Having been clean for awhile I remember how it was when Baltimore had two meetings. Those of us who have been clean over twenty years seem to have realized from the start that we could not use successfully. Our personal stories are fraught with examples of catastrophes that are the direct result of our using. Telling our stories and hearing the same from others continues to reinforce our resolve to remain clean. We were powerless over addiction and using made our lives unmanageable. That is the First Step.

The Fellowship helped us to stay clean.  Even when we attended AA meetings, since there weren't NA meeting each day, we found comfort in the company of other recovering addicts. After meetings we would stay together for hours, drinking coffee, eating, talking and testing wings of new found freedom and the joy that we once had sought in drugs.  We came to believe that there was something that could help us stay clean. That is the Second Step.

We chased this the way we had used and attended meetings whenever we could. Then we started new meetings and called Jimmy K. to get literature which consisted of seven or eight pamphlets and the "Little White Book", which was a compilation of the first few pamphlets and a couple of stories. Then someone from DC called and we started going to meetings and dances in College Park and DC and we got literature from them. We decided to turn our wills and our lives over to NA. That is the Third Step.

Traveling with friends from DC to a meeting of the East Coast Region in Wilmington, DE, I was asked to represent the Baltimore Area because they needed another vote or something and I was the only one from Baltimore.  We may have had seven meetings then.  I carried the message that there are meetings and we are recovering in Baltimore.

The lie, “drug addicts cannot stay clean”, was dying and the fellowship grew as thousands found hope in the hundreds of meetings that sprouted up in and around Baltimore. The sale and distribution of literature in area service meeting became a distraction and a few of us felt that we should start an office, like AA’s Inter-group Office here. Around 1985 we established the Baltimore Area Service Center on Lombard Street.