Narcotics Anonymous

Narcotics Anonymous is portrayed in Dopesick as a peer-support setting that people affected by opioid addiction may turn to during recovery, but not as a simple or universally welcoming solution. Tess Henry’s experience makes its central tension visible: although the organization’s official policy accepted medication-assisted treatment, some members would not sponsor her while she took buprenorphine. The meetings offered community, yet the meaning of being accepted as clean remained contested.

Meetings as a form of support

Tess had attended both Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings before the period the book follows. In early 2016, she attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings while trying to care for her infant son and establish a more stable life. For several months, the journalist drove Tess and the baby to meetings, recording interviews with Tess’s permission and walking the baby around the back of the meeting room when he cried. The detail locates the meetings within the practical demands of recovery: participation happened alongside childcare, transportation, and the unsettled work of rebuilding daily routines.

The meetings did not automatically provide Tess with a sense of safety or belonging. At one gathering in working-class southeast Roanoke, she noticed familiar drug dealers outside the church and complained about the setting. She had preferred meetings in Black neighborhoods, which she described as funnier, with participants who had more time in recovery and felt more authentic to her. Her response shows that a meeting’s usefulness was shaped not only by its formal purpose but also by who was present, the surrounding neighborhood, and whether Tess felt able to relate to the group.

Her conduct at meetings also suggested how difficult it was for her to settle into that support. She was distracted and restless, repeatedly taking cigarette breaks and checking her phone. These observations do not establish that the meetings themselves caused her discomfort; they show a person attending while still pulled by competing concerns and exposed to places and people connected to her past. The book presents attendance as an effort, not proof that recovery had become secure.

Medication and the question of being clean

The sharpest conflict concerned buprenorphine. Tess had used the medication as part of treatment, and she felt stigmatized at twelve-step meetings because some participants regarded medication-assisted treatment as not being clean or as merely replacing one opioid with another. The distinction mattered in practice: a meeting might be formally available to someone receiving medication, while its social culture could still make that person feel suspect or unwelcome.

Narcotics Anonymous’s official policy was accepting of medication-assisted treatment. Yet when the meeting leader asked longtime members to sponsor or mentor Tess, they politely declined. The refusal did not amount to an official organizational ban, but it deprived her of a form of personal guidance the group was being asked to provide. A relative later said that the experience must have felt like daggers. The contrast between policy and conduct is central to the book’s account: formal acceptance did not guarantee that Tess would receive the companionship or recognition she needed from individual members.

This conflict unfolded amid broader disagreement over medication-assisted treatment in the region. Some Hope Initiative volunteers helped arrange outpatient treatment with medication, while others doubted the approach, believing addiction should not be treated with another drug despite scientific evidence to the contrary. The book places the reluctance Tess encountered within a wider divide between recovery cultures and medical approaches, rather than treating her difficulty as a dispute unique to one meeting.

Recovery amid practical barriers

The meetings formed only one part of a difficult treatment landscape. Tess’s access to buprenorphine involved expenses beyond the medication itself: although insurance covered most of the drug’s cost, addiction-doctor visits were cash only, with a substantial initial payment and further charges at follow-up appointments. Waiting lists also limited access to care. These barriers help explain why peer support mattered, while also showing why meetings alone could not resolve the financial and institutional obstacles confronting someone in treatment.

A different support model appears in the work of the Hope Initiative. Its volunteers compiled a five-page spreadsheet listing thirty-six rehabilitation and aftercare providers in the southeastern United States, then sought placements according to a patient’s finances and available beds. At the Bradley Free Clinic, people could meet trained volunteers on a designated monthly day, provided they had no outstanding warrants; social-service workers could help eligible participants apply for Medicaid. This system was not the same as Narcotics Anonymous, but the contrast clarifies the distinct roles described in the book: peer meetings offered fellowship, while referral volunteers tried to navigate treatment availability, eligibility, and cost. Even within that referral effort, views on medication were divided.

A complicated place in the narrative

Narcotics Anonymous is neither presented as a cure nor dismissed as useless. Tess continued to attend despite distraction, discomfort, and the experience of being turned away when she needed a sponsor. Her story shows how recovery support depends on more than a program’s stated principles: local relationships and informal judgments can determine whether someone feels included in practice.

The book also records the presence of a Narcotics Anonymous book among Ashlyn Kessler’s belongings when officers searched her car and found heroin. The book had remained there from two earlier rehabilitation attempts. Its presence offers a restrained but pointed counterimage to any assumption that contact with recovery resources necessarily ends addiction: a recovery text could be in the car while drug use continued. Across these accounts, Narcotics Anonymous stands within a larger, uneven network of meetings, treatment, family support, and criminal-justice encounters. Its significance lies in both the help people sought there and the limits of belonging when medication became a test of recovery.