Wso Timeline of Important Dates and Events

January 1972 the first GENERAL SERVICE OFFICE of N.A. was opened at 2335 Crenshaw Blvd in L.A. with Jimmy K. as office manager. The Service office relocated to Highland Ave. in Hollywood.

Later, the name was changed to The World Service Office of Narcotics Anonymous.

November 1974: Following moves to 1346 Highland Ave., Los Angeles; a room in the Suicide Prevention Center, Los Angeles. The General Service Office was opened at 101 Santa Fe St. in L.A. This was much like a regional office of today. November 15, 1975: Following the move to Sun Valley, it was discovered that several boxes of records and other historical data had been lost. 1976: WSO moves to above a bail bond office on Van Nuys Blvd. and then to JK`s home. 1976 WSO incorporated.

The Wyandotte St. Address would be after it was in Jimmy K's home.

It is interesting to note that several addresses appear in printed materials for the WSO.

In the case of the IP, Who, What, How and Why...

1st printing had Why are we here, and po box 622, Sun Valley Address.

2nd printing had why are we here replaced with 12 traditions. Still had Sun Valley Address.

3rd printing had 12 traditions, 16155 Wyandotte St. Address.

4th printing had 12 traditions, po box 9999 Van Nuys, Address.

In 1986, the First printing of this run had the section entitled Why are We Here back in.

The people who wrote the Basic Text experienced something that had never happened before. They met NA’s who set high standards for themselves, met and exceeded those standards. It became socially acceptable to keep your service commitment in NA. We began to expand and develop for the first time the problems that come with being a really large organization. Sometimes persons not accustomed to being taken seriously were quoted making offhand statements and inaccurate rumors were generated. We had to learn to pace ourselves. Communications over such a broad range of newly formed meetings was difficult at best, impossible at worst. Policy issues were presented and voted on before the Fellowship understood the ramifications. Changes in our Service Structure from year to year became a confusing, changeable series of rules, utilized when perceived useful, circumvented when bothersome or inconvenient. These people got a real education in NA Steps, Traditions and policies. Policy means the plan of action agreed to by an organization or group. Policies set in place carefully can give members a sure way to go if they are well made and adhered to consistently. They started first hundreds, then thousands of meetings.

Before the Basic Text little meetings would spring up in towns and cities all across America. They would perhaps survive and start other meetings for a year or two. Relapse of key members would usually throw the other members into confusion and NA would die out for a time. Then the cycle would repeat itself. With the Basic Text the same thing happened except the other members who did not get loaded just continued to meet and start new meetings. Often the original members would be able to make it back into recovery because now they had a circle of recovering addicts to support them.

From the beginning all sorts of addicts were included in the recovery meetings and it followed that all members were welcome in the effort for the Basic Text. Young and old, rich and poor, educated and drop-outs were all welcome.

The World Lit Committee was actually the WSC Sub-Committee for Literature. It was also called the Lit Committee or World Lit. Affectionate abbreviations were common because so many people were involved with the Committee. The first active Lit Committee of the WSC was in 1978. Many of the active committee members were revisionists to the existing literature and turned in a lengthy re-write of the Alcoholics Anonymous Basic Text with drugs substituted for alcohol. Of course, we looked at alcohol as just another drug, a molecule or two away from ether, the kind they use in hospitals to knock people out. Still, it was hard work and their intentions were good.

The second year for World Lit was 1979. The Committee asked the WSC to set a site for it to hold a Conference in the fall of the year. The idea was that if the WSC set the site, they would also attend the Conference. The WSC chose Wichita, Kansas where the Leer Jet Company had it main offices. It was in the middle of the continent and it would be as easy to attend from the West Coast as the East Coast. It was held in a community center in a shopping center and about twenty-five members attended. They worked up ideas for a handbook to guide the Committee’s efforts. By the next WSC, a thousand little Handbooks for NA Literature Committee’s was presented and approved.

The next year for World Lit was 1980. A second Conference was planned in the mid-west, this time in Lincoln, Nebraska, 200 miles north from Wichita, the site of the next NA World Convention. This time, two members of the Board of Trustee, Bob B. and Greg P. were on hand and Greg’s notion to expand the Little White Booklet into a topic outline was adopted. Members were urged to pray for their Higher Power to remove their self-will and ego sufficiently to allow them to do the work. With this suspension of normal limitations, people’s abilities came out in all sorts of useful ways. The pace quickened and a tremendous amount of work was done in a few days. 800 pages of input was copied, clipped into key ideas and pasted onto typewriter paper with space in between for connective sentences to be hand written into the spaces. Typists helped flow the material into coherent sentences and readings began the arduous task of working the ideas into a flowing form eventually tagged ‘we form.’

Since the WSC was in the Spring and there was no Conference planned during the winter, some of the WLC members began to talk about doing another Conference in January or February to take the material further, while the people were hot on the trial of the Basic Text. One member from Memphis, Tennessee, Joseph P. was so flamboyant and persuasive that Memphis was chosen and plans were made.

The Memphis Literature Conference was a nine day Lit Conference beginning on a weekend, running the following week and then going through the second weekend. Like the experience in Lincoln, the Committee really started to roll after the first day or two. Tuesday things began to happen. We had an unused college dorm on Memphis State University. We had a cafeteria located next to us in the same building, and rooms upstairs. It was very comfortable. We had a bank of IBM Selectric typewriters and two heavy duty photocopiers. A black board at the end of the room had a chalk drawing of a work plan and the whole board was completed by the second weekend. Over a hundred members showed up and worked around twenty hours a day. Do your math and you will realize the NA members put in over 15,000 hours that week, working on their book. The shock waves of jubilation went out all over the NA world.

The Fellowship was astonished and full of gratitude and joy. We could not forsee that the people in California and at the World level especially, would view our progress with concern and alarm because they basically did not know or trust us fully. Their idea was to take the work to ‘professionals’ to have it cleaned up.

The following is taken from the Grey Form, so-called for its grey covered, GBC bound, review form sent out in Spring 1981: