Little Bobby was always ahead of his years. By the time he turned 10, he had seen it all. Rock and pills-Hendrix and Mandrax-literally ruled his life. It was a heady feeling as he progressed to brown sugar and sped along the fast lane. Soon the chemical-dependent youngster was on the highway to hell.

Luckily for Bobby though, he didn't quite get there. He was pulled back in the nick of time. Today, at 44, as the Bangalore-based designer thinks of all the hash-filled years that have rolled by, he can't believe he is clean. "The path to recovery was strewn with temptations and relapses," he recalls, adding how he made innumerable visits to detoxification and rehabilitation centres. The turning point came when he became a part of Narcotics Anonymous (NA). When nothing else worked, NA provided the magic.

SUPPORT GROUP: Anonymity eases interaction at NA's daily meetings

A 19-year-old fraternity in India, the NA has been more than just a good Samaritan. With over 5,000 members drawn from across the country, it has not only pulled drug addicts from the brink but has also taught them how to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Little wonder then that some 300 former addicts, including Bobby, recently converged on Raiwala at the foothills of the Garhwal Himalayas to celebrate the "miraculous" and "magical" fellowship that they shared. Reiterating one of their mottos, they agreed that their "common welfare" came first and that "personal recovery" depended on this unity. That's just one of the 12 principles or traditions that NA goes by. While a list of dos and don'ts is conspicuously-and consciously-missing, members learn quickly enough that one drug is too many, a thousand never enough. The freedom to remain anonymous throughout the programme also helps immensely.

Such a provision enables addicts at NA's daily meetings (most try to attend at least five times a week) to open up and let go of their defences. It makes the task of taking a "moral inventory"-another key tradition-of their lives that much easier. Manali, 25, recalls how she had no qualms about accepting the fact that she was helpless when she first walked into an NA meeting in Delhi in June last year. Hooked on to grass at the age of 14, she was into everything from acid to pills to liquor. She tried shifting from Mumbai to Delhi in a bid to move away from the "bad influence" but once in the capital, she took to cocaine. A call centre assignment subsequently took her to the US, but instead of the training that she was supposed to undertake there, she ended up learning how to "turkey on SCAG" (go cold on heroin) and "black out on glue" (sniff glue), the more happening ways to get a high. "Florida's glue dos are notorious," says Manali, thankful to NA for a new lease of life.

Like her, hardcore addict Viren has also started life with a clean slate. Employed in a civic agency, the 36-year-old was once in the pits. Part of a group of youngsters-of whom five died of drug overdose-he was involved in a series of drug-related crimes like theft and eve-teasing. In 1994, he even went to jail for stabbing a man to death over a pouch of heroin. Released four years later, he was running from one rehabilitation centre to another but help eluded him. Hospitalised, he had nearly given up trying when he chanced upon NA literature lying in his ward. Impressed by what he read, Viren began attending NA sessions. It was a decision he will never regret. "There is some hidden power in the meetings," he says. "Every time I attend one, I return home a stronger human being."

Kirti, 44, a member of an NA group in Delhi known as Winds of Change, fully agrees. An auto-parts businessman and a graduate from a top management institute, he was hooked to drugs for 23 years. There were days when he would smoke grass a hundred times. In 1997, he became a member of NA and with that his life completely changed. Today, when he looks back on the years lost, he is happy, not rueful. "At least I live and breathe," he smiles. "It could so easily have been different."

There are hundreds of such turnaround stories which the NA can boast of. But there is no hype. A self-supporting group, its finances are equally modest. At the end of the meetings which are regularly conducted in key cities like Darjeeling, Imphal, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bhubaneswar, Pune, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Delhi and Chennai, members pass a hat around to collect whatever funds it takes to rent halls, pay for snacks, electricity and publishing literature.

While external funding is not encouraged, members work through sponsors, usually fellow addicts who wish to walk out of the tunnel. Nothing, they vouch, can substitute for the counselling that one addict receives from another. Therein lies the NA's therapeutic value.