Welcome Home

OUR HOPE IS

That no addict seeking recovery need ever die from the horrors of addiction.

OUR MESSAGE IS

That an addict, any addict can stop using drugs, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live.

N.A. is a non-profit fellowship of recovering addicts who meet regularly to help each other stay clean. There is only one requirement for membership, the desire to stop using.

The Greater Pensacola Area of Narcotics Anonymous serves Escambia, Santa Rosa, & Okaloosa Counties of North West Florida. We have meetings in the following cities: Crestview, Ft. Walton Beach, Gulf Breeze, Milton, Niceville, Pace, Pensacola.

Need help now?

Call our 24 Hour NA Helpline: 850-990-HOPE (4673) to talk to an addict in recovery or get information on upcoming meetings texted your phone.

You can also text your zip code to the helpline to receive meeting information near you.

Find a Meeting

View our online meeting schedule or print a schedule at home to find a meeting near you in the Greater Pensacola Area.

We have NA meetings in Escambia, Santa Rosa, & Okaloosa Counties.

Click here to submit a meeting schedule change.

The H.O.W.L.

The H.O.W.L. is GPANA’s annual spiritual retreat, held the first weekend of October.

Join us as we celebrate the freedoms of recovery surrounded in Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness, and Love!

Looking for birthdays and other local events?

Check out our calendar and local events page for more information!

Literature Highlight

Read today’s Spiritual Principle a Day daily meditation or subscribe to receive daily emails.

Read today’s Just For Today daily mediation or subscribe to receive daily emails.

Mental Health in Recovery IP (English, Spanish)

Suggestions for Everyone

DON’T USE no matter what
Ask your Higher Power to keep you clean
Come early and stay late
Get a homegroup
Go to 90 meetings in 90 days
Read NA literature daily
Get and use a sponsor
Work the NA steps with your sponsor
Use the PHONE
KEEP COMING BACK!
IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT.

Fun in the Sun

F.I.T.S. is the Alabama Northwest Florida Region (ALNWFL) of Narcotics Anonymous annual convention held in April. Find more information here!

Surrender in the Mountains

Surrender in the Mountains is the Alabama Northwest Florida Region (ALNWFL) of Narcotics Anonymous annual spiritual retreat held in September. Find more information here!

ALNWFL Region of NA

Find more information about meetings, activities, the Regional Service Committee (SRC), and more in the Alabama Northwest Florida Region of Narcotics Anonymous here.

“Addiction is a disease that does not discriminate, and neither does the program of NA… Our members come from every walk of life. We are not contained within political or geographic boundaries, nor are we limited by any individual differences in faith or philosophy. No matter what conflicts are unfolding in the world at large, we aspire to an ideal of unity: Our common welfare should come first. Our text explains that this unity of purpose helps us “to achieve the true spirit of anonymity” where all of us are equal as members of this group. With that as our foundation, we as individual recovering addicts are each able to find our own distinct voice and to sing a song that is uniquely ours.”

Preface to the Basic Text 6th Edition, BT pg xvii & xix

Just For Today

November 20, 2024
Finding fulfillment
Page 338
"We weren't oriented toward fulfillment; we focused on the emptiness and worthlessness of it all."
Basic Text, p. 89

There were probably hundreds of times in our active addiction when we wished we could become someone else. We may have wished we could trade places with someone who owned a nice car or had a larger home, a better job, a more attractive mate--anything but what we had. So severe was our despair that we could hardly imagine anyone being in worse shape than ourselves.

In recovery, we may find we are experiencing a different sort of envy. We may continue to compare our insides with others' outsides and feel as though we still don't have enough of anything. We may think everyone, from the newest member to the oldest oldtimer, sounds better at meetings than we do. We may think that everyone else must be working a better program because they have a better car, a larger home, more money, and so on.

The recovery process experienced through our Twelve Steps will take us from an attitude of envy and low self-esteem to a place of spiritual fulfillment and deep appreciation for what we do have. We find that we would never willingly trade places with another, for what we have discovered within ourselves is priceless.

Just for Today: There is much to be grateful for in my life. I will cherish the spiritual fulfillment I have found in recovery.

Spiritual Principle a Day

November 20, 2024
Humor as a Practice of Surrender
Page 335
"One of the gifts of recovery is regaining our sense of humor."
Living Clean, Chapter Seven, "The Lifelong Practice of Surrender"

When we were using, everything was life-or-death serious--that lifestyle of getting, using, and finding ways and means to get more! Some of us felt like we hadn't laughed for years when we first got to NA. Others of us experienced plenty of laughter out there--directed right at us. "You're so thin-skinned," our mates would mock us. "Get a sense of humor."

While actual events of our using history stay the same, our relationship to them evolves as we grow in recovery. We see fellow NA members finding humor in their pasts, and we begin to lighten up about the darkness in ours. Our stepwork reveals a long list of defects that still affect us today. And being able (finally) to laugh at ourselves as we act out on that shortcoming--yet again!--is a strategy that can help us to not beat ourselves up and to be okay with where we are right now. Humor becomes a way we identify, connect, and express empathy and forgiveness, for others as well as ourselves. Humor is a practice of surrender.

For many of us, humor can also be a hazard. It's a strategy we may use to escape our feelings or avoid being real in our relationships. We sometimes use it to put people down, including ourselves. Self-deprecating humor has a place, but self-ridicule breeds self-doubt. Some of us used humor to survive out there, but in recovery we aren't living in that life-or-death cycle. As we become more aware of these issues through working our program and receiving input from our sponsor and others we trust, our relationship to humor may shift. Ideally, the sense of humor we gain in recovery becomes less self-pitying, protective, or aggressive than the one we came in with. And we can finally breathe because we don't take ourselves quite as seriously as we used to.

I will try to surrender to levity today. I can laugh at myself without putting myself down, and do the same for my fellow addict, with love, sensitivity, and wit, if I have a bit of that.