MA Getting Started Guide
Have you ever attended a 12-step meeting and were not allowed to "share" because you are a methadone patient? Have you ever gone to one of these meetings and felt like you could not be honest about being a methadone patient because there were things you needed to talk about? If so, Methadone Anonymous may be for you. Why not start a meeting of your own?
#1 - Generate Interest. The first thing that needs to be done is to generate interest on the part of staff (if the meetings will be held at the clinic) and patients. It is suggested that you make some fliers that say, "Methadone Anonymous meetings are coming to (place). See (person[s]) for information." After you have generated some interest within the patient group, it is suggested that you collect the names of those patients who appear interested enough to assist in starting the meeting.
#2 - Meeting of interested patients. Hold a meeting at a time and day convenient to the patients who have expressed interest in starting a group.
#3 - Staff presentation. If the meetings will be held at the clinic, schedule a time to meet with and to do a formal presentation for the program staff. It is important to have a patient who is in treatment at your facility and who has agreed to assist in starting your group to attend this meeting with you. Take along enough copies of the literature to give each staff person a copy and ask for their help and advice in getting the chapter started.
#4 - Meeting of patient officers. Have a meeting of all the patients who are going to serve in positions in the group meet with you. You will need a coffee maker, group secretary, group treasurer, literature person and greeter. Decide upon the best time and day to hold your meeting.
#5 - Put up signs. Advertise your meeting with signs that say: Methadone Anonymous Meeting, (Date), (Time), (Place). Please attend.
#6 - Get the meeting started. Remember to adhere to the policies that govern all MA meetings. Have your intergroup representative or someone in his/her place attend all of the monthly Board of Trustees meetings, so that your group's concerns can be raised and addressed by the board. Make sure your monthly chapter report gets recorded and passed on to the other chapters.
Questions & Answers on Methadone Anonymous
Q. What is Methadone Anonymous?
A. Methadone Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who are current or past methadone patients and who together have formed a 12-step recovery organization to help them maintain their recovery.
Q. Who can attend?
A. Methadone Anonymouschapter meetings are open (unless otherwise designated) to all those who wish to learn how to achieve and maintain sobriety over opiates and other drugs, including alcohol.
Q. Isn't Methadone a drug?
A. Methadone, of course, is a drug (medication). Methadone Anonymous, however, considers it to be a tool of recovery, not an issue of recovery.
Q. Who runs Methadone Anonymous?
A. Methadone Anonymous is not aligned or affiliated with any outside agency. It does not endorse or sponsor any outside issues. It is run solely by elected members of each local chapter.
Q. What does it cost to attend Methadone Anonymous meetings?
A. There are no dues or fees required to attend meetings of Methadone Anonymous. However, we do have expenses (rent, coffee, supplies, etc.), and we ask for donations whenever possible.
Q. If I go to a Methadone Anonymousmeeting, does that commit me to anything?
A. Your attendance at Methadone Anonymous meetings are entirely voluntary, and no records are kept.
Q. What is talked about in a Methadone Anonymous meeting?
A. Issues related to the recovery process, how to achieve and maintain sobriety over illicit drugs, how to avoid relapses, as well as overcoming the bias directed toward methadone patients.
Methadone Anonymous Preamble
We, of Methadone Anonymous, believe that methadone is a therapeutic tool of recovery that may or may not be discontinued in time, dependent upon the needs of the individual.
We believe that continued abstinence from opiates and other chemicals, including alcohol, is the foremost goal of recovery. It is the purpose of this fellowship to learn to develop a positive lifestyle, live in harmony with ourselves and the rest of the world, and to help those of us who still suffer from chemical dependency of any kind to achieve and maintain sobriety.
Methadone Anonymous Steps*
1. We admitted that we were powerless over illicit drugs, including alcohol.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could help restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to change our lives with the help of a higher power.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves, our higher power, and another person the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to change ourselves through the use of a higher power.
7. Asked our higher power to help us to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of wrongs we have done and became willing to make amends where possible.
9. Made direct amends whenever possible except when to do so would injure ourselves or another.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a power greater than ourselves.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we shall carry the message of recovery to those who still suffer and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The Twelve Promises
1. We will attain and maintain sobriety.
2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
4. We will comprehend the word "serenity", and we will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experiences can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change.
10. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that a power greater than ourselves is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled
around us--sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always
materialize if we work for them.
Methadone Anonymous 12 Traditions
Our common welfare should come first' personal recovery depends upon Methadone Anonymous unity.
For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a higher power as understood in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
The only requirement for Methadone Anonymous membership is a desire to stop using illicit drugs and alcohol.
Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or Methadone Anonymous as a whole.
Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry its message to the addict who still suffers.
A Methadone Anonymous group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the Methadone Anonymous name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Every Methadone Anonymous group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Methadone Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
Methadone Anonymous, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Methadone Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the Methadone Anonymous name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
<NOTICE>
* The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous have been reprinted and adapted with the permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (“A.A.W.S.”). Permission to reprint and adapt the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions does not mean that A.A.W.S. is affiliated with this program. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only – use of A.A.’s Steps and Tradition or an adapted version of its Steps and Traditions in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, or use in any other non-A.A. context, does not imply otherwise.
