Chapter Three The Book

Every addict who came to NA prior to 1982 dreamed of a book for Narcotics Anonymous. Although our beginnings went well back into the forties, we were a long time learning the lesson of commitment. Jealousy, inter-personal rivalry and fear of setting oneself above his fellows undercut and prolonged our struggle for freedom. Growing up in the long shadow of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were plenty of members who quickly started in with the “who do you think you are, Bill Wilson?” jokes to warn off any who thought to take the dangerous road of commitment to NA recovery writing. Therefore, we had to wait until the late 1970’s for a situation to occur where all members and service elements combined in their desire for a book for NA. Upon this stage several members approached with caution.

World services was honestly baffled by the lack of writing by NA members. The saying, “Addicts in recovery cannot write.” became the euphemism for this confusion. Nobody questioned the saying, well, almost nobody. Everyone repeated it throughout the NA world. And so, blind leading the blind, nobody wrote anything, just like they were told. The advent of having a World Service Conference allowed members concerned about literature for our Fellowship to come together in a non-confrontational, supportive environment where members were praised for their efforts and encouraged to do more. A series of literature conferences were held beginning with Wichita, Kansas in the fall of 1979, Lincoln, Nebraska in 1980, Memphis, Tennessee in the winter of 1981, Santa Monica, California in the spring of 1981, Niles, Ohio in the summer of 1981, Miami in the fall of 1981 and Philadelphia in the winter of 1982. A special Regional Service Conference held in Memphis, Tennessee mailed out the Basic Text material to all the known groups in the world and it was approved by the Fellowship at WSC 1982.

World Service Office became a hub of activity in trying to get the newly approved book typeset and printed. A plan to sell the first 2500 copies in a numbered special edition for $25 each allowed the Fellowship to launch the self-publication of our book by the World Service Office. There were seeds of destruction set in this because the World Service Office quickly came to see itself as a publisher, not a primary service center. This is a major departure from our written, approved service structure at the time and members were very slow to pick up on the exact nature of the conflicts which followed. WSO was never meant to be a seat of power. As our Traditions clearly state, God as you understand him is our Ultimate Authority and our our service boards and committees are DIRECTLY responsible to the Fellowship. This is very different from interactive boards and committees responsible mainly to each other. This layering can allow attention and priority to drift into preserving and expanding bureaucratic elements at the expense of the surrendered and trusting Fellowship. With the new payrolls at WSO, the potential for conflict of interest became greater. By careful shifts in the service structure, the control center of the Fellowship could be gently moved to the corporation that ran WSO. The WSC could be maintained to co-sign corporate decisions.

The purpose of raising all this money was to be self-supporting and not farming out to meet our publishing needs. It was also understood that once the book was well established, the price would be rolled back to $4 or $5 to make it more affordable to all members. The idea of creating a wide margin between the cost and selling price to fund world services was not considered by the Fellowship.

Another 5,000 books were printed to be sold at $8.00 a copy. This all brought in over $100,000 and our book quickly became universally available. Trouble cropped up from a few trusted servants and one new employee falling into a trap that they only partially understood. Concern over a few lines in the book as approved by the Fellowship were challenged by Jimmy K., who had long been our primary trusted servant. While the lines were consistent with our spoken recovery, they were thought to be problematic in possible outcomes. Changing them became a much greater and actual problem than any projections would have predicted.

The Fellowship had placed its ego and personal preferences on hold in favor of our primary group purpose and to have a few individuals take it on themselves to change anything triggered widespread anger and confusion. It is possible that the members who were involved with this were never completely aware of the exact nature of the outrage and upset over the book changes. Chuck Skinner, BOT Chair who signed off on the changes, said, “You’d have thought we killed somebody.” If they had voiced their concerns in any way prior to the approval, consideration and allowance of change could have been completely smooth and uneventful. Since all the material involved Chapter Six on our Twelve Traditions and was written by Greg Pierce, long time member of the Board of Trustee, the material was not considered controversial or problematic. Further, since the entire World Service Board of Trustees had the material for about six months prior to approval, and three more literature conferences had been held, it violated the Fellowships sense of fairplay for these last minute concerns to justify changes without group conscience. Some members from that time looked at it like a dog marks its territory with its scent.

Two key points were involved with the changes. The first is that the miracle of NA depends on daily decisions and moments of contact between two or more addicts who decide to not use for one more day. The simple phrase, “all else is not NA” had long been established to affirm this point and particularly to define that recovery is not a result of coercion from any force outside the individuals themselves. To delete this went against the very statement best affirming recovery is an individual working the 1^st Step on a daily basis. The second involved members setting themselves in positions of arbitrary power over other members. Since recovery is a matter of individual volition, the notion that some can ‘control’ the many is sort of ridiculous. And to allow it at the onset of the publication of our Basic Text is very telling about why it took us so long to have a book. Power really does reside in a spiritual force greater than us all, and people who thought this way wrote the book. No changes had been made to the original document as Greg wrote it either by the Board of Trustees or the World Lit Committee. To set themselves in opposition to a line like “service boards and committees do not have the power to rule, censor, dictate or decide” was a slap in the face of the Fellowship and a poor representation of the vast majority of surrendered trusted servants seeking only to serve, not to rule. Together, there couldn’t have been a worst choice of two key principles to change.

So, we have two things here: the fact of any changes at all was one and the content of the changes the other. These changes set in place antagonism and distrust between the service structure, particularly the WSO, and the Fellowship.

Early attempts were made to write some recovery material for NA. Greg Pierce and Bob B. speak of boxes kept in automobile trunks with input in them. The material never surfaced during the entire writing of the Basic Text. What seemed to concern members most was that they would be ridiculed for trying to write recovery material by the many AA members cruising through all the NA meetings. Some smoked marijuana and sold it to NA members. Their belief that AA and only AA would work stifled NA growth. In any debate, AA was taken seriously and NA was considered dishonorable and almost like a pretender to real recovery. It was gauling to those member who felt devoted to NA. There grew a determination to go to just NA meetings and doing the things required for recovery in terms of the new, young Fellowship.

One way to look at it is to think of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as a recipe for a cake. AA baked their cake long ago, establishing a system of devoted members that endures and renews itself as time goes by. We are doing the same thing in Narcotics Anonymous. We gratefully accepted the recipe and baked our own cake. We even put in some ingedients that may not be the same in AA. After all, we are not only dealing with many different drugs of choice, we have a deck stacked against us when we start recovery. Old friends, even families, will try to put us back into the place where we seem to belong - loaded. Breaking our of this mold means some real changes have to take place. There is a terrific load of brainwashing and media advertisement and entertainment that make it seem taking something would make our day go better, or get us the girl or guy! Baking our own cake, we began to stand on our own feet and stand for something good.