Basic Text Part II:
Active addiction is insane. In the second step, the BT describes insanity as addicts asking this question.
What is, ‘May I please have a heart attack (or fatal accident)?’
This book became available for purchase in 2018 continuing the NA Tradition of publishing new books nearly every WSC cycle.
What is Guiding Principles?
Conventions come and go and are sometimes a source of consternation but this local convention has kept it going for record time in our region.
What is The Berkshire Area Convention?
NA was slow to grow, having a hard time finding its feet and breaking free from AA until this 1986 event allowed us exponential growth with our own language and identity.
What is the publishing of the Basic Text?
"We keep what we have only with vigilance..."
What is Why it Works or The Twelve Traditions?
Funny, smart, and the best clean time keytag doller, this local member’s story appears in the 6th Ed BT.
Who is Elliot?
Over the group conscience of the area who proposed it, the idea of ‘Illness’ was replaced with the idea of ‘Health’ in a renaming of this newest NA IP.
What is Mental Health in Recovery?
All it takes is a coffeepot and a resentment. The drama in this region was the motivator in ABCD breaking off to become its own region.
What is Greater New York?
Though NA was ‘founded’ in 1953 officially, many call the adoption of these essential 12 foundations of recovery in 1959, the ‘rebirth of NA’.
What are the 12 Traditions?
"Alcohol is a drug."
What is How is Works or The Twelve Steps
Only NA could decide that a pyramid has seven sides. These four walls, top, base and outer circle are each named for these parts of our program.
What are Self, God, Service, Society, Goodwill, freedom, Universal Program?
Every 24 hours, it seems, addicts must be reminded to move away from their self-centeredness prompting this project plan for the newest NA book which is currently open for member input on na.org.
What is Spiritual Principle a Day?
Though we have been faulted for not dividing our region strictly along geo-political lines, ABCD’s name comes from these geological formations and geo-political inspirations and makes perfect sense to us.
What is Adirondacks, Berkshires and Capital District?
These laws made it illegal for 2 known drug addicts to ever meet, forcing early meetings in New York to stay secret or underground until they were amended in the 1980’s which allowed us to grow and meet openly.
What were the Rockefeller Drug Laws?
"Many of us ended up in jail, or sought help through medicine, religion and psychiatry."
What is Why are we Here?
This could be an error or a purposeful reiteration of ethereal stimulation that is repeated twice on the same page in Step 12.
What is “Spiritually refreshed, we are glad to be alive”?
Understanding and applying Traditions in many areas of our lives and in service can add depth and complexity to our lives, so these three sections of questions appear in every chapter of Guiding Principles.
What is for members, for groups and in service?
Growing all the time, ABCD now extends from the Canadian Border past Poughkeepsie, into Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and, now, all the way to Lake Ontario encompassing these 7 areas.
What are Albany-Rensselaer, Berkshire Area, Green Mountain, Mid-Hudson, Mohawk River, SAMMA (Southern Adirondack Mountain), and Seaway Trails?
Not wanting to be told what to do, Bill W and AA gave the early NA’s three fundamentals: The 12 Steps, which the early addicts rewrote completely and made them 13, the 12 Traditions, which were originally rejected outright as unnecessary, and these 12 principles which we have never adopted.
What are The 12 Promises?
"We lived to use and used to live."
What is Who is an Addict?
All the chapters in the BT ended up as either readings or IP’s except for this action chapter which is neither.
What is What can I do?
Though the majority, overwhelmingly the minority in meetings and in service, this group of members inspired this latest IP which should be available to review in the 2022 CAR.
What is Women in Recovery?
With our coffeepot and our resentment, ABCD changed from being an area to a region and was sat at the biennial WSC just missing the millennial cut off no longer accepting ‘split’ regions from the US for seating in this year.
What is 1998?
NA’s loved writing literature, even in the very beginning. Jimmy K, Cy M and Jack P took the first stab. It’s hard to know what was said since none of the material contained in this very first piece of brown NA literature was ever permanently adopted into modern NA literature.
What is The Brown Book?
"The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away."
What is What is the NA Program?