EPISODE 14: ANNDA

Annda describes nearly three decades of secret substance abuse that ended when she sought help and found her way to 12 step programs. As an atheist, she ignored the "God stuff" from the start, guided in part by an old-timer who modeled recovery without belief. Ten years into sobriety she discovered Narcotics Anonymous, She describes her recovery as simple, relational, and ongoing — a daily practice that has carried her and her family through continued hardship without a return to use.

For more information on recovery from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous 12 step program from a secular, non-religious approach, please check out secularna.org

**  This podcast is not formally affiliated in any way with Narcotics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous World Services. **

Comments are welcome. Email to: secularna@gmail.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:13

Greetings. Welcome and thank you for tuning into our podcast, Stories of Secular Recovery from Addiction Through Narcotics Anonymous. I am Michael E, coordinator and producer of the podcast. Each episode in the podcast is a story of addiction recovery from a member of Narcotics Anonymous, NA, who became clean in a secular, non-religious way. For more information about secular NA, check out our website, secularna.org. In this episode, we hear from Anda. Anda spoke at the Friday NA secular speaker meeting on May 15th, 2026. Anda tells how decades of secret substance abuse ended when she sought help and found her way to 12-step programs, particularly Narcotics Anonymous. Anda shares how she has stayed clean for decades without ever believing in a higher power. For Anda, recovery is a daily practice, not a completed course. Here's Anda. That's pretty good. In this episode, we hear from Anda. Anda spoke at the Friday NA secular speaker meeting on May 15th, 2026. Anda tells how decades of secret substance abuse ended when she sought help and found her way to 12-step programs, particularly Narcotics Anonymous. Anda shares how she has stayed clean for decades without ever believing in a higher power. For Anda, recovery is a daily practice. Here's Anda.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I'm Anda, I'm an addict. I'm clean today. Thanks for your service, everyone. Congratulations, Rudy. That's awesome. Two years. Um I'm a little bit uh a little bit nervy, I've got to say, because uh I never ever think I'm any kind of expert on working the steps. It's been haphazard, my working of the steps, to say the least. Uh, but anyway, born in Paisley in Scotland, little town outside, well, it's a big town actually, outside Glasgow, same town that Jimmy Kaye, one of the founders of NA, uh, lived in till I think he was about 14. And uh yeah, I lived there till I was 15, and then the family migrated to Australia. I didn't pick up drugs until I was 17, so I was a bit a bit older. And um one of the things uh which is a little bit uh odd to me is I'd always looked, you know, around around the place where I was brought up. There was a lot of drunks, and I'd always looked at them and thought, I'm never gonna be like that, I'm not gonna do that. Whatever I'm gonna do, I had no idea what I was gonna do in my life, but I'm not gonna do that. It really disgusted me, you know. And when I picked up, the first thing I picked up was alcohol. When I had those first, I think it was about three vodkas, it was like, ah, this, this is why they do it. I understood why they did it. It was like I'd been, you know, clenching my fists and not breathing properly, anxious, always very, very tight, very self-conscious. And when I had those drinks, it was like, oh, I can breathe. And I felt I didn't feel less than or more than. You know, the controlling, that's step one stuff. I started to do that controlling stuff. I won't use through the week, I'll only use at the weekend, I'll only use when I'm with other people, I won't use by myself, and you know, I would change the rules as needed as I progress through life. Um you know, I had my daughter two years later, so I had the two kids uh married to this man who went to work, did normal stuff, and I was really, you know, absolutely confounded. Why? Why do I have to keep going back and use and why can't I be at those normal people? You know, and that in my 30s I remember having a very clear thought. Um I'm fucked, I'm useless, I'm never going to be at those normal people. And I just accepted the fact that to get through life, I would have to use on a daily basis, and I went really, really underground with it and did everything in my power to hide my use. And that started off 10 years of just I wasn't out there, I wasn't a wild woman. I could be wild at certain times, but basically, I was a housewife drunk. You know, it was days, years of quiet desperation, knowing I was doing the wrong thing, and not being able to find the solution because I wasn't living in the right place, you know. I left that husband eventually and uh I moved in, you know, I bought a house. I was always able to maintain a job. It got more and more difficult, but always meant to I was still working at the end of my use, and and um I tried to commit suicide. So that was basically what happened to me. I was living in a house with just my daughter. My ex-husband was round the corner, my son usually stayed there, and I got to the point where I thought, I'm gonna be useless, they're gonna find me, I'm not gonna be able to look after my kids, I'm not gonna be able to get to work, and I didn't have an answer. What was I gonna do? The only thing I had in my very didn't realise very, very sick mind was to do a make do away with myself or get myself out of the picture, and then they won't have to worry about me. That's how lacking in self-esteem and how sick I was. Anyway, I didn't manage to do away with myself, obviously, and I picked up the phone on a Sunday morning and I phoned my mum. I phoned my mum and asked for help, and I remember saying to her, I need psychiatric help, you know, and she just came round, good Scottish mother, you know, typical wasp. We're not talking about any feelings or anything like that. She just came around and says, Right, get out of that bed, because I was lying in bed, you know, in an old track suit that I'd been wearing for days, and uh, hadn't had a shower. I'd written all this pathetic, dark, black poetry. She just grabbed that and put it in a garbage bag. She said, Well, get rid of that. You get up and get into get into the shower, get in and have a shower. I don't I remember trying to have that shower. Oh my god. You know, the ease with which I get in the shower today, no problem, no problem. It's a nice thing to do. That day, walking those steps from my bedroom, a very small house, into the shower was like miles, you know, and the water coming out of the shower rose head thing, whatever you call it, felt honestly felt like needles hitting me. You know, my nervous system was absolutely shower. Anyway, we went to a doctor, a GP, and he suggested I go to Alcoholics Anonymous, because I didn't mention any illegal drugs, I just mentioned the alcohol, and three days later I got to my first meeting, and um I'd never been to a meeting before. 27 years of using, and I managed to avoid going to any kind of 12-step meeting. I don't know. I'd heard about it, but I kind of just dismissed it. That won't work for me. That won't work, and I knew nothing about it, you know. I was expecting to walk into the meeting and see a lot of miserable old men all wearing raincoats being absolutely miserable about the fact that they couldn't drink anymore. That's what I thought I was going to find. And I walked into this, you know, pathetic church hall. It wasn't a high classroom, it was pretty shabby. But the people in it were laughing and joking and having cups of tea and looking like normal people, and they looked happy about the fact that they weren't drinking anymore. I'll be talking a lot about alcohol because that was my experience for a long time. Anyway, that a woman met me at the front door and she said, Are you new? She could see I was new. You know, I was crying, my face was red, my eyes were red, I was shaking, I was probably sweating a bit, you know. I'd gotten dressed up. I got dressed up because I didn't want the people at the meeting to think that I wasn't in control. So I was quite well dressed, you know. Anyway, she said, you come in, you sit down the front, and you listen up big. And I sat down the front and uh and they asked me to share at that meeting. I didn't know that you could say, No, I'm just listening. So I got up and shared, and it felt great. You know, I'd been keeping it all inside, not talking about it to anyone, not asking for help for this problem, and pretending, pretending that I I was pretending I was fine, absolutely fine when people, yeah, I'm okay, yeah, the kids are fine. I didn't talk about it. So when I got up and opened my mouth and was honest about how I felt and how I'd been living, it was like taking a strait jacket off. It was it was like the first time I used it was like that like a breath, taking a breath, you know. And uh, you know, people told me don't use, don't you, well don't drink in that fellowship and keep coming back and get some phone numbers and get to meetings, and I did that, I did that, you know, for for a long time. Uh I just that was all I did. I didn't drink and I went to meetings and I started developing relationships with people in that fellowship, getting to know them. I had to use the phone numbers. If I hadn't used those phone numbers, I would have picked up. I wanted to pick up all the time. I looked at those steps in the wall and I thought, nah, that's not for me. That's not for me. I'll just not drink and I'll just keep talking to these people. And that was okay for about six months. And then I was at a meeting and I listened to a woman sharing, and she said, I'm not responsible for my first thought, but I am responsible for my second thought. And it was like a light bulb going off in my head. I'd been an absolute slave to my thinking, my thoughts, my feelings. I didn't understand that I could change them. I'd have a thought and I'd just go with it, and it would normally be negative. So of course I felt like shit. Of course, I needed to use substances, and I think I accepted at that point that I'd have to do something more than just not drinking. And I started to think about that and look at those steps and maybe think maybe I need to do something, something more and do this to actually change, change the way I was living, the way I reacted to life. The way I did the steps was just through going to the going every week. I had this, I'd gotten really close to another, you know, recovering alcoholic, uh, and I'd go every Tuesday and we'd have a cup of tea, and she had all this literature, and she wasn't a curist, you know. She had books from A and NA, and we'd sit and we'd in January we'd read the first steps, so we'd go through that stuff. She'd give me homework, uh, questions, I'd go home, I'd go back the next week and we'd talk about it. And I didn't even realize that she was actually taking me through the steps. If MD asked me, I would have said, Oh no, I'm not doing the steps, I'm just going to meetings, you know. And anyway, about 10 years uh clean. I was clean. I didn't use any substances from that first meeting. That was in September 1999. My clean day is the 19th of the 9th, 1999. I don't know why I'm moving my fingers like that. Anyway, about 10 years cleaner. I remember I was sitting in my backyard, you know, and I thought, I could have a line of speech here and nobody would know. You know, and I realized, of course, that wasn't very clever thinking. That was probably not really healthy. But I thought I might go to one of those NA meetings and see if I fit in there. I can't I can't believe I was so ignorant, you know. And I got to an NA meeting, and of course I walked into that room, and half the people I knew from the AA fellowship were sitting in that room. So I knew them. I knew them, so I was very, very comfortable from my very first meeting in Narcotics Anonymous at 10 years clean, you know, and um the God stuff. I haven't even talked about the God stuff. You know what? I just ignored it. I absolutely ignored it. I just put it out my mind, and I was encouraged to do that by that woman, you know, who I got to know really well, and also another woman who became my sponsor, and she's still my sponsor today. They would just say, Oh, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. And I had a very good example in my first few years in the A fellowship. I had a there was a guy, Scottish mark, you know, and every time they got to the end of the meeting and they were going to say the serenity prayer, he'd get up and he'd walk out. And I'd quite get off and get up and walk out and chat to him, you know. And his story was that he'd had a very, very abusive uh Roman Catholic childhood in Glasgow. Hideous, hideous. And so, of course, he was very, very against any any of the God stuff. So, and he was, I think he was about 20 years sober or something when I was first around. So I had that example that I could be in this fellowship, and I did not have to believe in any kind of God, because at heart I'm an atheist. I tried, I tried to believe in some kind of deity. It never ever got to my heart, even when I would say with my mouth, you know, oh, this higher power, I never ever was believing it in my heart. So anyway, back to Narcotics Anonymous, you know, I've I've had the absolute privilege of being able to take some people, some other women through the steps. And that's really where I've done more, more official work in the steps, is when I've been going through with a sponsee that's taught me a lot, you know, and and all of them, of course, they're attracted to me because I don't do the God stuff, you know, just as I was attracted to the people who didn't do the God stuff, and I didn't hang around the people who who did the who talked about God doing everything for it. Uh I didn't feel um contempt for them or anything like that. It was sort of sort of just a natural, well, that works for them, but it's it doesn't work for me. And my laziness helped me in a way. I'm very, very lazy when it comes to study. I'm not gonna sit down, I just I'm not gonna sit down and study. I just it's not for me, you know. I do things pretty simply. I've always done my recovery very simply. I think the best thing, the thing that's I know the thing that's really helped me through is having a few people around me who I can talk to and I can discuss this stuff. That's where a lot of my healing has come. You know, I talk about the patterns of behavior, behavior that I've had, that have caused me trouble. And they talk about they talk back about having similar patterns of behaviour, and they've given me suggestions on what they do, how they deal with that. That is that is where my recovery has um basically been. It's been more organic than sitting down and writing pages and pages of stuff, and that's just that's just what I do. It might not work for anyone else, but it has definitely worked for me. My life has improved immensely ever since I first got to the fellowship, and I've had lots of challenges. You know, I've got a couple of kids that went into active addiction, and I've somehow managed to come through that, and they've managed to survive that without picking up the first one. And just a lot of days it's been like that. Today I'm just not going to pick up the first drug. I might not do a great day, I'm you know, I might be pretty, pretty miserable through it, but if I get through it without picking up, it's a win, you know, and every time I've gotten through those challenges without picking up and without blowing my life up, it's giving me more and more strength and more and more faith that if I continue this way of life, and it's a way of life for me, you know, I don't graduate, I haven't completed the course, I'm just still doing it a day at time. And I can look back when I'm struggling and say, Well, you got through that. And I don't have any fear of picking up the phone today and saying, I'm a bit fucked again, I don't know how to do this. Can you help me? And doing it as many times as I have to do till I find the person that suggests something that helps me through. I think my time's running out. I'm grateful for that. I've I'm done, I've done it. Thanks, Ken, for asking me, and thanks everyone for your service, and thanks for letting me share.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Your description of the moment you first understood why people use cuts right to the heart of why so many of us started. Thank you for your honesty, your humor, and your service. A reminder to everyone for more information on recovery from addiction through the Narcotics Anonymous 12-step program from a secular, non-religious approach. Please check out our website, secularna.org. That's S E C U L A R N A.org. This is Michael E for the stories of secular recovery from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous Podcast. Staying clean, one speaker at a time.