Running head: NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
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Final Paper:
Narcotics Anonymous
Araceli Xelhua
Social Work 370
Dr. Fazeeda Abdur-Rahman
1 December, 2017
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Narcotics Anonymous (N.A) is a non-profit fellowship of men and women who are
recovering from drug addiction. The purpose of Narcotics Anonymous is to help addicts stay
clean by creating a group of mutual support, and by getting the members of the group to share
their recovery experience and how addiction has affected their lives. With that said, meetings
are usually held in host settings, such as in churches, public facilities and treatment centers.
Narcotics Anonymous is 12-step program that is embedded in 12 traditions and 12 concepts that
help the program keep their unity and structure. Nevertheless, N.A meetings can last from 1 hour
to 2, and can either follow an open or close format depending on the location.
Narcotics Anonymous: Attending a Meeting
As a non-addict, I decided to attend an open Narcotics Anonymous meeting. As I
researched the web I noticed the multitude of open meetings being hosted in New York. Thus, I
decided to go to the closest Narcotics Anonymous meeting near me.
The meeting I attended was in a church in Richmond Hill, Queens. Upon entering the
meeting, I noticed the diversity of the group. There were 24 people in the group and they were all
different race and age. They were all sitting in a circle and once I joined the circle everybody
greeted me with a “Hello! Welcome to NA!”. Initially I noticed how friendly and vocal
everybody seemed to be, which to me was a surprise and totally unexpected. That said, I also
noticed that there was no sign-in sheet, which was unusual for me too since all the groups I had
previously attended needed me to sign some form of attendance sheet.
After 5 minutes and after everyone had congregated, the facilitator started to speak about
confidentiality and the rules and expectations of the group. Later he read an excerpt from a book
called “Behind the Wall”, in which he described as a “recovery literature.” He then went around
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the group asking members to share something relating to the literature and the topic of
responsibilities.
As soon as people started talking about how their responsibilities had changed now that
they are going through recovery I got overwhelm because I did not know what to say as a non–
addict, but then a man before said “My name is ___ and I will pass”. That is when I noticed that
the group members weren’t forced to talk or share their thoughts. Still and all, I noticed that
everyone had a chance to talk about their experience, but that there was no direct feedback from
the facilitator.
Furthermore, the meeting ended with a prayer and a basket going around for donations. I
noticed that after the meeting was people interacted with one another and even exchanged
numbers. People came up to me to welcome me again, suggested other N.A meetings and gave
me a bunch of pamphlets. Overall, the members were very welcoming and it seemed like they
wanted the best for one another.
Reciprocal Model
Narcotics anonymous is a good representation of the reciprocal model (also known as the
interactional model) because the leader does not focus on helping people with specific problems.
Instead, the facilitator “acts a mediator helping group members find the common ground between
their needs and societal demands (Toseland & Rivas, p. 52, 2017). In Narcotic Anonymous
authority is shared. The leader doesn’t have too much control and in fact he doesn’t even give
feedback, but he does set the tone of the meeting and what the members are going to discuss.
The group leader usually reads a text that the members can relate to. The topic for the meeting I
attended was “responsibilities”. Although everyone has responsibilities, I noticed that the
member’s perspective on responsibilities and my views on responsibilities as a non-addict were
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completely different. For recovering addicts in the group their responsibilities have shifted ever
since they have decided to sobered up.
Members of Narcotics Anonymous who are recovering addicts had to transition from not
abiding to any responsibilities to now being obligated to do certain tasks. For instance, there was
a member who said that the only responsibility she had before was getting drugs, however her
responsibilities have changed to things like going to work, paying her bills or even cooking for
herself. Many empathized with her and understood her concerns because they had the same issue
or are currently experiencing the same thing. As stated in the article, “Shifting the Social Work
Paradigm: The Contribution of the Interactional model”, in the Reciprocal model members form
an “enterprise in mutual aid “, and the worker’s job is not to “indirectly influence group
members but rather to help discover their common ground and address obstacles that serve to
