one that shrank from conflict, hopefully our fellowship will not and we will do the job, telling our history. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because you cannot edit history and you cannot change history. We only hear one thing in our NA Media, what the NA Media wants us to hear….Good Night
(Applause)
Please, please, we got time for a few questions. You will have to come to the microphone. We will not entertain any questions that are not addressed in line at the microphone. That will be rigor of the course over the entire weekend. I would like to say that I became a repository for information like a computer chip with about three years clean. I knew everything and could repeat it. You know but what I learned today was just stuff that I learned and stuff I can repeat. But I have done research on it. So kind of like with the Steps, the steps became something that came alive to me when I quit trying to sound good with them and tried to learn to live them. So let us have our future in Narcotics Anonymous. Are there any questions to the microphone?
Q: Hi, my name is Greg. (Hi, Greg) I found it interesting you were talking about the qualifications of service. Is there any history as to the efforts of the name change? To be changed when the progress became all in the addiction and the disease of addiction. As opposed to just narcotics in NA.
A: Yeah, several attempts have been made to alter the name of the Fellowship. But the name of the fellowship has so much history that there has not been any real serious or what you would say successful attempts to change the name. There have been splintered groups called Drugs Anonymous, Pills Anonymous in New York but they were not necessarily a splintered group of Narcotics Anonymous. They existed before the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous was able to be in public in New York. As soon as Narcotics Anonymous came busting in the World Convention there these other groups began to decline in membership and respect. Basically because they were so similar in their substance specific or symptomatic approach to recovery. Where Narcotics Anonymous approach top recovery is a holistic approach deals with the whole person rather than the symtomology and that makes our fellowship an evolving message unique today. It was not that way when we started out, it was very drug oriented. Did I get it all? There were addicts anonymous that was started a few times. It started out in Philadelphia with some disgruntled Narcotics Anonymous members. I know there have been other attempts as there was an addict in California, a couple of other attempts you know.
The question was, was there any attempts to form another fellowship. To change the name of Narcotics Anonymous to be more consistent with the approach to recovery. To be from the disease of addiction. In the past, there were some attempts to do that but there were not for that particular reason. Maybe in the future there will be other attempts that will be done for that reason. To more accurately reflect the exact principles in our steps and traditions. I do not know if I will be supportive of that, you know. I know too much about this fellowship and the evolution of this fellowship is exciting enough.
Q. I am an addict named Lawrence ( Hi Lawrence )…My question was that in your research have you run into or run across with any meetings or something’s that going sort of along as a meeting. As in ( ANDA) meetings? It is kind of like an AA / NA meeting. Have you run across an of that in your research.
A ;( laughter) As a matter of fact I have. Recently yet if you go in the northeast corridor in the large metropolitan areas you will find that (ANDA) is for the most part in these large metropolitan areas, except for a few of the old groups are very much ( ANDA) what we can call (ANDA) fellowships. And an also (laughter) in California and in some places in the northeast corridor and around in the larger metropolitan areas, Minnesota for example Narcotics Anonymous is an (ANDA) fellowship. That I think well points up rather clearly the phenomena of the message of the recovery in Narcotics Anonymous being more or less a southeastern, Southeastern United States and Midwestern effort. I think partially evolved because we were sent White Books and there was not a 25-year sober guy hanging and saying “Well look this is really the way it is kid”. We had to figure out what recovery from addiction was and what the desire to stop using meant. Because we were rejected by Alcoholics Anonymous, but there are rows of competition between the fellowship on the East Coast. That said hey there ain’t no recovery over there, you got to come over here. We got into it too, we got into it too now, were not little” well you cannot go over there, sober hmm hmm hmm(laughter), and in California they just don’t have a clue(laughter) you know and they go wherever they go and it don’t matter…Really.
But it is interesting that the 1st purist movement in the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous started in southern California in the Los Angeles area. There were members whom our next speaker knows that were completely, what we would call today, pure NA members. They talked clean, they only went to NA Meetings, and that is really marvelous. You know we have a heritage of purism in this fellowship.
Q: Who gets the money (laughter)? What are their names and who determines that our money is used to build buildings instead of putting out more books and who determines the cost of our books and our literature?
A: (laughter) Well lets see they have not changed the price of the Basic Text since 1983, so that particular price was set along time ago. Obviously, you and I up until the present have not been able to determine the price of our literature or where the money goes. (sigh) ( ) how to explain this in the short form. Most addicts see World Service as being one entity and their not. We have the World Service Office, which is a corporation that is producers and holders of a fiduciary relationship for our copyrights, which means that they are held in trust. They are the ones that print, publish and distribute our literature. Well that has not always been the case. Before areas, regions and groups printed, developed, and distributed literature and that similar to a grass roots type of thing that is going on today. The money goes to the corporation. Whether the corporation is using that money in a what that we as a fellowship feels is responsible or not is a matter for great study and debate and for conscience both individual and group. But knowledge is the forunner of making a decision. The volunteer service structure has a gross income last year of $280.000.00 , the corporation had an income of 5 million that is basically generated from the sale of our literature in which 43% of all total volume of the sales is sold to outside enterprises. Outside of the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, Hazelden and Comcare purchase their literature at $5.23 for a Basic Text where as the New York Regional Service Office pays forty cents more. So our office is selling the literature 40% to 43% of its funds to outside vendors cheaper than it is selling to the fellowship.
It costs about a quarter of a cent to produce to produce the Triangle of Self Obsession, and it costs you about 13 cents. It costs half a cent to produce a key tag and about 26 cents to produce a tape, twenty cents for a medallion $1.47 for a Basic Text. You get the idea that is where the money goes. We have expanded the World Service Office in the past two years from 18 paid employees in 1987 to a current staff of 48 fulltime employees. Everywhere they go, they go on airplanes, they have credit cards, expense accounts and maybe that is something we want to do and maybe its not. Because our 9th Tradition says that, we may create service boards and committees directly responsible. The flip side we may not create them or we may UN create them or we may modify the relationship of special workers to the service structure. But until you know, know what I mean. It’s the getting bad dope when you were first getting high you know, you thought it was great until you got some good and then you didn’t want anything else. It is like so really the fellowship owns everything. You everybody in this room own the copyrights, they are yours, they are ours, every staple every chair you know. So it is up to us to know what to do with it (Audience laughter) no simple answer to it, no short answers to any of these questions.
Q; How would you suggest that the fellowship at large organize to demand and accounting for monies and direct impact on some changes. That us the fellowship at large would want concerning the areas of copyright, new material, impact of the material, selection of officers and find out what the basic requirement to be a member of this committee is?
A; Well, there is a number of things we can do. Since 1982, we have been going to the World Service Conference as a block asking for dialogue, and accountability. There has not been the accountability or allowance of any substantial or significant dialogue as to the pertinent issues that you raise, the questions you asked.
This World Conference was the worst in memory, I mean depending on where you sit. I mean if you sit on the World Board Committee they got everything they wanted. If you look at the fellowship the news, line the NA Way I mean you know you can see. How the truth and the RSR and people who were at the World Service Conference how the truth has been manipulated to make people who want to engage with such discussion as you put forth in the question appear to be zealots, hitlers out to destroy the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. With no reason to you know, I mean that is what our NA media has been used for. It has been to isolate us from one another. The world Service Conference in here they told us that they said the regions on the east Coast made 150 motions; well we made less than thirty. The actual truth so the point is they aint listening. They want no dialogue, what can we do?
It is called Grass Roots you know, go to your Home Group, discuss these things, make a decision on what it is you would like to do you know. I mean we can try to continue to try to work Quote, unquote within the structure, which I support entirely. But there are other things that we can do that are not necessary entirely within the structure, as we know it. As it exists that, we can do. I see some of that in your bag; you know I mean you want cheaper literature and cheap Basic Text, “Print um that’s all”.
Send a message that we do not like it, they aint going to listen to nothing but the pocketbook. I’ll tell you that they have spent 15 thousand dollars of your money sending legal cease and desist orders around the fellowship in the past thirty days, federal expressing apologies because at $14.00 a pop because of that so you know the hand is on the nuts, if you want to put your hand on and squeeze a little bit maybe we can change something.
Q: Hi I’m an addict, my name is Arlene.(Hi Arlene).. I am confused you said that the 4th and 5th Edition are not WS approved. Am I correct ,ok. What is , why do we use it or I mean is that why we use it. I mean is that why we use it because they didn’t approve it and its what we want?
A: That’s a good question, why do we use literature that was not approved by the entire fellowship. I don’t know, I mean that’s a question to discuss in conscience. If you look and you research the history of the members of the WS Conference you will see that the 4th Edition, because that is why we have a 5th Edition, but they never voted to have another edition of the text. There was a discussion, which is in plain document for everybody to see that substantiates what I say. So what they have done is sold you a book that was professionally edited and made presentable, with a glossary put in tit so it would be palatable for treatment centers. If you take and compare the 4th Edition Revised with that edition, they take out some very controversial statements about recovery from the disease of addiction. And we need to have more money and more literature, and let us do it faster and better, I mean you are asking me, I am telling you, you know. That is a matter for you to go home and say, well look you know. Give us somebody who has the information I mean lots of people can talk, and lots of people talk real good, and are persuasive but if they cant back up what they are talking about don’t listen to them.
(Audience) In the book here, it says that this is NA Conference literature, and it says NA in the NA Way are regular trademarks of the WSO. What is conference approved literature, I mean are all the pamphlets we have, are those all conference approved or WS approved? Some say this, some say that.
A: The WS Conference is a group of 75 votes that may or may not reflect the wishes of the fellowship. The fellowship is the Home Groups and the conference is the conference. We gave the conference approved logo stamps for all our literature from the very beginning when we got a conference. We had literature before see, so you know the question is whether conference approved is fellowship approved, or whether its conference approved, because there is a lot of things that happened on the floor of the WS Conference, that do not coincide with what you and I believe or do in our Home Group. We say that is Group Conscience and move that up. You know a lot of things happen, quick fixes, people think they know what is best for NA, on the floor of the WS Conference and they just act in a lot of people’s views capriciously.
(Audience) I know when I read the Basic Text some of it is not very palatable to me. It is very hard for me to concentrate because I can not relate to a lot of it. You know this is my opinion, when you get into something like this I can relate to something more like this, you know rather than the technical jargon. Even though I am in the medical profession that does not matter, you know. Its still something that I want one on one and I guess that something that comes back to what can we do, you know. Thank you
Q: I want to thank you for the NA History. I heard the tape you did in Florida about the checkered past. Our Basic Text had a few other things , its always nice to learn a few things but you know like again maybe you can give me some history, maybe like why WSO , WSC, or what our service structure has done right, because all I am hearing is what they do wrong. Maybe you can shed some light on that.
A; Well our Service structure from the very beginning has been there basically to answer the telephone. Right now, that is what the WS Office does real well. They answer the telephone real well and they ship literature pretty well, most of the time. They disseminate information and they refer calls to PI and things like that. They do that stuff pretty well, I guess it is the nature of the nature that we all have. It is like when things are working real well we don’t want to fix it, you know. Its not the things that are being done you know that are correct, that need fixing, or maybe even so much discussion. There is a lot of good that has been done by the WS and it is still continuing to be done by the WS. It is not those things that need to be changed.