Welcome to the County Line Area
of Narcotics Anonymous
Serving: Agoura Hills, Moorpark, Newbury Park, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, and Westlake Village in Ventura County, California
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Serving: Agoura Hills, Moorpark, Newbury Park, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, and Westlake Village in Ventura County, California
NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We are recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. This is a program of complete abstinence from all drugs. There is only one requirement for membership, the desire to stop using. We suggest that you keep an open mind and give yourself a break. Our program is a set of principles written so simply that we can follow them in our daily lives. The most important thing about them is that they work.
There are no strings attached to NA. We are not affiliated with any other organizations. We have no initiation fees or dues, no pledges to sign, no promises to make to anyone. We are not connected with any political, religious, or law enforcement groups, and are under no surveillance at any time. Anyone may join us regardless of age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion, or lack of religion.
We are not interested in what or how much you used or who your connections were, what you have done in the past, how much or how little you have, but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help. The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away. We have learned from our group experience that those who keep coming to our meetings regularly stay clean.
For more information on Narcotics Anonymous,
please go to the: Narcotics Anonymous World Services Website
September 20, 2026 |
Courage to change |
| Page 274 |
| "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." |
| Serenity Prayer |
| Recovery involves change, and change means doing things differently. The problem is, many of us resist doing things differently; what we're doing may not be working, but at least we're familiar with it. It takes courage to step out into the unknown. How do we find that courage? We can look around ourselves at NA meetings. There, we see others who've found they needed to change what they were doing and who've done so successfully. Not only does that help quiet our fear that change--any change--spells disaster, it also gives us the benefit of their experience with what does work, experience we can use in changing what doesn't. We can also look at our own recovery experience. Even if that experience, so far, has been limited to stopping the use of drugs, still we have made many changes in our lives--changes for the good. Whatever aspects of our lives we have applied the steps to, we have always found surrender better than denial, recovery superior to addiction. Our own experience and the experience of others in NA tells us that "changing the things I can" is a big part of what recovery is all about. The steps and the power to practice them give us the direction and courage we need to change. We have nothing to fear. |
| Just for Today: I welcome change. With the help of my Higher Power, I will find the courage to change the things I can. |
"Addiction doesn't discriminate. Fortunately, hope doesn't either," a speaker shared during an international marathon meeting held online. "And neither should we."
Our hope lives at the intersection of anonymity, unity, acceptance, and inclusiveness. We believe that any addict can get and stay clean in NA, no matter who we are, what we've done, where we live, or any aspect of ourselves that, on the surface, would seem to separate us. To help us feel like we belong, we encourage each other to look for the similarities, not the differences; to focus on the message, not the messenger. We strive to bring this openness to visitors to our home group, and to meetings and NA events we're lucky enough to attend in unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar setups, in other areas, in other countries, in other languages.
The universality of hope in our program and our message doesn't diminish the fact that there are differences among us, real ones. As important as it is for us to take responsibility to see past our own differences, we have perhaps an even greater responsibility to be inclusive of those who may have experiences or identities that depart from the group's majority. Actively including others assures a place for each of us and elevates hope for all of us in the rooms.
To give hope to those who feel intimidated or unheard by the majority, some of us find it important to establish meetings that embrace a similarity of experience or identity. There is room for this diversity of hope's expression within NA; autonomy also ensures that addicts are able to find each other in ways that are welcoming and safe--and acknowledge and honor the similarities inherent within our differences.