Original Gambling Recovery Program

This article will reveal the main points in treating gambling addiction starting from the common symptoms and to then to the twelve point steps of recovery program.

As soon as you are aware that yourself or any other person you know has become addicted to any form of gambling, you should contact the association for problem gambling in your city/country. The first help association was Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), formed in 1935 to help those suffering from alcoholism. The Twelve step plan below was written by the founders of the AA - Bill Wilson and Dr.Bob Smith and in 1953 Narcotics Anonymous got permission to use the steps and traditions of the AA. After that, these steps, traditions and methods of treatment are used by numerous organizations for fighting addictions and helping addicts.

You have probably already know that the first step in fighting any problem is admitting you have a problem and that you cannot control this addiction. A person that admits this fact will be more willing to accept help than if they are forced into treatment.

The following step is to recognize a greater power to receive strength from/ In most cases this greater power can be faith.

Next the person has to examine their past errors with the help of an experienced member of a Gamblers Anonymous association and then start making amends for all previous errors.

The aim is to learn how to live a new life with a whole new behavior and even start helping others that suffer with the same addictions and problems.

The Twelve steps can be the name of classes for group therapies with people who are ready to fight their addictions. They start with the first step and move to the last helping others on the way.

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over gambling - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to a normal way of thinking and living.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of this Power of our own understanding.
4. We 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. We were entirely ready to have these character defects removed.
7. We humbly ask God (of our understanding) to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admit it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood 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 try to carry this message to other compulsive gamblers.

(originally found at Gamblers Anonymous)

The 12 step program is a fundamental and powerful way of overcoming compulsive gambling.