The Step Working Guides
The narrative is meant to provoke thought about the questions but is not meant to be comprehensive.
The narrative is written in “we” voice in order to promote unity about what we all have in common: our addiction and recovery.
The questions are written in “I” voice so that each member using these guides can personalize the work.
The Step Working Guides is a companion piece to It works: How and Why.
There’s probably only one inappropriate way to use these guides: alone.
We can’t overemphasize the importance of working with a sponsor in working the steps.
If you haven’t yet asked someone to sponsor you, please do so before beginning these guides.
Merely reading all the available information about any of the 12 steps will never be sufficient to bring about a true change in our lives and freedom from our disease.
To do that, we have to work them.
“We Admitted that we were powerless over our gambling, that our lives had become unmanageable.”
~ Step One
A “first” of anything is the beginning, and so is the steps:
The first step is the beginning of the recovery process.
The healing starts here:
We can’t go any further until we have worked this step.
Our reasons for formally working step one will vary from member to member.
• It maybe we are new to recovery, and we have just fought –and lost – an exhaustive battle with gambling.
• It may be that we have been around for a while, abstinent from gambling, but we have discovered that our disease has become active in some other area of our lives, forcing us to face our powerlessness and the unmanageability of our lives once again.
Not every growth is motivated by pain;
It may just be time to cycle through the steps again,
thus beginning the next stage of our never-ending journey of recovery.
Now it is time to engage in some concrete activity that will help us find more freedom from our gambling, whatever shape it is currently taking.
Our hope is to internalize the principle of Step One:
To deepen our surrender and to make the principles of:
• Acceptance
• Humility
• Willingness
• Honesty
• Open-mindedness a fundamental part of who we are.
First, we must arrive at a point of surrender
There are many different ways to do this.
For some of us,
The road we traveled to the First Step was more than enough to convince us that unconditional surrender was our only option.
Others start this process even though we are not entirely convinced that we are gambling addicts or that we have really hit bottom.
Only in working the First Step do we truly come to realize that:
• We are gambling addicts
• We have hit bottom.
• We must surrender.
Before we begin working the First Step, we must become abstinent – whatever it takes
If we are new
Our First Step is primarily about looking at the effects of gambling in our lives and we need to get clean.
If we have been clean for a while
Our First Step is about our powerlessness over some other behavior that’s made our life unmanageable,
we need to find a way to stop that behavior so that our surrender isn’t clouded by continued acting out.
The Disease of Addiction
What makes us addicts is the disease of addiction – not the casino, football matches.
There is something within us that makes us unable to control our gambling.
This same something also makes us prone to obsession and compulsion in other areas of our lives.
How can we tell when our disease is active?
When we become trapped in Obsessive, Compulsive, and Self-centered routines.
Endless loops that lead no-where but to physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional decay.
1. What does the disease of addiction mean to me?
It means that when I pick up the first glass or place the first gamble, I want to continue, even when it is doing harm to myself, I could not stop and want more.
2. Has my disease been active recently? In what way?
Has been binging on food recently.
3. What is it like when I am obsessed with something? Does my thinking follow a pattern? Describe.
When I was obsessed with gambling, I cannot stop thinking about going back to gamble, I lose control of my thought. My mind is on the subject all the time and lost interest in other things.
Pattern: Weekend, midweek, payday.
4.When a thought occurs to me, do I immediately act on it without considering the consequences? In what other ways do I behave compulsively?
When a gambling thought occurs to me, I thought about what gambling can do for me and what gambling can do to me and still proceed to gamble despite the consequences. I will continue to gamble until I have no more money to gamble win or lose.
5. How does the self-centered part of my disease affect my life and the lives of those around me?
I lost all my earning to feed my gambling and also borrowed from those around me so I can continue gambling.
I become so heavily in debt and causes those around me great stress, they become my hostage, I leave them no other choice but to help me.
6.How has my disease affected me Physically? Mentally? Spiritually? Emotionally? Financially?
I do not have proper rest or sleep because I will be staying up until very late into the next morning with my gambling.
I will lose all my peace and become anxious, restless, irritated if I do not gamble.
I have no spirituality because I was using the money to gamble instead of feeding or providing the family.
After I win tens of thousands of dollars, I will keep them as my capital for the next bet and not for the family.
Emotionally it was a real roller coaster because the results can be so unpredictable and full of up and down.
Financially I become heavily indebted and a bankrupt.
Our addiction can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
When we first come to gambler anonymous, our problem will, of course be gambling but later on, we may find out that our addiction is wreaking havoc in our lives in many other ways.
7. What is the specific way in which my addiction has been manifesting itself most recently?
Binge eating and long hours surfing internet.
8. Have I been obsessed with a person, place or thing? If so, how has that gotten in the way of my relationships with others? How else have I been affected mentally, spiritually, and emotionally by this obsession?
Gambling. I lost interest in other people, place and thing except gambling. I have no time for my family and others. I become very selfish, self-centered and self-seeking. I feel anxious, irritated and restless when I cannot gamble.
Denial
Denial is the part of our disease that tells us we don’t have a disease.
When we are in denial, we are unable to see the reality of our addiction.
• We minimize the effect.
• We blame others, citing too high expectations of families, friends, and employers.
• We compare ourselves with other addicts whose addiction seems “worse” than our own.
• If we have been abstinent from gambling for some time, we might have compared the current manifestation of our addiction with our gambling, rationalizing that nothing we do today could possibly be as bad as that was!
One of the easiest ways to tell that we are in denial is when we find ourselves giving plausible but untrue reasons for our behavior.
Plausible: appearance of truth or reason; seemly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable; pleasing or persuasive, rational, logical, acceptable, thinkable…
9.Have I given plausible but untrue reasons for my behavior? What have they been?
I feel that gambling is a good way to make fast money; I do not plan to gamble everything that I have; I will not be greedy; I will be more careful this time; I will never lose everything that I have.
This gamble is an opportunity I cannot miss; Law of probability is on my side; I feel that my chances are high.
My false confident never think that my chances of a loss were very high here. I still think that my decision to gamble was a correct one.
If I lost the bet, it is alright, because it is a one-time thing, I can afford it.
I will not lose myself and go out of control. I can stop if things are not going well.
I can go ahead to gamble because I was not using borrowed money to gamble. If I lost the bet, there was nothing wrong.
I feel that there is nothing wrong to gamble if I lost the bet. I feel that I can afford the loss when I really cannot.
10. Have I compulsively acted on an obsession, and then acted as if I had actually planned to act that way? When were those times?
I have made trips to the casino and binge gamble on the slot and table games. I can lose every single cent and still feel there was nothing wrong with me.