Gambling Addiction & Recovery Support Group
Compulsive gambling is an urge or addiction to gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. A preferred term among many professionals is problem gambling, as few people described by the term experience true compulsions in the clinical sense of the word. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others rather...
Good Afternoon Folks
Took me awhile to figure out how to get back into the site.
I am not computer wise.But am back and I am going to start
posting the GA Reflection for the Day again and hope to catch
up with my old recovery friends and to meet some new people.
If you are interested I visit a new site called Gamtalk that is run
out of Montreal Canada and it has 24/7 chat room and on Friday
at 3pm est we have a group Topic Session.Today's topic is Step 9.
God Bless
Ken L GRCG
March 22 Reflection for the Day
Once in a great while, I find myself thinking perhaps things werent quite so bad as they seemed to be. At such moments, I force myself to realize that my illness is talking to me, trying to tempt me into denying that I am, in fact, afflicted with an illness. One of the key action steps of the Gamblers Anonymous Program is that we give our illness to God, as we understand Him, accepting our powerlessness in the face of His greater Power.
Do I believe that the grace of God can do for me what I could never do for myself?
Today I Pray
May I know that much of our lives depends on faith. For we cannot know the limits of space and time or explain the mysteries of life and death. But when we see God working through us and through others who have found new life in the GA Program it is all the evidence we need to know that God exists.
Today I will Remember
The Big Wheel runs by faith.
Took me awhile to figure out how to get back into the site.
I am not computer wise.But am back and I am going to start
posting the GA Reflection for the Day again and hope to catch
up with my old recovery friends and to meet some new people.
If you are interested I visit a new site called Gamtalk that is run
out of Montreal Canada and it has 24/7 chat room and on Friday
at 3pm est we have a group Topic Session.Today's topic is Step 9.
God Bless
Ken L GRCG
March 22 Reflection for the Day
Once in a great while, I find myself thinking perhaps things werent quite so bad as they seemed to be. At such moments, I force myself to realize that my illness is talking to me, trying to tempt me into denying that I am, in fact, afflicted with an illness. One of the key action steps of the Gamblers Anonymous Program is that we give our illness to God, as we understand Him, accepting our powerlessness in the face of His greater Power.
Do I believe that the grace of God can do for me what I could never do for myself?
Today I Pray
May I know that much of our lives depends on faith. For we cannot know the limits of space and time or explain the mysteries of life and death. But when we see God working through us and through others who have found new life in the GA Program it is all the evidence we need to know that God exists.
Today I will Remember
The Big Wheel runs by faith.
We learn in Gamblers Anonymous that, as we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes towards our instinctual drives need to undergo drastic revisions. Our demands for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power, all have to be tempered and redirected. We learn that the full satisfaction of these demands cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives. But when were willing to place spiritual growth first then, and only then, do we have a real chance to grow in healthy awareness and mature love.
Am I willing to put spiritual growth first?
Today I Pray
May my development as a spiritual person temper my habitual hankerings for material security. May I understand that the only real security in life is spiritual. If I have faith in my Higher Power, these revisions in my attitudes will follow. May I grow first in spiritual awareness.
Today I Will Remember
Value the life of the spirit.
We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we know a truth that is outside us We make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it, wrote Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island. Since much of my recovery is based on spiritual progress, it is essential that I start by creating within me a small area of absolute truth and love where God can become rooted. As I expand that area of truth and love, God will grow within me. When I came to Gamblers Anonymous, my spiritual life was at an all time low.
At least for today, will I not allow my compulsions to come between me and my inner truth?
Today I Pray
May I recognize the difference between my feeling today of God within me and the emptiness that existed when I was gambling. Help me understand that only by continuously seeking and facing the truths about myself will my spiritual recovery progress.
Today I will Remember
Truth within lets God come in.
Since I came to Gamblers Anonymous, Ive begun to recognize my previous inability to form a true partnership with another person. It seems that my egomania created two disastrous pitfalls. Either I insisted upon dominating the people I knew, or I depended on them far too much. My friends in the Program have taught me that my dependence meant demand a demand for the possession and control of the people and conditions surrounding me.
Do I still try to find emotional security either by dominating or being dependent on others?
Today I Pray
May I turn first to God to satisfy my love hunger, knowing that all God asks from me is my faith. May I no longer cast emotional nets over those I love, either by dominating them or being excessively dependent upon them which is just another form of domination. May I give others the room they need to be themselves. May God show me the way to mature human relationships.
Today I Will Remember
To have faith in Gods love.
If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, well find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. So let us, with Gods help, continually surrender these crippling liabilities. Then we can be set free to live and love. We may then be able to Twelfth Step ourselves, as well as others, into emotional well being.
Do I try to carry the message of the Gamblers Anonymous Program?
Today I Pray
May I first get my emotional and spiritual house in order before I seek to carry out serious commitments in human relationships. May I look long and thoroughly at dependency upon the highs of gambling or upon other human beings and recognize it as the source of my unrest. May I transfer my dependency to God, as I understand Him.
Today I Will Remember
I am God-dependent.
All my life, I looked to others for comfort, security, and all the other things that add up to what I now call serenity. But Ive come to realize that I was always looking in the wrong place. The source of serenity is not outside, but within myself. The kingdom is within me, and I already have the key. All I have to do is to be willing to use it.
Am I using the tools of the Gamblers Anonymous Program on a daily basis? Am I willing?
Today I Pray
God gives me the courage to seek out the kingdom inside myself, to find that well-spring within me that has its source in the never-ending, life-giving river of God. May my soul be restored there. May I find the serenity I seek.
Today I Will Remember
To seek the inner kingdom.
One thing that keeps me on the right track today is a feeling of loyalty to other members of Gamblers Anonymous, no matter where they may be. We depend on each other. I know, for example, that Id be letting them down if I ever gambled. When I came to GA, I found a group of people who were not only helping each other to stay clean, but who were loyal to each other by staying clean themselves.
Am I loyal to my group and to my friends in GA?
Today I Pray
I thank God for the loyalty and fellowship of the group and for the mutuality of commitment that binds us together. May I give to the group in the same proportion that I take from it. Having been a taker during so many of my years, my giving used to be no more than a commodity, for which I expected to be paid in approval or love or favors. May I learn the joy of pure giving, with no strings attached, no expectation of reward.
Today I Will Remember
A perfect gift asks nothing in return.
There have been days during my recovery when just about everything seemed bleak and even hopeless. I allowed myself to become depressed and angry. I see now that it doesnt matter what I think, and it doesnt matter how I feel. Its what I do that counts. So when I become anxious or upset, I try to stay in recovery by going to meetings, participating, and working with others in the Gamblers Anonymous Program.
If God seems far away, who moved?
Today I Pray
May I not be immobilized by sadness or anger to the point of despair. May I look for the roots of despair in my tangle of emotions, sort out the tangle, pull out the culprit feelings, acknowledge that they belong to me. Only then can I get into gear, take action, begin to accomplish. May I learn to make use of the energy generated by anger to strengthen my will and achieve my goals.
Today I Will Remember
To sort out my feelings.
with gambling I was avoiding my feelings,
sort them out ???
first I had to get to "know" and recognize them once again.
But feelings do not need to automatically elicit an action.
I can use them to understand myself and use them to help me
understand my place in this world.
I do not need to be afraid of them and learn that they
can be recognized, controlled and utilized for my own good.
Feelings,
nothing more than feelings,
trying to forget them............
sorry
just had to.
Let us remember that we were probably avoiding feelings
when we gambled. Let us learn to recognize and accept them
and now use them to OUR advantage.
Do not be afraid (another feeling).
Gamblers Anonymous teaches us that we are emotionally and mentally different from our fellows. We are reminded that the great obsession of every compulsive gambler is to prove that somehow, someday, we will be able to control our gambling. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing, and many pursue it to the gates of prison, insanity, or death.
Have I conceded to my inner self that one bet is too many, and a thousand not enough?
Today I Pray
May I have no illusions about someday becoming a controlled gambler after being an obsessive one. May I muffle any small voice of destructive pride which lies to me, telling me that I can now go back to my former addiction and control it. This is a Program of no return, and I thank God for it.
Today I Will Remember
My goal must be lifelong abstinence a day at a time.
ODAAT-- life long abstinence
John