Clinic 528 encourages participation in recovery group as a cornerstone of recovery from addiction. We host a twice weekly Recovery Support Group - for opiate addicted clients on Methadone Maintenance Treatment.

Many clients from our facility also attend to Twelve Step recovery groups - and have always been encouraged by our physicians to do so. The experience of our clients has been mixed - and we offer this page for your comments on this topic.

To introduce the discussion - This well written article is reprinted in full from the London (Ontario) Narcotics Anonymous Life Line Newsletter of January 2008.

You may use the 'discuss' link to the top of this page - to submit your experience and comments.

We’re Clean When We Say We Are

For the last three years or so - I would read in NA Way about Narcotics Anonymous World Services view on methadone - and never really thought much about it.

The subject of methadone for me was never an issue because I believe it to be a prescription written by a doctor for an illness and therefore I have no opinion. When I sit in meetings - I don’t think that maybe ‘the addict sitting beside me is on methadone’ or when I hear someone share the thought of ‘is that person clean today?’ - is not on my mind.

What happened to ‘you are clean when you say you are?’

So now our members are asked to vote on should members on methadone be permitted to share, chair, celebrate or hold service positions?

It is paramount for every group member to read the world service board of trustees Bulletin #29 - Regarding Methadone and Other Drug Replacement Programs. Our group members at our business meetings will be asked to vote on this issue.

The hardest thing for me is to place principles before personalities and to remove emotion out of my vote.

I have relationships with addicts that are on the methadone program - and never once did I think of them as still using. I also attend meetings at the Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre - and many of the addicts in that institution are prescribed methadone.

Personally - I always believed that it (methadone) was just part of some addict’s journey.

I ask myself - why would anyone that was using - want to attend to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting - to share, hold a service position or celebrate a birthday? If I’m not clean – NA is the last place I want to be.

Another addict whom I respect brought up a point. Who in this fellowship is going to be responsible for policing the ‘methadone rule.’

Are we going to walk up to newcomers - and ask them if they are on a drug replacement?

Will this be a question on our service resumes? Should we just build a methadone detector - and that way be sure and therefore selective of who attends our program of recovery?

Some of us come into this program very sick - and that is just a fact. I am not comparing drugs - but I am talking about the extent of the damage some of us have suffered because of active addiction - and without methadone some of our members would die.

World Service states that a newcomer or member listening to a member on methadone is getting a mixed or confused message. We are addicts - not simpletons - and I believe we all know a mixed or confused message when we hear one.

Today - I am in a program of recovery - and I am accepted here for who I am - for the first time in my life. I don’t need to sell myself or prove myself to any member of NA. I used drugs all my life - and I just want to stay clean.

I am grateful that we are all characters with different personalities suffering from all kinds of illness - mental and physical - just lost souls trying to live a good life.

My greatest pleasure is sitting back and watching an addict’s journey from despair to repair. We all have the disease of addiction - and the desire to stay clean in common - because medicine, religion and psychiatry alone are not enough for us.

We need Narcotics Anonymous – and every member in it – no matter what our issues are . . . . . . . . by Suzie C.

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