The Fellowship

"From the isolation of our addiction, we find a fellowhip of people with a common bond of recovery. N.A. is like a lifeboat in a sea of isolation, hopelessness and destructive chaos."

Basic Text, chapter 9, p. 94

I have mixed feelings about the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. I don't really feel the "love" from a lot of the men in the program. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for a partner or lover or anything like that. It would just be nice to make friends with a man or two in the program who didn't want to "get in my pants" and wasn't a jerk!

In the area where I live, the vast majority of the people in the program are white too. (I could safely say 99%) I am not comfortable around all white people. I can't help but wonder what chases off the people of other races and/or cultures? Is it their prejudices, ours or a combination of both? I was raised by an interracial couple for the first ten years of my life and I like a multicultural society better.

I am grateful for the wonderful women I've met in the program. I have made friends with a few of them. Those women are in Alcoholics Anonymous, though. Perhaps, like me, they got frightened of the kind of men who usually become addicts and turned to AA. Because most of my women friends now are addicts, but they don't go to the local NA meetings. I am especially grateful for my wonderful sponsor. I love her to death. She knows that I would not respond well to uncalled for "tough love." I am not a problem sponsee..... The very thought of using marijuana again turns my stomach. I have some good clean time behind me. Those few women I am friends with I could call anytime.

I only moved to this area about a year and a half ago.... It takes time to get to know people. I am not really stressing about not feeling the "love" right now, because I have learned patience. I don't have a homegroup yet. I also had some bad experiences with some men in the program. Also, a lot of the people who come to the meetings disappear sooooo fast. I've liked a lot of the newcomers. A lot of these women are great people when they are clean and sober, and then they go back out. I try not to get too attached to newcomers, but that can be difficult at times. I do call people, but my phone isn't exactly ringing off the wall. Perhaps that's because I can be very skeptical of white people in general....

However, I have found some degree of fellowship online. In particular in the Open Recovery Room of http://www.stepchat.com . There are lots of people on there that I can relate to.

Perhaps one of the reasons I am having difficulty is because I also need people who grew up like I did with alcoholics and addicts in my life. I can't seem to find people that want to hear what I have to say about that very often.

One thing I am grateful for is that nowadays, since I've gotten into recovery I've found people that actually will listen to me, and sometimes defend me.

More will be revealed....