$100.00 FOR BREAD

 

On March 28th 1990, I walked into my first GA meeting. I had spent 7 years beating myself up out there. Never where I should have been nor doing what I should have been doing, I gambled 365 days of the year. I gambled anywhere. Casinos, grocery stores, even the car wash. I just had to have my fix every day.

For Christmas I bought battery-operated toys for my grandson, purposely forgetting the batteries. That way I could get out on the pretense of buying them. I would be gone while dinner cooked. Any excuse.

I lied, I cheated and I stole. I forged my husband's signature to consolidate the bills. I got a second mortgage the same way. Anything to make that bet. The last time I gambled, I wanted to end it all. I remember leaving the casino. I had about 10 minutes to make it to my grandson's school, or they would take him away from me. I thought, "Well, if I get killed in an accident everyone will feel sorry for me." I made the drive in time, even though I have proved since that it is impossible.

I really believed everyone would be better off without me. I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wanted to stop gambling and had promised so many times that I would, but I just couldn't.

Well, I didn't kill myself on that suicidal drive; instead, I started the road to recovery. I was so scared that first meeting. I remember thinking that nobody had done the things I had done. But the people in the room knew how I was feeling, like I was in a dark tunnel with no light at the end. The first meeting sparked a flicker, and every meeting made it brighter.

I found a lot of caring and loving people in the rooms. They told me to give them a chance. They also said I had gone to any lengths to make a bet, so I needed to go to any lengths now not to. I did everything they told me; I made 6 meetings a week. The 7th day I didn't go out.

I didn't trust myself to go grocery shopping by myself. I took someone with me for at least four months because so many times it had cost me hundreds of dollars for a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.

Here in Vegas, as well as all over the country, I have some truly wonderful friends because of the GA program. We support each other no matter what. I've never had that kind of friendship before.

But, like they told me, I have to give it away to keep it. I know for sure that without the GA program, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this letter. I also know that I am a compulsive gambler, and I will die a compulsive gambler. I just don't have to practice my addiction. ...................................................Love you all, Liz N., Las Vegas

POP, PULL, PUSH...

Since first coming to Gamblers Anonymous, I've probably attended several hundred GA meetings. By listening to other people's therapy and working my program, I've learned a lot—about myself and about compulsive gamblers in general.

I've learned that despite our differences in economic status, background, age, sexual orientation, education, gambling preferences, ad infinitum, we're way more alike than we are different. I believe that virtually every compulsive gambler has elements of both the ‘action' gambler and the ‘escape' gambler. When I thought about that angle, I just discovered that the scales tipped more one way or the other at different times in my life. While I fit the profile of an action gambler most of my life, I certainly behaved like the typical escape gambler during the weeks and months preceding my lst GA meeting. Finally, the pain I had inflicted on myself by gambling surpassed the pain I had chosen to mask by gambling. (See Theory on Hitting Bottom by Carol R. in WHW, July ‘99.)

I've learned that the gambling addiction, substance abuse, and other addictive behaviors I practiced at various points in my life all served to self-medicate the pain of ancient wounds I had never addressed. And I'm not alone. Many of us come from an abusive background—or remain in an abusive situation. Abuse comes in many forms: physical, sexual, verbal, emotional .... We may not have recognized the abuse at the time; we may not recognize it to this day! But identified or not, acknowledged or not, abuse still does its destructive, debilitating dirty work in our lives, and the effects of abuse don't end when the abuse does. The pain lives on.

Some of you may be protesting, "Pain? What pain? I wasn't abused!" Pain has many sources. Perhaps loss of a loved one is the source of your pain. A failed marriage. Unrealized dreams. Guilt. Any given meeting may harbor as many different sources of pain as GA members. Virtually every person in the program is there because the addictive medication—in our case, gambling—finally caused greater pain than the one we were trying to medicate against in the first place.

Gambling as medication explains a couple of phenomena we're all familiar with if we've been in GA for awhile. Cross-addiction: Who among us doesn't know several people who accumulated considerable time in another 12-step program successfully combating an addiction, only to find they then became addicted to gambling?! Unmedicated by the previous addictive substance or activity, they began using gambling to mask the pain. And my discovery about self-medicating explains a second common occurrence.

Relapses: All medication ‘wears off' when we stop taking it. Our pain reasserts itself when we stop gambling and fail to address the pain by any other means. So we gamble again to cover up our pain. I believe only one sure means exists to securely arrest the disease of addiction. Confront the pain. Some of us need a treatment program. Some need one-on-one therapy with a properly trained mental health professional.

We ALL need to WORK our recovery program. Perhaps Steps 4 and 5 will unmask your pain, as they did mine. You may feel ‘ripped apart' by these steps, as I did. That's why it's so important to work the entire program. I thank my Higher Power for all 12 of these healing steps............................Betty C., Yarnell, AZ

 BOUNDARIES

BOUNDARIES can be defined as a distance placed between self and another person, place or thing. They help us to have a sense of separateness, to know where we end and others begin. Healthy boundaries provide a sense of empowerment. We know who we are and are not, what we believe and do not believe and what we think, feel and want.

How many of us have ever asked ourselves "Who Am I"? People with healthy boundaries have a clear sense of themselves. They are secure within themselves. They know how to assert themselves in an appropriate manner so as to avoid the role of victim. Learning to say "no" is often difficult, especially for women who have been socialized to believe that they must care for, care about and please others. Many fear that to verbalize and/or act upon their own needs and wants will be perceived as "selfish". This denial of self, over the long term, eventually results in sense of shame, decreased self-esteem, aggression, and inappropriate acting out of repressed thoughts and feelings.

Poor boundary setting is typically learned behavior of dysfunctional families in which parenting skills are weak or non-existent. Rules and limits are too strict or lacking. Traumatic experiences in the form of abuse, addictions, illness, death, divorce, poverty, crime, and being rescued from consequences of one's own behavior often result in inappropriate childhood boundary development. Dysfunctional family settings become arenas that promote lack of individuation of self, and development of family secrets and sense of shame.

One's relationships, spirituality, physical, sexual, and emotional being are impacted by boundary development. Resolution of issues in these areas of our life enhances personal growth, and increased self-esteem. Appropriate grieving of past losses, and letting go of anger and resentments for past hurts, is at the root of the healing process. Unhealthy boundaries are a result of learned behavior. With time and perseverance, they can be unlearned and replaced with healthy boundaries.

Following development and maintenance of real self through supportive relationships is key.

Some steps that can assist in establishing healthy boundaries through honesty and responsibility are as follows:

* Group participation, discussion, and skill practice in a safe environment of truth and accountability.

* Acceptance of responsibility for what we allow for ourselves and for others by learning that we have the power to say "no" in fairness to ourselves and to maintain respect in fairness to others.

* Work the 12 Steps of Recovery

* Journal daily on our thoughts, feelings and incidents of daily maintenance and violations of boundary setting.

Development of healthy boundaries affords us the opportunity to be true to ourselves and to others with confidence thereby enhancing recovery and personal growth...........................Carol Stamos MC,CPC,NCC