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.
Good suggestion.In my early days of recovery I too kept my GA
phone list with me and it saved me many a time.
God Bless
Ken L YBIR
What causes slips? What happens to a person who apparently seems to understand and live the Twelve Step way, yet decides to go out gambling again? What can I do to keep this from happening to me? Is there any consistency among those who slip, any common denominators that seem to apply? We can each draw our own conclusions, but we learn in the Gamblers Anonymous Program that certain inactions will all but guarantee an eventual slip.
When a person who has slipped is fortunate enough to return to the Program, do I listen carefully to what he or she says about the slip?
Today I Pray
May my Higher Power show me if I am setting myself up to gamble again. May I glean from the experiences from others that the reasons for such a lapse of resolve or such an accident of will most often stem from what I have not done rather than from what I have done. May I "keep coming back to meetings.
Today I Will Remember
Keep coming back.
In almost every instance, the returned slipper says, I stopped going to meetings, or I got fed up with the same old stories and the same old faces, or My outside commitments were such that I had to cut down on meetings, or I felt Id received the optimum benefits from the meetings, so I sought further help from more meaningful activities. In short, they simply stopped going to meetings. A saying Ive heard at Gamblers Anonymous hits the nail on the head: Them that stop going to meetings are not present at meetings to hear about what happens to them that stops going to meetings.
Am I going to enough meetings for me?
Today I Pray
God keep me on the path of the GA Program. May I never be too tired, too busy, too complacent, too bored to go to meetings. Almost always those complaints are reversed at a meeting if I will just get myself there. My weariness dissipates in serenity. My busyness is reduced to it rightful proportion. My complacency gives way to vigilance again. And how can I be bored in a place where there is so much fellowship and joy?
Today I Will Remember
Attend the meetings.
Another common denominator among those who slip is failure to use the tools of the Gamblers Anonymous Program the Twelve Steps. The comments heard most often are, I never did work the steps, I never got past the First Step, I worked the steps too slow, or too fast or too soon. What it boils down to is that these people considered the Steps, but didnt conscientiously and sincerely apply the Steps to their lives.
Am I learning how to protect myself and help others?
Today I Pray
May I be a doer of the Steps and not a hearer only. May I see some of the common mis-Steps that lead to a fall: being too proud to admit Step One; being to tied to everyday earth to feel the presence of a Higher Power; being overwhelmed by the thought of preparing Step Four, a complete moral and financial inventory; being too reticent to share that inventory. Please God, guide me as I work the Twelve Steps.
Today I Will Remember
To watch my Steps.
Today's is particularly meaningful to me as I've sort of jumped around the steps and the fearless financial inventory was pretty easy with my wife working with me, but the moral was tough and still evolving- i really can't believe now looking back how totally gambling controlled my life... Whether a simple daily routine that became entrenched so very easily to giving up family and friends to feed my addiction... Just astonishing how this can bore its way into the deepest recesses of our minds. Thank goodness I woke up, recognized my faults and have begun to repair what I had damaged!
Jay
Still another common thread we invariably see among slippers is that many of them felt dissatisfaction with today. I forgot we live one day at a time, or I began to anticipate the future, or "I began to plan results, not just plan. They seem to forget that all we have is NOW. Life continued to get better for them and, as many of us do, they forgot how bad it had been. They began to think, instead, of how dissatisfying it was compared to what it could be.
Do I compare today with yesterday, realizing, by that contrast, what great benefits and blessings I have today.
Today I Pray
If I am discouraged with today, may I remember the sorrows and hassles of yesterday. If I am impatient for the future, let me appreciate today and how much better it is than the life I left behind. May I never forget the principle of one day at a time.
Today I Will Remember
The craziness of yesterday.
Thanks, Vicky
What do we say to a person who has slipped, or one who calls for help? We can carry the message, if the person is willing to listen; we can share our experience, strength, and hope. Perhaps the most important thing we can do, however, is to tell the person that we love him or her, that were truly happy he or she is back, and that we want to help all we can. And we must mean it.
Can I still go to school and continue to learn from the mistakes and adversities of others?
Today I Pray
May I always have enough love to welcome back to the group someone who has slipped. May I listen to that persons story-of-woe, humbly. For there, but for my Higher Power, I go. May I learn from others mistakes and pray that I will not re-enact them.
Today I Will Remember
Abstinence is never fail-safe.
Our spiritual and emotional growth in the Gamblers Anonymous Program doesnt depend so deeply upon success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. If we bear this in mind, a relapse can have the effect of kicking us upstairs, instead of down. We in the Program have had no better teacher than Old Man Adversity, except in those cases where we refuse to let him teach us.
Do I try to remain always teachable?
Today I Pray
May I respect the total Program, with its unending possibilities for spiritual and emotional growth, so that I can view a relapse as a learning experience, not the end of the world. May
relapse for any one of our Fellowship serve to teach not only the person who has slipped, but all of us. May it strengthen our s
hared resolve.
Today I Will Remember
If you slip, get up.
Think of a tree that bears bad fruit that is gambling; furthermore think of gambling as the water that makes the tree grow. To explain, the tree has taken its root and will not entirely be removed, however if you deny it water it will dry out and die. Do not be fooled into to thinking that one last punt or bucket of cold water will not bring life back into the tree that bears bad fruit. It is clear that gambling provides the water for the tree to be revitalized and to grow stronger and for the roots to grow deeper. Deny the tree its life sustaining water and stop eating bad fruit, which is sickly sweet or bitter to the taste. There are other trees that bear good fruit in abundance, enough to share, which is good for the spirit. Moreover with sharing comes cleansing of the conscious and a gentle spirit that is resilient to temptation but not beyond it, cautiously watchful yet forgiving of oneself and of others. You are the good tree that bears good fruit.
RAJCHAPMAN2013
Time after time, we learn in Gamblers Anonymous, newcomers try to keep to themselves shoddy facts about their lives. Trying to avoid the humbling experience of the Fifth Step, they turn to a seemingly easier and softer way. Almost invariably, they slip. Having persevered with the rest of the Program, they then wonder why they fell. The probable reason is that they never completed their housecleaning. They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock.
Have I admitted to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs?
Today I Pray
That I may include all the sleaziness of my past, my cruelties and my dishonesties, in a complete moral and financial inventory of myself. May I hold back nothing out of shame or pride, for the exact nature of my wrongs means just that a thorough and exact recounting of past mistakes and character flaws. We have been provided with an appropriate dumping ground. May I use it as it was intended. May all my throw-aways, the trash and outgrown costumes of the past, be foundation fill on which to build a new life.
Today I Will Remember
Trash can be a foundation for treasures.
Faith is more than our greatest gift; sharing it with others is our greatest responsibility. May we in the Gamblers Anonymous Program continually seek the wisdom and the willingness by which we may well fulfill the immense trust which the Giver of all perfect gifts has placed in our hands.
If you pray, why worry? If you worry, why pray
Today I Pray
Our God is a mighty fortress, a bulwark who never fails us. May we give praise for our deliverance and for our protection. God gives us the gift of faith to share. May we pass it along to others as best we know how and in the loving spirit in which it was given to us.
Today I Will Remember
God will not fail us.