I went to a GA meeting for the first time tonight everyone was v pleasant and was good to hear stories similar to mine and to get support. That said there were elements that made me a little uncomfortable. nearly everyone that spoke mentioned the importance of going to lots of meeting and never thinking that you have control or can manage alone. Although I realise that is true of me at the moment I like to think won't be like this forever. I know one step at a time etc but is not very pleasing to think of having to go to at least 2 meetings a week for rest of life and being told if don't do this will fail. Know if can help me stop is worth going but am already thinking about the day decide don't need to go anymore and get lots of phone calls from members telling me am making huge mistake. Anyone had good/bad experience with GA?
Hi 77, well done for walking through the doors, I know how scary that can be for some people.
The reason people talk about getting to meetings is because it works & everyone in the rooms want to help each other because they get how hard it is to be an addict & don’t want others making the same mistakes we have made. I understand from AA that the initial recommendation is that you attend as many meetings as days you would normarily drink & some compulsive gamblers need that. It’s not one size fits all though & you may find that one meeting a week is enough for you @ the moment. I go as & when I can but then again, I was able to abstain from gambling with the support of this site & went to GA for the recovery because that is a different ball game to simply abstaining.
Sounds very much like you are hoping for a cure? Go to a few meetings, be better? It doesn’t work that way I’m afraid & even if you don’t need meetings for the rest of your life you will still be an addict & will still need to work on staying clean. If you give GA a real chance & subsequently decide it’s not for you, you won’t be hounded by members judging you although you may get a few (especially those who ended up breaking out after convincing themselves that they didn’t need to go anymore) offering support. Addiction is sneaky, it plays with our minds & just like it whispered about big wins when you were active, it will equally whisper against doing anything that threatens its lifeline.
Plenty of people in GA with good experiences so don’t take my word for it...Ask people that go/have been & I’ll be surprised if you find many people who have actually worked the program properly speak ill of it.
Try to live in the now & not expect the worse from the future, you enjoyed your meeting & that should be what counts because gambling will steal your happiness if you let it.
I understand differing perceptions of how GA works.
The basic fact is GA is not religious. What it defines itself by is spiritual - being open to honesty, openmindedness and willingness to change.
Like ODAAT suggests, give GA time to help you and try not to worry about the long term. Especially in the early days, we encourage new members to get to at least 12 weeks of GA meetings. After that, you should have more of a knowledge to make a decision if GA is helping you or not.
Bon voyage, tri
It keeps Mr L grounded and focused and I would get the severe twitches if he decided he didn't need it any more. It serves as a reminder of where he would be if he ever went back to gambling and from the outside looking in I gather that's the case for many of the regulars he sees with years to decades worth of GF time under their belt.
A couple of hours a week is nothing compared with the time and energy spent gambling then covering up the results.
Thanks very much for responding. Think looking for reason to abandon because looking for non existant easy route. Went to another meeting today and think am starting to understand how helpful and just lovely it is to have people asking how am doing.
Hi Seventy7, I attended my first meeting on Tuesday this week. THere were elements i felt uncomfortable with, I am not religious, but the fact that we said a "prayer" at the end made me question it a bit.
That said, I thought that the session was well run, a good opportunity to listen to other gambler's situations and of course to explain my own situation. I was given advice by people who had been through the same as me 5 weeks ago, 6 months ago and 2 years ago. I actually do buy into the fact that I alone am unable to stop gambling. I have tried previously and I have proved to myself that I am unable to do so. I need help. I have support from my wife, but also having support from peopel who have been though and are going through what i am going through is a strength.
I've waffled a bit there, but "is it a bit culty?" I think its origins (from AA, which in turn came from a sort of fellowship with religious roots) suggest that there is a religious undertone to the meetings, but for me, the only cult is a bunch of compulsive gamblers trying to turn their lives around. I had already decided before I left my first meeting on Tuesday, that I will be going to my second meeting next Tuesday.
Hi seventy7
I think you can input your feelings and concerns into the meeting. I know what you mean though. I went to one many years ago and I found it a bit overwhelming to be honest. I will keep the location out of it.
I wasnt really ready to face quite a dark room with a handful of men who had serious stories of life savings being stolen from biscuit tins and so on. I felt like a la di da, lightweight gambler by comparison which was wrong because its the same addiction and I should have benefitted from hearing those stories and experiences.
I didnt know how I could fully relate to those men and the group leader. I didnt know whether to try and befriend them or whether I wanted to be in this room and how they could help me. I wasnt sure if we were recovering or venting to be honest. It appeared that some were actively gambling and venting. I didnt know whether it was helping at the time.
I was a bit shy and embarrassed and Im not sure the meetings were run the way I would have preferred. There were religious and twelve steps overtones and Im not sure I was ready for that. I understand what you mean about being a bit culty and religious...personally I would want to move away from that sort of praying, cult style mantras and religious passages
I would be ready at my older age and I think you have to input and take what you want from the meetings. Im not sure if this implied pressure that you must attend for ever helps. I wanted to go when I could attend and not feel it was a lifelong committment but I do understand this addiction could be lurking in us all our lives.
I think it is helpful to hear other stories and back up blocks with some commitment to face people and accept there are others like you. I do think it also depends on how the meetings are run though
If I went now I wouldnt be scared to voice my feeling and discuss it. I would discuss the twelve steps , support and blocks. I would discuss things making me uncomfortable about the meeting.
If you ever get the chance to see" The Work" documentary in Folsom state prison as shown on the BBC.......watch it all because its the most amazing and moving group therapy session Ive ever seen and recorded...prisoners and people who came in from outside for the group therapy sessions.
Thats what I want a meeting to be about.
What do others think about my views and experiences? I dont knock anything if its working for you but I do understand what Seventy7 is getting at
Best wishes to everyone on the forum
The Fellowships work for those who believe in God. They work equally well for those who don’t believe in God. But they don’t work for those who believe that they are God. Put another way, The Fellowships don’t work for those who want to control their own world (and everyone else’s), for those who want to personally be in charge of what happens. That’s just ego trying to be omnipotent, it doesn’t lead towards recovery.
A Higher Power has two components, it’s higher than me and it’s more powerful than me. Therefore I am not the highest power out there, so I don’t run the world. I might not know who or what does, my beliefs about that are my own business. As a Fellowship member, it’s enough to for me to know that whoever or whatever does run the world, it’s definitely not me.
Addiction’s cunning, it’s easy to rationalise that GA is a cult and dismiss it on that basis. But when followed, the program works.
CW
Cynical wife wrote:
The Fellowships work for those who believe in God. They work equally well for those who don’t believe in God. But they don’t work for those who believe that they are God. Put another way, The Fellowships don’t work for those who want to control their own world (and everyone else’s), for those who want to personally be in charge of what happens. That’s just ego trying to be omnipotent, it doesn’t lead towards recovery.
A Higher Power has two components, it’s higher than me and it’s more powerful than me. Therefore I am not the highest power out there, so I don’t run the world. I might not know who or what does, my beliefs about that are my own business. As a Fellowship member, it’s enough to for me to know that whoever or whatever does run the world, it’s definitely not me.
Addiction’s cunning, it’s easy to rationalise that GA is a cult and dismiss it on that basis. But when followed, the program works.
CW
Nicely put
Hi I'm not a religious person in the slightest. When I first went to a gamanon meeting I was in such despair I just listened to the advice. You can substitute the word God, because to some that's all it is a word, with conscience, please, help. It's a support group. If people didn't stick at GA there would be no help. There are many meetings run in different ways. A cult it is not, it isn't brainwashing, it's self help. My husband did a year about 15 years ago, he decided he didn't need it, didn't like what they said. He's back now and he said 'I stopped going because I didn't want to stop gambling.' It is what you make it, you get back what you put in. I hope I've helped someone else in this journey, all those who came in once and didn't return.
As a non gambler, I’m not convinced by or about stats...
Recovery isn’t for those who want it, or even for those who need it. Recovery is for those who do it. As the slogan says, it works if you work it.
CW
Personally I prefer approaches based on more modern methods such as cognitive behavourial therapy, SMART Recovery has helped me tremendously over the last year and you meet people with different poisions of choice but lots of common ground. Each to their own though.
Phil72 wrote:
Personally I prefer approaches based on more modern methods such as cognitive behavourial therapy, SMART Recovery has helped me tremendously over the last year and you meet people with different poisions of choice but lots of common ground. Each to their own though.
I wouldn't call CBT modern as it started in the 1960s. There's also increasing research questionning effectiveness, eg
Certainly better than the do-nothing approach though.
I've been on these forums for 5 years and clean for 5 - What appears to be the most effective mainstream approach, by some considerable distance, is GA, and in particular the Steps programme (and I've never been to GA/done Steps, so have no reason to promote it. I've no friends who do it - I simply have no reason for being bias towards it).
Furthermore, not only does the success rate seem obviously high in relative terms of abstinence, but those who do the programme seem to make more impressive wider personality and life changes.
I've read literally 1000s of diaries, probably 10s of 1000s and the success of GA shines through and speaks louder than any set of stats I would read.
Louis
I agree now that GA seems to work for a lot of people and my attitude towards the steps has mellowed over the last year.
I do however still genuinely think it's possible to incorporate some of the steps without going to meetings into one's life as part of recovery - specifically 1,4,5,6,8,9,10,12. All of those steps became a part of my daily life organically.
I think a decent person with common sense would recognise what they needed to do anyway in terms of financial reparation etc. but as I said if meetings work and the whole program works for those that "work it" - great.
One of the major turn-off's about GA for me is the whole religious / higher power stuff written into their steps.
I much prefered 1 to 1 counselling.
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