Need Help?
If you require immediate medical attention, please dial 911.
If you think you have a problem with any mind-altering substance, please contact the
Helpline: Call (888) 714-8325 and speak to a member of Cocaine Anonymous, 24/7.
If you are looking for a meeting, please go to the meetings tab.
To the newcomer who wonders about the first thing he or she must do to achieve sobriety, we say that you have already done the first thing: you have admitted to yourself, and now to others, that you need help by the very act of coming to a meeting or seeking information about the C.A. program.
You are at this very moment doing what is necessary to stay sober: you’re not getting loaded. Cocaine Anonymous is a one-day-at-a-time program. We suggest that you not dwell on wanting to stay sober for the rest of your life, or for a year, or even a week. Once you have decided you want to quit, let tomorrow take care of itself. But sometimes it is too much for us to project even one whole day drug-free. That’s okay. Take recovery a day at a time, an hour a time, or even a minute at a time if necessary.
In the C.A. Fellowship, you are among addicts who are living without drugs. Make use of us! Take phone numbers. Between meetings, you may not be able to avoid contact with drugs and people who are still using. Some of us had no sober friends at all when we first came in. You have sober friends now! If you begin to feel restless, irritable and discontented, don’t wait. Give one of us a call, and don’t be surprised if one of us calls you when we need help!
It may surprise you that we discourage the use of any mind-altering substances, including alcohol and marijuana. It is the common experience of addicts in this and other programs that any drug use leads to relapse or substitute addiction. If you’re addicted to another substance, you’d better take care of it. If you’re not, then you don’t need it, so why mess with it? We urge you to heed this sound advice drawn from the bitter experience of other addicts. Is it likely you’re different?
We thought we were happy in our active addiction, but we were not. In C.A., we learn to live a new way of life. Cocaine Anonymous is a spiritual but not a religious program—our spiritual values are accessible to everyone.
We who are grateful recovering addicts ask you to listen closely to our stories. That is the main thing—listen! We know where you’re coming from, because we’ve been there ourselves. Yet we are now living drug-free, not only that, but living happily; many of us, happier than we have ever been before.
No one says that it is easy to arrest addiction. We had to give up old ways of thinking and behaving. We had to be willing to change. But we are doing it, gratefully, one day at a time.
We are a Fellowship of addicts who meet together to share our hope, faith, and courage for the purpose of staying sober and helping others achieve the same freedom. Everything heard at our meetings is to be treated as confidential. There are no dues or fees of any kind. To be a member, you only have to want to quit. We also exchange phone numbers, and give and seek support from one another between meetings.
We are all on equal footing here. We are men and women of all ages, races and social backgrounds, with the common bond of addiction. The Twelve-Step program of Cocaine Anonymous is gratefully borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous. Many years of experience have demonstrated the value of one addict helping another.
We welcome newcomers to C.A. with more genuine warmth and acceptance in our hearts than you can probably now imagine—for you are the lifeblood of our program. In great part, it is by carrying the message of recovery to others like ourselves that we keep our own sobriety. We are all helping ourselves by helping each other.
