No N.A.

After almost thirty years of mostly on though occasionally off marijuana use, I decided finally to quit. I had forgotten why I had started in the first place, but mostly I had to quit smoking. The idea was to handle first one addiction followed shortly thereafter by the nicotine addiction.

Some years ago I had had an intense though destructive love affair with cocaine, managing in the absence of any other available help to get clean by myself; alone and on my own. Anyone who has lived with or near a cocaine addiction will know that that was not fun at all, and so with the idea of finding some support in my planned endeavour to get clean of marijuana I looked around for Narcotics Anonymous.

Argument around the reasons why, the relative good or otherwise and prevalence of drug culture is beyond the scope of this article. The fact is that anything you might want or need is available anywhere in practically all towns in this country, even in towns considerably smaller than this one.
If you don't believe this ask your kids.
Inherent in the nature of the society we have created for ourselves and our offspring is the fact that an ever-growing market for the best that Afghanistan, Colombia, and points beyond have to offer is part and parcel of our suburbs and neighbourhoods. To think anything otherwise is to delude ourselves.

Our society as it stands today is the creation of ourselves and those who have gone before us. Denialist thinking to the contrary seems only to be the preserve of the deeply religious, perhaps as a result of the idea that blame can often conveniently be placed upon an entity other than ourselves.
It is understandable, but anybody living with heart, mind and eye even slightly open will admit that drugs are a significant part of our lives, and will agree also that the culture will not simply go away, whether by enthusiastic application of either prayer, law-enforcement or both.

The existence of the drug culture in some form or other is as old as civilisation itself, and it would appear that until civilisation changes fundamentally the drug culture will continue to remain with us. It is for the best that we accept that fact quickly that we can sooner realise that passing judgement on those afflicted with some addiction or other is pointless and short-sighted, not least because we are almost all addicted to something or other.
Addictions are as many as they are various - anger, money, sex, pornography, gambling, lying, shopping, stealing, work, religion, speed, risk, danger, junk food, health food, debt, television, exercise, computer games.
And drugs- caffeine, sugar, nicotine, alcohol, prescription meds, painkillers, coke, weed, heroin, solvents.
Addictions are everywhere, addicts are all around us.
Unfortunately society tends to regard narcotic addicts in a manner different to other addicts, and because of this stigma there is frequently a need for the treatment of narcotic addictions to be a little different to the treatment of other addictions.

Narcotics Anonymous is not unlike Alcoholics Anonymous.
A similar 12 -step programme is followed, the same 'Hi, I am Whomever, I am an addict' format applies to their meetings.
Key to the success of Narcotics Anonymous, as with Alcoholics Anonymous, is a system by which someone undertakes on a reciprocal basis to keep in touch with and keep an eye on the recovering addict.
Another key is anonymity.
No-one is interested in who or what you might or might not be outside of the meetings – within the meetings everyone is the same, an addict in one of the stages of recovery. To an addict this anonimity can be powerfully attractive, even mandatory. NA has much to offer.

A search of the local telephone directory revealed no number for Narcotics Anonymous.
Not surprising really – the management of a chapter can imaginably be quite a fluid thing as peoples' lives take on different forms at different stages of recovery.

I called a local supermarket-type pharmacy for an NA contact number, surprised to find that the lady I was eventually put through to did not have the slightest clue what I was talking about! Not only did she not know what I was talking about, but she thought I was a prank caller trying to have a laugh at her expense! The more I tried to explain that NA was like AA but for narcotics addicts, the more abrubt, obtuse and rude she became! Perhaps she had a 'secret' of her own?
In the end I cannot remember who hung up on whom, but I do remember thinking that that particular store must do a significant trade in OTC medications. In return for the right to sell such substances in among our communities surely we ought to be able to insist that some sort of trained counsellor be available instore at all times?

A call to a second, almost as large pharmacy rendered no better a result!
Again, the hostility with which my call was handled made me pity the desperate 13-year old attempting to get help for whatever addiction they might suddenly find themselves confronted with.
The pharmacy happily sells diet pills and painkillers that so many people find themselves in trouble with, surely they ought to have a pair of sympathetic ears on the floor?

The silly old biddy at the third pahrmacy made little effort to keep the scornful disdain from her voice, demanding to know where I worked before she would answer any questions!
I realised that a chapter of NA most likely did not exist in this particular little town and continuing to search for it would be nothing more than a fruitless, frustrating exercise. None of the people who should have known about it had ever heard of it.
It remained to discover what other options, if any, might be available.

Further enquiries led to the door of The South African National Council for Drug and Alcohol Abuse, where an earnest and very well-meaning woman set about trying to help me, prescribing me an assortment of medicaments and offering counselling of a sort. For a fee.

My reaction to the prescription of drugs was less than zealous – one of the dangers of addiction is the swapping of one addiction for another. It happens all too easily, and can take any one of a number of forms. In the past I had unintentionally exchanged a drug addiction for a church addiction, and having had that experience made me less than happy to start tossing pills down my throat.
My GP could see the danger and we chose not to fill the prescription.
A tonic and a multivitamin were fortunately the only medications necessary in the end.

The counselling was well-intentioned but for me difficult to take seriously. The counsellor lacked credibility as far as I was concerned, and I could not help feeling that the real objective behind the counselling process was for me to get saved and get religious. I don't have anything against religion as such, and it can be an innoccuous enough addiction. My plan was to get free of addictions, and I had done religion before and found it unsatisfactory anyway.
The chance of finding significantly greater long-term satisfaction in a second religious addiction seemed remote.

Then the morality of my primary relationship was called into question. I decided I was not going to start justifying why my partner and I were reluctant to get 'married' Then the attendance of my incidentally drug-free partner became a condition to the continuation of the counselling.
I decided to stop wasting everyone's time and withdrew from the counselling process.

Overall, my experience of the counselling was that it seemed a little too narrow-minded and overtly Christian in substance to be of much use to anyone except those with a Christian background or predilection therefor.

There were also forms to fill out along the way, and no substantively good enough explanation given for this. Again my thoughts went out to someone who might really want to or need to remain anonymous. This particular programme was not an option for them, especially in view of the fact that addicts frequently have issues around trusting non-addicts.

The bill for several hundred rands that has been sent to me every month since has, as a test, remained unpaid thus far. Some credit is due to SANCA for not handing the matter over to a lawyer as yet, though I do wonder where non-payment would ultimately lead to, and how long anonymity would be maintained under those circumstances?

There is very little to attract any of the addicts I have ever known to this SANCA programme.
To think that all addicts are simply crying out for spiritual salvation is to be as deluded as someone who refuses to see that addicts are synonymous with our society.

All of this means that in this particular town with its pretensions to being known as a city, anyone who for whatever reason wants to remain anonymous whilst battling an addiction or trying to become drug free, will most likely have to go it alone.

Is it not obvious why drug culture will always be a part of this society? Football stadiums we can build, social programmes that deliver are a bit of a tall order.