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.
I once heard it said that the mind is the slayer of the real.Looking back at the insanity of those days when I was gambling, I know precisely what that phrase means. One of the Program's important fringe benefits for me today is an increasing awareness of the world around me, so I can see and enjoy reality. This alone helps diminish the difficulties I so often magnify, creating my own misery in the process.
Am I acquiring the sense of reality that is absolutely essential to serenity?
Today I Pray
May I be revived by a sharpened sense of reality, excited to see for the first time since the blur of my worst moments the wonders and opportunities in my world. Emerging from the dont-care haze of addiction, I see objects and faces coming into focus again, colors brightening. May I take delight in this new-found brightness.
Today I Will Remember
To focus on my realities.
The Gamblers Anonymous Program teaches me to remain on guard against impatience, lapses into self-pity, and resentments of the words and deeds of others. Though I must never forget what it used to be like, neither should I permit myself to take tormenting excursions into the past merely for the sake of self-indulgent morbidity. Now that Im alert to the danger signals, I know Im improving day by day.
If a crisis arises, or any problem baffles me, do I hold it up to the light of the Serenity Prayer?
Today I Pray
I pray for perspective as I review the past. May I curb my impulse to upstage and outdo the members of my group by regaling them with the horrors of my addiction. May I no longer use the past to document my self-pity or submerge myself in guilt. May memories of those miserable earlier days serve me only as sentinels, guarding against hazardous situations or unhealthy sets of mind.
Today I Will Remember
I cannot change the past.
We in Gamblers Anonymous know full well the futility of trying to overcome our addiction by will power alone. At the same time, we do know that it takes great willingness to adopt the Program's Twelve Steps as a way of life that can restore us to a normal way of thinking and living. No matter how severe our addiction, we discover with relief that choices can still be made. For example, we can choose to admit that were personally powerless over compulsive gambling; that dependence upon a Higher Power is a necessity, even if this is simply dependence upon our group in the Program.
Have I chosen to try for a life of honesty and humility, of selfless service to my fellows and to God as I understand him?
Today I Pray
God grant me the wisdom to know the difference between will power (which has failed me before) and willingness to seek help for my gambling, through God and through others who are also recovering. May I know that there are choices open to me as there are to my fellow sufferers in the foggiest stages of addiction. May I choose the kind of life God wants for me.
Today I Will Remember
Willingness, more than will power, is the key to recovery.
As we continue to make these vital choices and so move towards these high aspirations, our reality returns and our compulsion vanishes. We learn, in the words of Plutarch, that, A pleasant and happy life does not come from external things. Man draws from within himself, as from a spring, pleasure and joy."
Am I learning to travel first class inside?
Today I Pray
The grace of God has showed me how to be happy again. May the wisdom of God teach me that the source of that happiness is within me, in my new values, my new sense of self-worth, my new and open communication with my Higher Power.
Today I Will Remember
Happiness comes from within.
Thanks ken for sharing.
Love,
Victoria
If a person continues to see only giants, wrote Anais Nin, it means he is still looking at the world through the eyes of a child. During this twenty four-hour-period, I wont allow myself to be burdened by thoughts of giants and monsters of things that are past. I wont concern myself about tomorrow until it becomes my today. The better I use today, the more likely it is that tomorrow will be bright.
Have I extended the hand of caring to another person today?
Today I Pray
God, may I please grow up. May I no longer see monsters and giants on my walls, those projections of a childs imagination. May I bury my hobgoblins and realize that those epic dream-monsters are distortions of my present fears. May they vanish with my fearfulness, in the daylight of my new serenity.
Today I Will Remember
I will put away childish fears.
Can I be wholeheartedly grateful for today? If so, Im opening doors to more and more abundant good. What if I cant be thankful for the rain that has fallen in my life for the so called bad times? What then? I can begin by giving thanks for the sunshine I can remember, and for every blessing that has come my way. Perhaps then Ill be able to look back over the rainy periods of my life with new vision, seeing them as necessary; perhaps then, hidden blessings Ive overlooked will come to my attention.
Am I grateful for all of life both the sunshine and the rain?
Today I Pray
May I be grateful for all that has happened to me, good and bad. Bad helps to define good. Sorrow intensifies joy. Humility brings spirituality. Disease turns health into a paradise. Loneliness makes love, both human and Divine, the greatest gift of all. I thank God for the contrasts that have made me know God better.
Today I will Remember
I am grateful for the whole of life.
As I attended meetings of the Gamblers Anonymous Program, may my eyes open wider and wider. Other peoples problems make mine look small, yet they are facing them with courage and confidence. Others are trapped in situations as bad as mine, but they bear their troubles with more fortitude. By going to meetings, I find many reasons to be grateful. My load has begun to lighten.
Do I expect easy solutions to my problems? Or do I ask only to be guided to a better way?
Today I Pray
Make the GA Program my way of life. Its goals are my goals. Its members are my truest friends. May I pass along the skills for coping I have learnt there. May my turnabout and the resulting transformation in my life inspire others, as others have inspired me.
Today I will Remember
May I be grateful.
No matter what it is that seems to be our need or problem, we can find something to rejoice in, something for which to give thanks. It is not God who needs to be thanked, but we who need to be thankful. Thankfulness opens new doors to good in our life. Thankfulness creates a new heart and a new spirit in us.
Do I keep myself aware of the many blessings that come to me each day and remember to be thankful for them?
Today I Pray
May God fill me with a spirit of thankfulness. When I express my thanks, however fumbling, to God or to another human being, I am not only being gracious to God or that other person for helping me, but I am also giving myself the greatest reward of all a thankful heart. May I not forget either the transitive to thank, directed at someone else, or the intransitive giving thanks, which fills my own great need.
Today I Will Remember
Thank and give thanks.
We come to know in the Gamblers Anonymous Program that there is no deeper satisfaction and no greater joy than in a Twelfth Step well done. To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness to light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, and above all to watch them awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives these things are the substance of what we receive as we carry the message of the Program.
Am I learning through Twelfth Step experiences that gratitude should be forward, rather than backward?
Today I Pray
May my Twelfth Step be as wholehearted and as convincing and as constructive as others' Twelfth-Stepping has been for me. May I realize that the might of the Program and its effectiveness for all of us come through passing it on. When I guide someone else to abstinence, my own abstinence is underlined and reinforced. I humbly ask Gods guidance before each Twelfth Step.
Today I Will Remember
To pass it on.
I have much more to be grateful for than I realize. Too often, I dont remember to give thought to all the things in my life that I could enjoy and appreciate. Perhaps I dont take time for this important meditation because Im too preoccupied with my own so-called woes. I allow my mind to overflow with grievances, the more I think about them, the more monumental they seem. Instead of surrendering to God and Gods goodness, I let myself be controlled by the negative thinking into which my thoughts are apt to stray unless I guide them firmly into brighter paths.
Do I try to cultivate an attitude of gratitude?
Today I Pray
May God lead me away from my pile-up of negative thoughts, which make for detours in my path of personal growth. May I break the old poor-me habits of remembering the worst and expecting the most dire. May I turn my thoughts ahead to a whole new world out there. May I allow myself to envision the glory of God.
Today I Will Remember
Keep an attitude of gratitude.