My life with addiction

Hi No maybe
Im kind of struggling for words myself. You have humbled me & I am grateful you could trust me to share that.

I will not pretend to know how such a traumatic experience as rape or the complexitiies of raising a child with Asbergers would impact upon you & how you get through life day to day. I will say, you have my deepest respect, you are clearly a remarkable strong & couragous woman. We just need you to believe that now dont we?.

If someone else were to write your life story down without your knowledge & read it out as their own, i wonder what your reaction to it would be. My guess is, you would think what an amazing person, how they found the strength to deal with that i will never know. The courage to live through all of that is an inspiration. If only i could be more like them.

Well you are like them. Its ok to acknowledge youve had a pretty s hitty set of experiences to deal with. You found a temporary solution to the way it made you feel about both yourself & others through a gambling addiction & probably other behaviours. But now today they no longer work for you.

I can only give you what has worked for me. That is to confront my angers fears frustration & shame at both the things i have done & the things that have been done to me. I found this in the 12 Step program, but it can be found in the offices of a trained professional.

I have found untreated my past tends to end up becoming my future. I will always return to the one solution i know will offer me some relief (addiction) without an alternative. So for me i had to fearlessly seek out a healthier solution to my pain.

I wish i had a simple solution for you, but it would be foolish to think that such a complex mix of emotions, hurts & wrongdoings could be sorted overnight.

Again try to take comfort from the fact of your accomplishments, your son & that you have survived things no one should have to endure.

I sponsor someone who has lived through almost all the things you talk about, if you wish i could put you in contact with her, no pressure. Ha i havnt even asked her if she would be ok with that!

Keep talking, keep sharing, im sure lots of folk are identifying with what you are going through & your honesty is helping them a lot. Again my deepest respects to an amazing story of human endurance.

Dan x

The link between childhood sexual abuse & addiction is staggering. Research has shown it to be at the heart of many addicts stories. 42% of men & 68% of women admitted to suffering from either isolated or ongoing abuse in childhood. More chillingly when allowed to answer the question anonymously the figure rose to 90% across the board.
My experience from listening to many step 5 confessions would mirror these stats, as would my own personal experience.

Hi Julie, sorry only just read your post. The only women preferred meeting i know of is in Manchester. We have 6 women in regular attendance at the meeting i attend. I suggested they may wish to start a women only meeting between them. They were horrified! They understood it didnt matter whether they were m/f , black/white, all that mattered was that they were compulsive gamblers.

day@atime wrote: Hi Julie, sorry only just read your post. The only women preferred meeting i know of is in Manchester. We have 6 women in regular attendance at the meeting i attend. I suggested they may wish to start a women only meeting between them. They were horrified! They understood it didnt matter whether they were m/f , black/white, all that mattered was that they were compulsive gamblers.

No longer GA meetings in Manchester. Julie, you could email in to the Information Officer and ask them?

Sometimes somethings got to give if we are not tk become left twisted by our own anger, bitterness & self loathing. In the twinkling of an eye our own insecurities can contort our view, that any one could be anything but as damaged as ourselves.

Ok Julie. Take care. You know where to find me if i can help in any way

Hello my old friend
I thought it's been a while
Just something kept nagging
For me to come by.

I biatched and moaned about your approach
Even my pram is free of the toys 😉
So much anger and judgement i chucked on your way
Yet you stood strong accepting my mindless "frame".
Never for once did you try to bite back
You let me observe the feelings i had.
I have learned my lessons i have to admit
Recovery is a journey what comes from within.
No matter what path we choose to thread on
Acceptance, forgiveness, self awareness is the goal.
From something as little as friendly advice
I took huge heart in understanding myself.
Reconnecting with others seems the everest to climb
But i have my boots on and ready to try.

Just wanted to leave you with this little honest line
" thank you for letting me see recovery through your eyes"

☺
Have a good day ;-))))))

S xxx

Seems to be confusion over the difference between GA meetings & the 12 Steps. Not surprising as even most who go to meetings have very little knowledge of what the steps are, let alone people who have never set foot in a room. The Steps ARE NOT about stopping gambling, they are about leading & practicing a life that has purpose & connection. They are about changing the thought processes that allowed addiction to take over your life. Changing you from a person who cant gamble safely, to a person who doesnt need to.

95% of GA meetings are basically group therapy meetings, where folk share their stories & talk about how it has been for them recently. They are what i would call maintenance meetings. They keep you abstaining but can tend to leave you stuck in one place. Not evolving. Yes , not gambling, which is great, but you get the sense a lot are just hanging on by their fingertips.

The Steps will help to take you beyond that constant battle. Pity more GA meetings dont make the Steps the focus as they were always intended to be.

On another matter. I have never once said GA is the only way. It is not for everyone & some i would actively steer them away from it. What does stick in the craw slightly is people having a not so humble opinion about it, having never set foot in a room or who have attended a couple of meetings. Always best to stick to talking about things you have experienced rather than giving out information you know nothing of.

If you have found willpower works for you, talk about that. If barriers alone are all you need to cure your addiction, great, pass it on. If standing in the corner making chicken noises has worked out well, suggest it. I have found that opinions are worthless. If you go to a meeting where people are full of them, probs best to find another, where experiences are more important.

Thankyou Dean appreciated. Just like to make it clear they are not my meetings, there is no hierarchy within GA. Again as before if you attend a meeting where it is one man/womans vision of what GA should be, find another meeting!

A disjointed post today in response to some of things i have read over the last few week.

Success rates within GA:
The figure i was given when 1st attending was 1 in 12 will reach 1 year gamble free who walk through the doors. So approx 8%. Now that doesnt sound great on the face of things especially when it is reported that 5% will give up with no outside help.
Where the figure is misleading is that number takes into account everybody who walks in.
Now most who come along, will attend for one, two maybe even half a dozen meetings. Will it work for them? Of course it wont! GA is the same as anything in life, without commitment, results will be poor.
I dont have anything official, because Annonymous programs dont keep records(because we are annoymous). What i do have though is my experience of attending rooms for close to 9 years.
This is what i have seen. People who commit. Attend meetings regularly, get involved, get a sponsor & work the program,very very rarely relapse. The success rate i have seen for people who do this would be around 80%. Thats pretty impressive in my view.

At times over the last few weeks. It has been like a lynch mob running around hurling personal insults at anyone who dared question that recovery maybe a little more complex than a bit of willpower & mutual admiration. Some of the insults directed at CW & half life where sad to see. I have never witnessed such hostility within a GA room, i suppose its easier to sling bile from behind a keyboard. I have nothing against high fiving, back slapping & lighting the candles on an almost weekly basis. All some of us are saying is this maybe goes a little deeper than simply not gambling & maybe for your future long term safety it might help to examine your life instead of focusing on the symptoms.

The accusation of the glorification of a nasty life event! That was quite a comment! I can asure the poster of that one, there was nothing glorious about a mouthful of a dirty predators bodily fluids to feed my addiction.

That said. Was i any different after 1 week, 2 months, 6 months free of a bet? Nope! The behaviour i see on here is almost identical to how i was at that stage. I thought i knew it all. No one could possibly teach me anything useful. Why would i listen to anyone else, i know me best. I havnt had a punt in months. My way is obviously working. Its the very definition of complacency. The motivation to keep adding to your recovery is probably the hardest hurdle people face. Why would i try something new when what im doing is working? Complacency. Recovery is giving up the comfort of where you are today for the betterment of what you can become tomorrow. Personal growth.

So, i came to this site new years day 2015. I hadnt had a bet in 7.5 years. I didnt need this site to help me. Everyone i spoke too, warned me not to get involved. That i would get frustrated by people. That i would be talking to people just interested in stopping losing. I would be wasting my breath & time. But i believe in finding things out for myself rather than listening to opinions. Have some of the warnings been true? Lol yes, but that is more my issue than the things that have been said. Hurt people hurt other people, has always been so. All in all its been a positive experience.

I only popped on to say thanks to Dean. Always did like the sound of my own voice

Hi Dan , just wanted to post a quick comment regarding your last post , wonderfull post that makes absolute sense in my view and now youv'e picked yourself up from the floor after falling off your chair at a positive from me to you LOL! I also wanted to add that I've never had a problem with what you say , just the way its sometimes delivered but that may also be due to my way of thinking , you have a wealth of knowledge to give on here and I would be more than happy for you to keep sharing and making the likes of me think out of the box a little , not saying I'm always gonna agree with you but It's a start eh?.

I apologised to you in my last post regarding not being more accepting of your view and can only reapeat what I said earlier , I have my feelings as to what is best for me and only time will tell if i'm correct in my assumption , as you say it's all about personall growth and all I can say is " I continue to grow " .

On a lighter note , I'm glad to see you throwing a couple of LOL's in your post and am trying hard to imagine you smiling , LOL !

Best wishes for a happy easter ,.................Alan

Morning Dan,

I felt a twinge of shame when I read that comment about glorification of the nasty past. But, I know I am only as sick as the secrets I keep. It takes courage to speak plainly about abuse self inflicted or otherwise. I'm glad you continue to post on your diary. I take a lot from your experiences and your words. -joanxxx

Hi, Dan,

Glad to hear from you again.

A couple of comments - you mentioned the vitriol that got sloshed round, but you might have posted at the time to add balance.

re GA, I appreciate that I'm not eligible for meetings (other than one open meeting, not my husband's, Himself says that his was a sanitised version of what really goes on), so I'm not best qualified to fly that flag. Although I liked one comment that I read to the effect that a high speed elevator instead of the Twelve Steps just won't do it. Shame - I would so much prefer for my husband and I to both be fully and permenantly recovered by now.

BW,

CW

Its a fair comment CW. I wrote a few replies but ended deleting them as i felt they would just add fuel to the fire with the way people were charging around screaming look at me look at me!
If you ever want to attend a GA meeting your more than welcome to sit in on one of ours, we let any old riff raff in.

Thank you so much for that kind invitation!!! Does it have to be cheerful riff raff or are less cheerful allowed? Will have to decline, though, because I'm not local to you.

All the best,

CW

Hey CW, they really do take anyone...I should know, they let me in 😉