Before coming to Narcotics Anonymous, our lives were centered around using. For the most part, we had very little energy left over for jobs, relationships, or other activities. We served only our addiction.

The Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous provide a simple way to turn our lives around. We start by staying clean, a day at a time. When our energy is no longer channeled into our addiction, we find that we have the energy to pursue other interests. As we grow in recovery, we become able to sustain healthy relationships. We become trustworthy employees. Hobbies and recreation seem more inviting. Through participation in Narcotics Anonymous, we help others.

Narcotics Anonymous does not promise us that we will find good jobs, loving relationships, or a fulfilling life. But when we work the Twelve Steps to the best of our ability, we find that we can become the type of people who are capable of finding employment, sustaining loving relationships, and helping others. We stop serving our disease, and begin serving God and others. The Twelve Steps are the key to transforming our lives.

When we look back at early recovery—regardless of how recent or distant that may be—we can see how faith inspired some of our decisions and helped us to act on them. Many of us credit some sort of blind faith for getting us through the doors of our first meeting. We decided to get some help and found our way to Narcotics Anonymous.

As our heads cleared, we saw that our every effort to clean up on our own had failed. Consciously or not, we surrendered and made that crucial admission in Step One. We took another leap of faith by entertaining the possibility that we could stay clean and be restored to sanity. Faith that the recovery that we'd seen work for others could also work for us brought us to Step Three.

Deciding to turn our will and life over to the care of the God of our understanding was huge. It might have seemed too big, really. Other members reassured us, "You're just making a decision. You'll have a lifetime to figure out what that looks like, plenty of time to practice." So, okay, we decide . . . now what?

Some of us get stuck here or find ourselves cycling through the first three Steps, sure that we've dropped a stitch. We get lucky—as we do so often in NA—when we're sitting in a meeting, only half listening, and we hear just what we need to propel us into action: "The footwork of Step Three is Step Four." And so on.

The faith we practice as NA members gives us the courage to make other momentous decisions: to change careers, to exercise more, to marry, to end a marriage. When we're secure in our recovery, faith enables us to ask ourselves some really tough questions, like "What do I want?" and "What's holding me back?" Faith steadies us as we make decisions, supports us as we clear the way forward, and keeps us humble as we find out what we're capable of.