A Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group is now meeting weekly in Wesson.
The group, including recovering addicts who have abused a wide range of mood-altering and mind-changing substances, including drugs and alcohol, and their family members, comes together on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at Wesson Volunteer Fire Department (1038 Factory Street). It is part of a global, community-based organization with a multilingual and multicultural membership that was founded in 1953, and now holds nearly 67,000 meetings weekly in 139 countries.
At NA fellowship meetings worldwide, and locally, addicts seek support in maintaining drug-free lives. People with various lengths of clean time attend, including newcomers and members who have been sober for many years. All of them support one another in learning and practicing a way of living that keeps them healthy and drug free. At meetings, addicts share their stories and discuss simple spiritual principles to guide daily living.
The NA program calls for complete abstinence from all drugs and requires only that its members desire to stop using. It advocates a twelve-step guide for persons seeking to overcome addiction:
· Admitting powerlessness over their addictions.
· Belief that only a power greater than themselves can restore their sanity.
· Turning their wills and lives over to the care of a God as they understand God.
· A searching and fearless understanding of themselves.
· Admitting the exact nature of their wrongs to God, themselves and other persons.
· Readiness for God to remove all their character defects.
· Humbly asking God to remove their shortcomings.
· Willingness to make amend to all persons they have harmed.
· Making direct amends to people they have harmed.
· Continuing to take a personal inventory of themselves and promptly admitting wrongs.
· Prayer and meditation to improve conscious contact with the God they understand, and receive the knowledge of God's will and power to carry it out.
· Carrying their spiritual awakening to other addicts and practicing the twelve principles in all their affairs.
The local NA group invites participants to meetings with the reminder that "Even the Broken Rise."
NA is not affiliated with any other organizations. It has no initiation fee or dues, pledges to sign or promises to make to anyone. It is not connected to any political, religious or law enforcement groups, and meetings are under no surveillance. Anyone may become part of an NA group regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion or lack of religion.