GET IN WHERE YOU FIT IN: "A" HISTORY OF THE O.C. AREA NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS

The Orange County Area of Narcotics Anonymous [OCA NA] announced the creation of the Archives Liaison position in Winter 2021 to organize and digitize nearly fifty years of local NA history. From Fall 2022 to Summer 2024, hundreds of volunteer hours were committed to cataloging, digitizing, and housing thousands of documents including: minutes, reports, financial statements, notes, invoices, pamphlets, booklets, artifacts, and rare NA literature. The purpose of this thesis is to report on the archival procedure and the conclusions deduced from these records. The premise of this thesis is that implementation of the service structure created in 1976 was the primary factor contributing to the stability, growth, and maturity of the NA fellowship, as demonstrated by the formation of local Areas like Orange County. This work departs from earlier literature which argued that a centralized World Service Office was the locus for stability and counter-histories which implied stability resulted from member participation in collaborative NA literature creation. The goals of this thesis are: to address the silence in the narrative by presenting an early history of the OCA NA service structure. To contribute to the limited field of scholarship of the development of local NA Areas. Describing a practical procedure for local NA archivists. Explaining the geographic division between the OCA NA and the South Coast Area of NA. Encouraging local historians in other NA Areas to seek out and preserve their archives for their communities. Finally, purposing a reliable and accurate date for the establishment of the OCA NA.