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.
Change is the characteristic of all growth, from reckless action to thoughtfulness, from dishonesty to honesty, from conflict to serenity, from childish dependence to adult responsibility all this and infinitely more represent change for the better. Only God is unchanging; only God has all the truth there is.
Do I accept the belief that lack of power was my dilemma? Have I found a power by which I can live a Power greater than myself?
Today I Pray
I pray that the Gamblers Anonymous Programme will be, for me, an outline for change for changing me. These days of transition from compulsive gambling to abstinence, from powerlessness to power through God, may be rocky, as change can be. May my restlessness be stilled by the unchanging nature of God, in whom I place my trust. Only God is whole and perfect and predictable.
Today I Will Remember
I can count on my Higher Power.
I came; I came to; I came to believe. Gamblers Anonymous has enabled me to learn that deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of a God. It may be obscured by pomp, by calamity, by worship of other things, but in some form or another it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that Power in human lives are facts as old as man himself.
How well do I share my free gifts?
Today I Pray
I pray that I may continue to look for and find the Godliness that is in me and in every other person, no matter how it is obscured. May I be aware that the consciousness of a Higher Power has been present in man since he was first given the power to reason, no matter what name he gave to it or how he sought to reach it. May my own faith in a Higher Power be reinforced by the experience of all mankind and by the working of Gods gracious miracles in my own life.
Today I Will Remember
God is in us all.
If we attempt to understand rather than to be understood, we can more quickly assure a newcomer that we have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired. All of us, whatever our race, gender, creed, color or ethnic heritage, are the children of a living Creator, with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.
Do I know the difference between sympathy and empathy? Can I put myself in the newcomers shoes?
Today I Pray
May I try to love all humanity as children of a living God. May I respect the different ways through which they find and worship God. May I never be so rigid as to discount anothers path to God or so insensitive that I use the fellowship of the group as a preaching ground to extol my religious beliefs as the only way. I can only know what works for me.
Today I Will Remember
We are all children of God.
Any number of compulsive gamblers are bedeviled by the conviction that if they go near the Gamblers Anonymous Program whether by attending meetings or talking one to one with a member theyll be pressured to conform to some particular brand of faith or religion. They dont realize that faith is never an imperative for membership in the Program; that freedom from gambling can be achieved with an easily acceptable minimum of it; and that our concepts of a Higher Power and God as we understand him afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.
Am I receiving strength by sharing with newcomers?
Today I Pray
May I never frighten newcomers or keep away those who we are considering coming to GA by imposing on them my particular personal ideas about a Higher Power. May each discover his or her own spiritual identity. May all find within themselves a link with some great universal Being or Spirit whose power is greater than theirs individually. May I grow, both in tolerance and in spirituality, every day.
Today I will Remember
I will reach, not preach.
Every man and woman who has joined Gamblers Anonymous and intends to stick around has, without realizing it, made a beginning on Step Three. Isnt it true that, in all matters related to their gambling, each of them has decided to turn his or her life over to the care, protection, and guidance of the Program? So already a willingness has been achieved to cast out ones own will and ones own ideas about the addiction in favor of those suggested by the Program. If this isnt turning ones will and life over to a new-found Providence, then what is it?
Have I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the Steps?
Today I Pray
For myself, I pray for a God-centered life. I thank God often for the spiritual awakening I have felt since I turned my life over to Him. May the words spiritual awakening be a clue to others that there is a free fund of spiritual power within each person. It must only be discovered.
Today I Will Remember
I will try to be God-centered.
Rare are the practicing compulsive gamblers who have any idea how irrational they are, or, seeing their irrationality can bear to face it. One dictionary defines sanity as soundness of mind. Yet no compulsive gambler, rationally analyzing his or her destructive behavior, can truly claim soundness of mind.
Have I come to believe, as the Second Step suggests, that a Power greater than myself can restore me to a normal way of thinking and living?
Today I Pray
May I see that my own behavior as a compulsive gambler could be described as abnormal or insane. For those still actively addicted, admitting to insane behavior is well-nigh impossible. I pray that I may continue to abhor the insanities and inanities of my addictive days. May others like me recognize their problems of addiction, find help in Gamblers Anonymous, and come to believe that a Higher Power can restore them to a normal way of thinking and living.
Today I Will Remember
He restoreth my soul.
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 I'm alert to the danger signals, I know I'm 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.
Really sums everything up for the most part- accepting things you cannot change, changing the things you can and trying to recognize and know the difference.
Thanks for posting these!
Jay
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.