Narcotics Anonymous Reflection

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On September 26, 2015, I observed Out to Lunch Narcotics Anonymous group in Fairmont Church in Raleigh, which lasted for about an hour and few minutes. Before moving into further details, having an insight of the origin of this group matters for a better understanding of the group. In 1953, Jimmy Kinnon founded Narcotics Anonymous, a non-profit fellowship for men and women that are recovering from drugs and alcohol addiction. Under Narcotics Anonymous, many groups across the country have been formed, with the same vision and purpose. The mission is each group in a given area gathers people where they help each other daily, to stay clean from all drugs and alcohol. The Out to Lunch Narcotics Anonymous group had 26 participants, excluding me and Dr. Fitzpatrick, a faculty member at North Carolina State University …show more content…
Whenever one shared something, everyone was quiet and appeared to pay attention with respect. The topic of the meeting was self-acceptance. There was a high level of participation, where many shared their experiences reflecting on the topic. Listening to participants’ stories, gave me insight into their backgrounds and an understanding of their purpose for joining the group. One participant’s reflection on the self-acceptance topic was that he had trouble accepting who he was in the past. Despite his achievements, he struggled to love and accept the person who he was, even when people gave him affirmation. Because of this, drugs became his best friend. When he started he could not stop. Now, he has lost his career, family, and other things that he cared about. However, he revealed that the program has helped him to accept his current situation and to love himself. Besides telling personal stories, there were readings with occasional group responses, where participants would recite the serenity prayers after a volunteer leader read a passage from the daily