Tradition Seven

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NA TRADITION SEVEN

"Every NA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions."

Our program is grounded in spiritual principles. To drift away from the honest caring and sharing of our tremendous growth period is to betray the spirit of NA. After all, it is the promise of freedom from active addiction that attracted addicts to our program in the first place. The vast number of incoming members assures us that our members who know about recovery and principled living will be outnumbered. It takes principles and courage to interact with the newcomers and help them keep pace with the demands placed upon them. Yeah, we know this is a big job and we run a severe risk of developing teams of followers, but we just have to pray and do the best we can. Our need from prayer and meditation is greater when we have the support of a great number of people - because they may, on occasion, be wrong! Listening to the inner voice may be our only chance. This doesn't mean we act against the majority, we just bring our higher power into the picture. If our inner voice says something worth hearing, it should be interesting to others.

To let our focus drift into fundraising and excessive markup of our literature and justify it in the name of helping others fools no one. We are not a business. We are a spiritual Fellowship. In those instances where we must collect or disburse funds, we have to minimize the cost to the Fellowship.

Our service bodies are nothing more than holding companies for what we have given. It is hard in some of the committees to remember that while the illusion of power can come with a title, service positions are nothing except opportunities to help those who may otherwise die or suffer needlessly. It is easy to see ourselves as more than we are because of this. Nevertheless, we surrender and pray for a loving God to help us remember our contribution to what we have been given only allows us to increase ourselves by more giving. This is how we fill the hole in the gut.

The Seventh Tradition speaks about being fully self-supporting. In this Tradition, fully means completely. We decline all outside contributions. If we compromise this principle, we open the doors to outside influences. Many places would like to give us free meeting rooms. We insist on paying rent. This helps to insure our autonomous groups. We also refuse donations of money, materials and services from outside our Fellowship. We send back the money with a note of thanks and a polite explanation. We cannot afford to be obligated or to even feel obligated. Our sense of obligation may effect our actions and decisions as groups.

We also need to look at the less obvious effects of this Tradition on NA as a whole. If our service boards and committees become dependent on sales of NA materials to outside enterprises for income, how does this affect our motivations and the development of NA materials? Our Fifth and Sixth Traditions become interrelated here. Our primary group purpose comes first. These are issues we have faced in the past and continue to face today.

In our addiction, we were never able to be self-supporting. We were always dependent on others. That is why it is so important for us to be self-supporting in our recovery. By being completely self-supporting we owe nothing to anyone other than our group and the fellowship, no one can say you owe me. We begin to stand on our own two feet and we take pride in our independence.

We just experience the concept of responsibility through our group. Our group teaches us that we need to take care of our own. We refuse money or anything else from outside of NA. Our members donate at the group level. The group, in respect to the fund flow and their autonomy has the choice to donate to the area, or to provide services to the addict who suffers. If a group decides to follow the fund flow, they may donate their excess money to the area. If they choose to surrender to the fifth tradition, they may make books free to newcomers or various other things to carry a message. Addicts can choose to donate in their home group or in many groups. Many addicts get confused and believe the seventh tradition applies to service boards or committees. Service boards or committees are not NA thus the seventh tradition does not apply. Donating in a committee does not carry our message, it funds the service board. The service board is not a business and is not self-supporting. Groups are self-supporting and money after bills goes to support the service effort. We may on occasion throw a fund-raiser to meet additional needs if they occur. Service boards and committees carry our group conscience with money from the groups. As we begin to respect our seventh tradition and begin to make healthy decisions in our lives and be self-supporting members of society.

As addicts, we have always been dependent on others - either our families, spouses or social agencies. We have never felt secure enough in ourselves to stand on our own two feet. Dependency has become a way of life. In order to begin to recover we must break that chain and a way to begin is by contributing our fair share to our NA group. In doing this, we become responsible for our own recovery.

Much of recovery has to do with awakening to the interrelationships that were invisible to us in active addiction or early recovery. We demand respect when someone intrudes on us yet express amazement when others accuse us of intruding on them. The Seventh Tradition helps us maintain some separation from other groups and purposes to preserve our focus on recovery. In gratitude, we seek strength and guidance to carry on in the Spirit of NA in many ways. Direct contact with addicts who are learning to live clean places special demands on us to keep faith with the confidence and trust they place in us. This requires distance and seperation from groups and the purposes those organizations would have. We dare not alter our identification as addicts recovering in Narcotics Anonymous. Other purposes would creep in and while most would seem to have little impact, they would accumulate until we were applying for funds and preoccupied with the concerns of bureaucracy rather than meeting the service needs of groups..

Getting our support from our members gives us a solid base in recovery. We have no other goals to take into account or people whose aims we must satisfy. Our sincerity protects us when things could go wrong.

An addict shares, "Giving of 'myself' is a new concept in my life. In the past, I would always try to buy your attention, friendship, etc. The self support that this tradition talks about has a lot more to do with home group members giving of themselves in service than it has to do with the money we put in the basket. The commitment of sharing 'myself,' 'my being' with you is one of the most effective antidotes to self-centeredness and egocentricity that I have found.

"I have had confused feelings when it comes to giving. Am I giving enough? I would spend much more than this if I were using. Should I make up the difference when I think the basket is short? After all this fellowship has given me so much and I contribute so little. The amount must be an individual decision. Contribution through service and monetary means are necessary for our fellowship to survive. Once I decided on an amount and made a commitment to it I try to donate it regularly not just here and there. Part of the change for me is consistency and willingness to stay consistent."

It would be easy for us to accept free rent from centers that would like to promote themselves as having our services available to their clients. We must not allow this so as not to become dependent upon them for meeting halls and to allow them to possibly bend our message to better suit their needs. They would commit our services to their clients and that would be a lie. We in NA respect the treatment community and want the respect from them needed for us to function. Our spiritual integrity is at stake here.