About the fellowship
What Nar-Anon is, who it is for, and where to find meetings in the UK.
Nar-Anon Family Groups, or Nar-Anon, is a free, anonymous fellowship for the families and friends of people with a drug problem. Members share their own experience of living with someone else's addiction so they can find a way through it, whether their loved one is in recovery, still using, or no longer in their life.
There are no fees and no referral. The only requirement for membership is that there is or has been a problem with drugs in a family member or a friend.
Nar-Anon is for anyone whose life has been affected by someone else's drug use. People in meetings describe the familiar shape of it: worry that will not switch off, trying to control or fix the other person, keeping the problem a secret, losing track of their own health, work and relationships in the process.
The focus is on the member's own recovery, not the other person's. People come whether their loved one is in recovery, still using, or has died.
Three fellowships cover the family side of addiction in the UK and all three are listed in the directory. Al-Anon is for people affected by someone else's drinking. Families Anonymous is for people affected by a loved one's drug use or related behavioural problems, often with a focus on younger family members. Nar-Anon is specifically for the families and friends of people with a drug problem, parallel to Narcotics Anonymous.
People sometimes attend more than one, especially where a loved one's problem has crossed between substances over time.
Nar-Anon meetings in the UK run both in person and online. They last about an hour. A member chairs the meeting, reads a short opening, and people share their own experience. Nobody is called on, and nothing said in the room is repeated outside it. Two of the UK groups meet in Polish.
The fellowship is small in the UK, so some areas are only covered by online meetings. These are open to people joining from anywhere in the country, and members often say an online meeting is where they started.