Of Course L.A. Is a National Capital for Drug Addicts

Welcome to Hollywood. Which NA meeting do you attend?

Los Angeles is a landing point for drug cartel imports, a hot spot for celebrity recovery and a haven for narcotics from mild to wild. In L.A. marijuana is just an apéritif.

Film stars and wannabes lucky enough to find Narcotics Anonymous and 12-step recovery before they die have plenty of choices in our fair city.

Los Angeles ranks as a top-five city in the nation when it comes to the number of NA meetings available to residents, according to a new analysis from addiction resources site Recovery.org.

In fact, L.A. placed fourth.

Los Angeles has a whopping 184 NA meetings each week. That's a lot of cigarettes, coffee and childhood stories.

“We gathered data on all recorded AA and NA meeting places in the U.S. to find out which areas have the most meetings,” a spokeswoman for the site said.

The analysis also looked at data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

“The West Coast has its share of major NA hubs,” the analysis states. “Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, and Sacramento all make the top 20 cities for most weekly NA meetings.”

California knows how to party.

Baltimore (416 meetings each week — go B'more!), Philadelphia (325) and Brooklyn (187) captured the top three spots for NA meeting stats. The analysis looked at the sheer number of meetings and did not rank cities on a per-capita (population-weighed) basis.

Strangely, California as a whole didn't rank as high when it came to the metric of miles between meetings. The Golden State, with an average of 9.8 miles between meeting places, came in 12th place.

Maybe that's because it's a big-ass state.

If you want your NA meeting place to be within bicycling distance, New Jersey (3.9 miles) is your state. But if you want to meet your next agent, L.A. Narcotics Anonymous gatherings are where you should be.

Seriously now. Go on and get that help. 

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