Help for Gambling Addicts Available
By: Jose G. Landa
Do you or anyone you know have a gambling problem? As gambling addictions share many similarities with drug and alcohol addictions, compulsive gambling is also a progressive condition and without intervention it will, in time, get worse. A gambling addict is an addict for life; but through help and willingness to stop, a gambling addict may never wager again.
TWENTY QUESTIONS TO ACCEPTANCE
Here is a list of 20 questions that you can answer to determine if you have a gambling problem. It is estimated that a person with a gambling problem will answer yes to more than half of these questions. Please answer each question yes or no.
TWENTY QUESTIONS
1.Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling?
2.Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy?
3.Did gambling affect your reputation?
4.Have you ever felt remorse after gambling?
5.Did you ever gamble to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?
6.Did gambling cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?
7.After losing, did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?
8.After a win did you have a strong urge to return and win more?
9.Did you often gamble until your last dollar was gone?
10.Did you ever borrow to finance your gambling?
11.Have you ever sold anything to finance gambling?
12.Were you reluctant to use “gambling money” for normal expenditures?
13.Did gambling make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?
14.Did you ever gamble longer than you had planned?
15.Have you ever gambled to escape worry, trouble, boredom or loneliness?
16.Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance gambling?
17.Did gambling cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
18.Do arguments, disappointments or frustrations create within you an urge to gamble?
19.Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?
20.Have you ever considered self destruction or suicide as a result of your gambling?
How did you fare after answering this questionnaire? If you answered “yes” to 10 or more questions, then you have a gambling problem.There is help, however.
Gamblers Anonymous is one of those programs that provide a road to recovery through a 12 step program of acceptance and willingness to change your life for the better. Gamblers Anonymous believes that through your commitment of working the 12 steps to recovery into your life , you can recover and stay away from falling back into the destructive behavior of compulsive betting.
If you follow the Gamblers Anonymous 12 steps, you can achieve personal growth through recovery.
THE 12 STEPS OF GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS
1.We admitted we were powerless over gambling – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to a normal way of thinking and living.
3.Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of this Power of our own understanding.
4.Made a searching and fearless moral and financial inventory of ourselves.
5.Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6.Were entirely ready to have these defects of character removed.
7.Humbly asked God (of our understanding) to remove our shortcomings.
8.Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9.Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10.Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12.Having made an effort to practice these principles in all our affairs, we tried to carry this message to other compulsive gamblers
It is understood that this program may not work for some on their way to recovery from a gambling addiction, but always remember that there is help, and in order to find it, it must all start within you and the acceptance that you have a problem.
Provided below is the Gamblers Anonymous National Hotline Phone Number 1 – 888 – GA – HELPS (1 – 888 – 42 – 43577).
Gambling Anonymous is there to help you with your gambling addiction.
Please call them today if you need help and want to stop gambling! Take control of your life today with the help of Gambling Anonymous (1-888-424-3577).
