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 are powerless over addiction and using made our lives unmanageable. That is the First Step.
The Fellowship helped us to stay clean. During that time we attended the other fellowship, since there weren't NA meetings 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 meetings the way we had used, and attended meetings where ever we could. We began starting 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, MD and DC and we were able to get 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 exposed 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, similiar to AA’s Inter-group Office. Around 1985 we established the Baltimore Area Service Center on Lombard Street. Which today is the Free State Regional Service Center of Narcotics Anonymous.
Message from Narcotics Anonymous World Service Office
Price Increase
Greetings,
We have difficult news to share today: global conditions have made it impossible to postpone a price increase any longer. In 2023, despite rising costs, we chose not to raise prices on IPs, booklets, keytags, or chips in order to allow groups more time to recover from the global shutdown. At this point, tariffs and increased cost of goods have created a deficit we can no longer absorb.
Beginning 1 January 2026, most materials in our inventory will increase in price by 15%.Several items, including The NA Survival Kit and In Times of Illness will remain at their current price and a few items, such as Guiding Principles, will increase very slightly. Pricing on the complete poster set and Group Starter Kit is increasing more than 15% but is still less than the total value of the bundled contents. Additionally, some special editions and bundles will be offered at stable or reduced prices.
This wasn’t an easy decision, but a necessary one. Tariffs and production costs have risen dramatically, and we believe this adjustment is the most prudent way forward, especially as demand grows for the many resources we provide at no cost. Please know that we’ve done our best to keep this adjustment as modest as possible. Without adjusting prices, we would be forced to reduce the services we provide and limit the ways in which we make the message available to the addict who still suffers.
Accordingly, the Free State Regional Service office will increase prices by 15%, beginning 1 January 2026.
