WORKING THE RECOVERY STEPS

STEP ONE
We admitted that we were powerless over gambling – that our lives had become unmanageable.

SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE: HONESTY & INTEGRITY

FIRST STEP PRAYER

Dear Lord,
I admit that I am powerless over my gambling. I admit that my life is unmanageable when I try to control it. Help me this day to understand the true meaning of powerlessness. Remove from me all denial of my gambling problem.
 

STEP ONE
We admitted that we were powerless over gambling – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Note that the first word of the first step is “We”. This is not an accident. You are no longer alone with your secret life. Recovery Road is a fellowship of men and women who know exactly what your remorse and emotional distress feel like. Whatever shameful thing you think you might have done, if you stick around our fellowship long enough, chances are you will hear someone who did the same or worse.

Many of our earliest members were “low bottom gamblers” who lost everything. Often, they had been incarcerated or had survived suicide attempts. Fortunately, today, the majority of our new members are more likely to be younger and still have quite a bit of their life ahead of them. These “high bottom gamblers” may have entered Recovery Road before they lost everything or faced serious legal problems. If you feel that you have lost everything however, there is still plenty of hope. Many of our “low bottom” members, have turned their lives around with surprising speed and have achieved a wonderful “second act” of their lives. For the “high bottom gamblers”, the good news is that you can get off the elevator at any floor. You don’t have to ride all the way down to the basement. However, to come back up, the elevator is broken – you have to take “The Steps”.
 
Some of us may feel that we realized our powerlessness over gambling a long time ago, but we felt it was hopeless. Others just recently admitted this to themselves, and that is why we started coming to Recovery Road. Also, there are those who have come at the suggestion of a family member or friend, but, are still not convinced that they are completely powerless over gambling. Finally, there are some people attending Recovery Road meetings who are simply not certain if they are in fact completely powerless.

Regardless of which group you fall into, we encourage you to spend some time on this step and that you work both of the short worksheets at the end of the chapter. After completing the worksheets and discussing them with your sponsor, if you are not entirely certain that you are powerless over gambling and that your life has become unmanageable, then unfortunately you may need to do some more gambling to convince yourself. If you are in fact a compulsive gambler and truly powerless over gambling, these facts should become apparent pretty quickly after a few more gambling binges. You will then be welcomed back to our fellowship with love and without judgment. For many of us, it took several relapses before we were finally ready to stop. Hopefully however this won’t be necessary, and you can quickly see how gambling has controlled your life and you won’t have to go further down to find your bottom.

This step really has two separate parts. Let’s look at the first part – “We admitted we were powerless over gambling.” This is difficult for many of us to admit. A common characteristic of the compulsive gambler is an arrogant belief that we are masters of our destiny and in control of our life choices. This is especially laughable for people who so willingly risked thousands of dollars we couldn’t afford on the random turn of a card or the position of a cherry on a slot machine.

We may have tried to convince ourselves that because of our superior poker skills or stock picking acumen, we were in control of our actions. The reality is that we willingly gave over a large portion of our life to events that were primarily determined by chance (and mathematically constructed to insure our monetary losses). The notion that we have control over these life choices is a sad illusion. In all likelihood, we had been powerless over gambling for a very long time before we finally came to Recovery Road.

The fact that we continued to gamble in spite of the negative consequences again and again, should make clear the extent of our powerlessness. If someone has a peanut allergy, knowing that eating peanuts can be fatal, they do not keep eating them. The fact that we have a certain amount of self-knowledge about our past behavior and yet we continue to gamble is practically the very definition of powerlessness.

This also tells us something about the nature of this self-knowledge. For many things in our life, self-knowledge is very useful. We may have observed that we have talent in some areas and so chose a career that allowed us to utilize that talent and be successful. We may have discovered that we are near-sighted, so we wear corrective lenses. We may have realized that we are one of those people that is hopeless at remembering jokes, so we leave joke- telling to others in our group who seem to amazingly be able to repeat every joke they ever heard.

Unfortunately, when it comes to compulsive gambling, while self- knowledge is a necessary condition for recovery, it is not a sufficient condition. By that we mean that understanding the nature of the illness and that we may be powerless over gambling will not help us in the mental blank spots that we inevitably experience. It is not unusual for new members to come into a Recovery Road meeting and listen attentively. After one meeting they admit that they probably are compulsive gamblers and proclaim themselves cured. Now that they understand this, all they have to do is not gamble anymore – just like the guy with the peanut allergy who avoids peanuts. Often it is not too much later that they come back into the rooms with a dazed expression on their face and not fully understanding what happened after another major gambling loss. The simple fact is that understanding the illness is only a beginning. Permanent recovery requires the action of working the remaining steps.

Another fairly useless and even counter-productive human attribute in dealing with compulsive gambling is “will power”. Will power may have served us well in school, at work or at the gym. However just trying to exert our will power to not gamble is usually exhausting and unsuccessful. The problem is simply that we have an illness. Trying to use will power to deal with compulsive gambling is normally about as successful as trying to will a tumor not to grow or the tremors of Parkinson’s to stop.

Initially this admission of utter defeat and humiliation may seem like our life is over. However, the reality is that this is really only the beginning of the foundation for our wonderful new life. No illness can be treated without an honest diagnosis. While it is common for newcomers to feel depressed about this first phase of recovery, this is temporary. We implore our new members not to quit before the miracle happens.

Worksheet 1A

WE ADMITTED WE WERE POWERLESS OVER GAMBLING

Reflect and discuss about examples of how you were powerless over gambling. Include instances that you tried to use will power to stop or control gambling without success. Also, any situations you decided you would only gamble for a set period of time or certain amount of money but were unable to adhere to that decision.
 

WE ADMITTED WE WERE POWERLESS OVER GAMBLING – THAT OUR LIVES HAD BECOME UNMANAGEABLE.

The second part of this step is “that our lives had become unmanageable”. For some of our members, this is obvious. Lost marriages, jobs and houses may all be abundant evidence of an unmanageable life. However, some people may not have lost any of these things and think that because they still have a job and a family, their life is not really unmanageable. For these people we call those things that they still have the “Yets” – as in “I haven’t lost a job – yet” or “I haven’t lost my marriage – yet”. YET also stands for You’re Eligible Too – even if you haven’t lost everything…yet. Also, there are other members that started gambling very young and were never able to acquire many things. We had one member who wryly observed, “I never lost a house due to gambling. I lost the money before I ever bought the house, and therefore, I cleverly eliminated the middle-man”.

What most of our members eventually come to understand is that our life’s manageability is not a function of “how much stuff we still have”. The reality is that the life of a compulsive gambler is typically very stressful. We usually are lying often to cover up how much we gambled and for how long. Even if we have a good income, we usually have financial pressures that are not conducive to peace of mind. We often have trouble sleeping because of our worries caused by gambling while simultaneously we are plotting to return to gamble more. This is simply not a life that we are “managing”. Rather, the illness is managing us and forcing us to make increasingly bad decisions.

Worksheet 1B

– THAT OUR LIVES HAD BECOME UNMANGEABLE

Reflect and discuss about some examples of the unmanageability of your life as a result of your gambling. This would include instances where you were not able to satisfactorily manage important elements of your life such as personal relationships, jobs, finances, legal issues, health etc. because of your gambling.

After you have completed the worksheets, ask yourself this one simple question – Do you admit that you are powerless over gambling and that your life has become unmanageable? If you can honestly answer “yes” without any reservations, you are ready to move on to Step Two.   If you are still unsure, we encourage you to continue to attend meetings and look for the similarities with other members rather than the differences. Over time, you may begin to realize that you fit into our program more than you originally thought and hopefully you won’t have to do more destructive gambling to become convinced. Keep coming back. It works if you work it, so work it. You’re worth it!