A newcomer walks into his or her first meeting, shaking and confused. People are milling about. Refreshments and literature are set out. The meeting starts after everyone has drifted over to their chairs and settled themselves in. After taking a bewildered glance at the odd assortment of folks in the room, the newcomer asks, "Why should I bet my life on this group? After all, they're just a bunch of addicts like me."

Though it may be true that not many of our members had much going for us when we got here, the newcomer soon learns that the way we are living today is what counts. Our meetings are filled with addicts whose lives have turned completely around. Against all odds, we are recovering. The newcomer can relate to where we've been and draw hope from where we are now. Today, every one of us has the opportunity to recover.

Yes, we can safely entrust our lives to our Higher Power and to Narcotics Anonymous. So long as we work the program, the payoff is certain: freedom from active addiction and a better way of life.

We don't all enter the rooms of NA certain that we are addicts like those people. Some of us are dubious. Now that we have a couple of weeks clean, we remember our using days a bit differently: Was it that bad? Do we really have a "disease"? Sure, we have a problem with drugs, but it's not like we were ever arrested for it. We have a roof over our head and teeth in our mouth. Never have we exchanged sex for drugs, and all our student loan payments have been on time. Was our bottom so terrible? Was it terrible enough to warrant a daily surrender? An oldtimer offers some unhelpful advice: "Maybe you aren't done yet." That sounds ominous, and we definitely have some sort of problem, so . . .

We stay clean and get a sponsor. We pick up the NA Step Working Guides and, at our sponsor's direction, begin to answer the questions as honestly and thoroughly as possible. By the time we get to the section on surrender, we've already written about our "disease" at length: our profound dishonesty and denial, our manipulation of the people who loved and trusted us, all the laws we broke (even if we didn't get caught), the powerlessness over our addiction, our obsessiveness, our compulsiveness, our obsessive-compulsiveness, the unmanageability we've created in our lives, and the reservations we may be holding onto.

Seeing it all there on the page, all that proof in black and white—it's undeniable. I am an addict. In an ideal world, that's the moment of surrender we never look back from. Sure, that happens for many of us. That's the beginning of our process of surrendering, opening the door to recovery. Others of us end up getting loaded, doing more "research," hitting a lower bottom, and surrendering later. Still others never make it back.