In “We Do Recover” William White and others reported that in the beginning of 2020, there are 71,000 weekly Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings in 144 countries. The number of NA meetings worldwide has more than doubled in the past 15 years. Unlike Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for alcoholics, it was not the first self-help group for addicts. The current NA was not even the first self-help group for addicts called Narcotics Anonymous. And there was even a brief time in the fall of 1959 when NA as we know it today stopped having meetings.

In “Narcotics Anonymous: Its History and Culture,” William White, Chris Budnick and Boyd Pickard said the history of the birth and near-death of NA is best understood within the cultural context of the 1950s. They said this was a time when the idea of “good” drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, and “bad” drugs like heroin and cannabis, became “fully crystallized.” There was a post-World War poly-drug epidemic in the hip youth culture surrounding jazz musicians and some well-known entertainers. Then during the late 1940s cocaine use became more widespread. “As one observer pointed out, heroin use spread from street corner to street corner very much like an infectious disease epidemic.”

Social panic triggered harsh new anti-drug laws. Known addicts were arrested for “internal possession” and prohibited from associating via “loitering addict” laws. Any gathering of recovering addicts for mutual support was subjected to regular police surveillance. Mid -century treatments for addiction included electroconvulsive therapy (“shock treatment”), psychosurgery (prefrontal lobotomies), and prolonged institutionalization. This is the inhospitable soil in which NA grew.

The mid-thirties birthed AA and the opening of the first federal “Narcotics Farm” (prison hospital) in Lexington, Kentucky. Houston S., who found permanent sobriety within AA in June of 1944, became interested in helping AA members with dual problems with alcohol and drugs. When his company transferred him to Frankfort Kentucky, which is just 29 miles from the Narcotic Farm, he called upon the medical director of the hospital and proposed starting a group similar to AA for addicts. The first meeting was held on February 16, 1947 and the members christened themselves Addicts Anonymous. By 1950, Addicts Anonymous had 200 members at the hospital.

Danny C. finally achieved sustained recovery on his eighth admission to the Lexington facility in 1949. Following his discharge, he started an Addicts Anonymous group in New York City. “He called the new group Narcotics Anonymous (NA) to avoid the potential confusion of two AAs.” New York NA and the Lexington-based Addicts Anonymous received considerable publicity in prominent newspapers like the New York Times and magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Time and Down Beat Magazine. The NA created by Danny C. and others did not exist as an organized fellowship, rather they were isolated groups connected by a common service structure. Some groups even chose names other than Narcotics Anonymous. The NA groups formed under the original leadership of Danny C. dissipated by the early 1970s in the wake of harsh new anti-drug laws and the death of Rae L., who led New York NA after Danny’ C.’s death in 1956.

Betty T., a nurse who had left treatment at the Narcotics Farm in 1950, started to correspond with Houston S., Danny C. and Bill W. about starting a support group for “pure addicts,” but did not think she was the one to do it. Among her reservations with New York NA was their failure to adhere to the Twelve Traditions, particularly Tradition Eleven on anonymity, and their minimization of the problems posed by alcohol: In a letter to Bill W. she said: “They do not stress the danger of alcohol as a substitute for drugs!” She did host a special closed meeting in her home that was called “Habit Forming Drugs” for AA members who were recovering from other drugs.

Tension around the issues of addicts attending AA meetings eventually led to the Habit Forming Drugs group being removed from the AA world directory. Bill W. was in correspondence with several people besides Betty T. who were trying to start a support group for “straight addicts.” He eventually wrote an article for the February 1958 issue of the Grapevine, “Problems Other Than Alcohol: What Can We Do About Them?” White, Budnick and Pickard said by clarifying the boundaries AA’s primary purpose, it set the stage for the development of a distinct NA fellowship. When he was repeatedly asked for guidance in starting groups for “mainline addicts,” Bill suggested that “bridge members” (AA members who were recovering from drug addiction) could serve as catalysts for such a group.

And that is what happened. In the middle of June in 1953, there was an NA meeting at the Unity Church on Moorpark Street in Van Nuys, CA. One of the AA members attending was Jimmy K., who is widely considered to be the founder of NA as it exists today. Jimmy K. introduced himself as an “alcoholic addict” from the time he began attending AA in 1950. He attended early meetings of Habit Forming Drugs and communicated with Danny C. in New York. Then on August 17, 1953, Jimmy K. and five others held an organizational meeting and formally organized Narcotics Anonymous, stating in its bylaws that any group could use the NA name as long as they followed the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Narcotics Anonymous. The NA bylaws, approved on August 17, 1953, included the following Purpose statement:

This is an informal group of drug addicts, banded together to help one another renew their strength in remaining free of drug addiction.Our precepts are patterned after those of Alcoholics Anonymous, to which all credit is given and precedence is acknowledged. We claim no originality but since we believe that the causes of alcoholism and addiction are basically the same we wish to apply to our lives the truths and principles which have benefited so many otherwise helpless individuals. We believe that by so doing we may regain and maintain our health and sanity. It shall be the purpose of this group to endeavor to foster a means of rehabilitation for the addict, and to carry a message of hope for the future to those who have become enslaved by the use of habit forming drugs.

There were significant differences between the New York and California NA groups. New York NA had more morphine or heroin addicts and it had minimal concern about alcohol. Despite being in New York, it also had little contact with AA. The California founders of NA had histories of alcohol and other drug addictions, prior affiliations with AA and emphasized strict adherence to the Steps and Traditions adapted from AA. “When NA groups veered from those principles, those so-called ‘bridge members’ left NA and returned to AA.”

There was considerable debate over how to phrase the NA Steps. Jimmy K. was able to prevail in getting the phrase “our addiction” inserted in the First Step rather than alternatives like alcohol and drugs, drugs, or narcotic drugs. NA Trustees would later look upon this wording as a masterful stroke: “The one thing we share is the disease of addiction. . . With that single turn of a phrase the foundation of Narcotics Anonymous Fellowship was laid.” Instead of centering their institutional identity on a single drug, as AA did, New York AA and other 12 Step groups that followed, NA focused attention on the shared process of addiction.

This had three significant effects. First, it resolved the frequent issue of drug substitution by embracing the renunciation of all drugs, including alcohol, within recovery. Second, it opened the potential for people to enter NA with drug choices other than opiates. Opiates were the primary dug of choice by New York-based NA, and the early members of California NA. Third, it specifically defined addiction as a disease, and the addict as a sick person.

White, Budnick and Pickard said NA’s definition of the problem as a process of “addiction” that required a common recovery process and transcended your drug of choice may be one of the great conceptual breakthroughs in the understanding and management of alcohol and other drug problems. This was all the more amazing as it came at a time when substance-specific disorders were all thought of as distinct from each other. It also anticipated future scientific findings that “addiction to multiple drugs is linked to common reward pathways in the brain.” Jimmy K. made a remarkable conceptual leap that deserves wider recognition today within the scientific and treatment communities. As it was expressed by an early NA member: “It really doesn’t matter whether you’re strung out smoking reefer every day or you’re shooting a couple thousand bucks of heroin a week. It’s about addiction—drug addiction.”

The contemporary emergence of “addiction” and “recovery” as conceptual frameworks for the professional field of addiction treatment and as frameworks for the larger cultural understanding of severe alcohol and other drug problems and their resolution is historically rooted in NA’s formulation of its Twelve Steps in 1954. However, this breakthrough did not assure NA’s survival as an organization.

Between 1953 and 1958, the young California NA group faced severe problems from internal dysfunction and personality conflicts. Jimmy K. later said: “So, the very first meeting, it wound up, oh God, it was a riot. Everybody was fighting with each other. Within two weeks, we only had one or two people left of the original group.” By 1959, the only NA meeting was at the North Hollywood Inebriate Asylum, known as Shier’s Dryer. A critical turning point was reached when Cy M. and another member, who was suspected of being loaded, appeared on a television show in the fall of 1959. As a consequence of the discord that resulted, NA meetings stopped for a time.

Jimmy K., Sylvia W., and Penny K. met in late 1959 and sought to see if they could rekindle NA. There were no existing members, no money in the treasury and no literature. NA was reborn when they started the Architects of Adversity Group at Moorpark, later known in NA as the “Mother Group.” One of early NA’s long-term members said every time he’d come back to the group after another time of using, “Jimmy always seemed to be the one who was standing there with the door open saying, ‘Come on in and have a cup of coffee.’”

NA learned painful lessons through its near-death experience, including the dangers of relying on a single, dominant leader, the risks of abandoning adherence to NA Traditions, and the need for a distinctive NA culture. NA was reborn in late 1959 with those lessons in mind. NA’s near-death experience cleaved its history into “before” and “after,” with the phrase “NA as we know it today” used to denote the new NA that rose in 1959 from the ashes of the old. As earlier members returned and new members joined, NA began its slow growth into the present.

For more information on the history of Narcotics Anonymous, see “Growing Pains with Narcotics Anonymous.”