Listen Now

An interview with Ron M, who has made several trips to Africa, Haiti, and many other places around the world doing NA fellowship development work shares stories from his life and his travels.

The second of two episodes on the writing of the Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text

The first of two episodes on the writing of the Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text

We caught up with Greg 7 months into a 1 year trip around the world, hitting meetings and conventions constantly along the way. Greg got clean at 17, and with 33 years clean, is fulfilling a goal he set 10 years ago for his 50th birthday this year.

Interview with William White: author or co-author of over 400 articles and 20 books on the history of addiction treatment and recovery. Bill has performed extensive study on the history and culture of Narcotics Anonymous in the context of his much broader focus and expertise. This interview focuses primarily on that aspect of his work.

This is a story of the original draft of the NA Fellowship's book, Living Clean - The Journey Continues, written in 1983. The draft was given to NA World Services as a completed manuscript, but was eventually published in 2012 in a very different form than the original, which served as source material when the project was undertaken afresh. In this episode we interviewed the original author of that manuscript, now 83 years old with 56 years of recovery.

Interview with Mahmoud from Iran. After Iran has become established as the largest NA community in the world, they began to work with other NA communities through partnerships with NA World Service and the Asia Pacific Form. Mahmud describes these efforts in Afghanistan, and tells some stories about his own personal journey and the journey of the Iranian fellowship.

Tonia is a member who got clean in Greece in the early days of the NA fellowship there. She spoke to us about her recovery journey with an honesty and eloquence that just kept getting deeper and richer as we delved into her experience facing cancer in recovery, and how that experience paralleled the surrender and rebirth of spirit that comes with recovery from addiction.

This is the third episode in our NA History series featuring Boyd and Chris, researchers into the fellowship's history and culture. This episode focuses primarily on the 1970s, and looks at events in the early '80s as well.

An interview with Karin B, who found recovery in Southern California in 1976. She tells of her early recovery at Jimmy K's home group, her long journey of healing with her mother, who had been a holocaust survivor, her career in LA's comedy clubs that took a surprising and inspiring turn, and her life in recovery.

Pete H has been carrying a meeting inside a maximum security prison in the Philadelphia area for 33 years. He shares his experience, and introduces us through his stories to a number of men who found recovery and even reached decades clean behind the walls.

In this interview with Jimmy H from Albuquerque, New Mexico, we hear about his efforts to get prisoners, who have found NA behind the walls, out for an afternoon to attend an NA convention. This one is dedicated to all the trusted servants of NA who bring hope to incarcerated addicts the world over, and to those addicts who choose recovery even in the most challenging of circumstances.

This is the second and concluding part of an interview Ron and Dave conducted with Franney J., the Chair of the NA World Board, and Anthony E., the Executive Director of NA World Services. We spoke of translations and how that process works in NA, management of World Conventions, more about conference preparations and some of the new innovations that will come into play at the conference this year.

Ron and Dave sit down with Franny J., the current chair of the NA World Board, and Anthony E., the Executive Director of NAWS for a wide-ranging discussion of issues faced by NAWS and their perspectives on the upcoming World Service Conference.

The second in our NA History series featuring interviews with researchers Boyd and Chris. This episode concentrates on the 1950s and 60s.

An interview with John F, who was a Trustee in the '80s, who shares about getting clean in the '70s and being present at the conference during the passage of the Basic Text, the replacement of Jimmy K with Bob Stone as office manager, and a number of the projects he participated in during the '80s

Two stories: The writing of a history book by the New York Region of NA and the contents of that book, the New York NA history itself.

An interview with Siamak, a member from Iran who found recovery when there was only 1 group in the country and was involved in service during the time of explosive fellowship growth there. He later went on to become a special worker running the NAWS branch office in Tehran. Ron and Dave query him about what happened in Iran, and ask him to share his personal experience of this phenomenon.

A two-part episode: First we hear from Piet from Sweden who visited Iran in 2005 as a World Board member, and then we hear from two current board members who went on their own to a Narcotics Anonymous convention in Iran in October of 2015. Upon their return, we sat down to interview them about the experience.

The first of a number of planned interviews with Boyd and Chris, two researchers with a particular interest in what they call "mutual aid societies" in the recovery field, which includes twelve step fellowships such as NA. In this episode, we explore in some depth the origins of NA going back to the 1940s and 1950s. We discuss the Addicts Anonymous fellowship in Lexington, Kentucky and its relationship to Narcotics Anonymous, both in New York in 1949 and Los Angeles in 1953.