Narcotics Anonymous online meetings going strong
The meetings started at 6am and continued during the day with a large number of meetings held in the evenings.
Narcotics Anonymous (NA) South Africa was one of the first fellowships to go online in the first lockdown.
Within one week, the NA outreach subcommittee ensured over 100 meetings were available to addicts or anyone who feels they have a drug problem.
Between March 24, 2020, and April 1, the NA held over 2 500 online outreach meetings. Total attendance included over 100 000 NA members from SA, the rest of Africa and across the world. They also welcomed 2 633 newcomers.
The growth of the online meetings was substantial, the online meetings reached communities and individuals in remote areas of South Africa who have not yet had the benefit of face-to-face NA meetings.
The online platform provides valuable experience to members in remote areas on how to run a NA meeting.
The online platform expanded to include participation from several countries across Africa. In many of these countries, NA meetings are very new.
It thus became common practice for an entire meeting in remote areas to dial in and attend an online meeting to benefit from members who have decades of recovery.
NA South Africa attracted membership attendance from the USA, Australia, Europe and APAC and helped other regions with a best practice on how to run online meetings.
South African NA members also got to attend meetings abroad and the recovery community got closer over the past year.
The meetings started at 6am and continued during the day with a large number of meetings held in the evenings.
The NA outreach team opened four weekly meetings after midnight to help save data costs for those who needed it.
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