Browse 155 quotes about Gamblers Anonymous.
“The spouses and loved ones begin to understand that the work of their recovery must begin from within and that they are responsible only for themselves. They will learn that it is possible to love their gamblers without enabling.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Parents may be forced to face issues presented by an adult child who gambles, and, by extension, their adult child’s spouse and perhaps even their grandchildren.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Parents may feel tremendous anger and a sense of betrayal just as spouses and companions do. But there is also a great deal of confusion surrounding the origin of the problem since parents generally feel responsible for their child’s upbringing. This is one of the primary points at which the path of the parents diverges from the path of other non-gamblers. Gamblers might be able to make the other nongamblers in their lives feel as though they have contributed to the problem in the family, but a parent may actually feel that they have caused it.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“When a child is born, a parent often has dreams and plans for that child. With the realization that this child is a compulsive gambler, those dreams are likely shattered.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Parents will often attempt to "fix" their children by giving in to their demands. The gamblers, of course, will exploit this by insisting that the parents can indeed fix everything by just giving them more money.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Since compulsive gamblers are master manipulators, the gambling children will attempt to capitalize on their parents' feelings of guilt and despair. They will beg, plead, blame, set one parent against the other and play all manner of other games designed to get the parents to bail them out of each worsening situation.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Grandparents are often a favored target as are siblings. Siblings are often coerced into keeping the gamblers' secrets as well as giving the gamblers money. This can cause even more rifts in the family as the other children begin to lie to the parents to cover for their siblings. The gamblers, in the meantime, will continue to manipulate all these family members in order to achieve their goals of obtaining more money and time to gamble.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The children may witness situations such as the constant turmoil and game playing between parents and experience the gambler’s physical and emotional withdrawal from the family.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The most important thing that can be done for children in this situation is to appropriately explain the problem. The children may not find the truth as threatening as the fear of the unknown.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Some adult children of compulsive gamblers may identify with the gamblers, mimicking their behavior. Others may become the protectors of the non-gambling parent. Even though these children abhor gambling and may have grown up to dislike and distrust the gambling parent, they may actually help the gambler keep secrets so the non-gambling parent does not become upset. They might give the gambler money so the other parent does not suffer the financial and emotional consequences of the gambling. Some children will strive throughout their adulthood to secure the love and attention of the gambling parent, continuing to give money to the gambler, even to the detriment of their own relationships and financial security. For some children, their only choice is to physically and emotionally abandon their parents in order to strive, unencumbered by their parents' problems, to live a normal life.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“In the beginning one may fail to recognize compulsive gambling as a serious problem. The loved ones may participate as part of their social entertainment, enjoying the excitement and glamour of vacations in places such as Las Vegas and similar destinations.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Although at first, [non-gamblers] may be disquieted by the early intensity and complete absorption of the gamblers in the game, fears are set aside.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“In the second stage of the compulsive gambling progression, the disenchantment begins, and the non-gamblers' anxiety increases.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers lose and are remorseful. The non-gamblers are consoled in the mistaken belief that the gambling is only intermittent and thus accept any promise made to never gamble again. Months pass between gambling episodes. Most of the time, however, there is ongoing gambling which remains hidden from view.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“In the third stage of gambling, the illness escalates and exerts an even stronger pull on the gambler. Family relationships deteriorate, friends are gone, emotions are strained, and finances are ruined. Life becomes meaningless and the players proceed down the pathway to the complete destruction of one another.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Are we doing for the gamblers what they must do for themselves? Are we accepting behavior that is unacceptable? Are we taking responsibility which is not ours to take? Are we shirking our responsibilities to self and others? Are we in a state of denial about the reality of our situation? Are we continually reacting to the gamblers, or are we taking our own appropriate actions?”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers blame anyone or everyone for the reason they gamble.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers may make statements such as: "If you weren't always nagging me and making life miserable, I wouldn't need to gamble." "You know how hard I work and you begrudge me my hobby." "If you were a better spouse... " "If you didn't spend so much I wouldn't need to gamble." "If you hadn't made me so angry, I wouldn't have had to leave the house to calm down." "Sitting at the computer is the only way I can relax after one of your stupid fights." "If you paid more attention to me, I wouldn't gamble." Usually, the accusations are much more subtle and more difficult to deal with.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“[The non-gamblers] can’t help but wonder if they could have stopped the gamblers from gambling if only they had done or said something differently. The fact is that whether or not the non-gamblers continue to play this game and join in the argument created by the gamblers, the gamblers get to gamble.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“If my husband ever felt guilt, he never showed it. I always felt guilty. My efforts to stop him from gambling or change his horrible behavior always ended up with me apologizing for making him angry, or not trusting him, or making him feel inadequate as a person and as a provider for his family.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“My gambler put blame on me for any problem that might occur. This kept me tripping over myself to prove that I was a good person and blameless. These "blame sessions" never really ended; they just moved on to the next time my gambler had the opportunity to indulge his need to take the focus off his gambling behavior.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Sunday was my husband's day to do what he wanted, when he wanted to do it. All he wanted to do was watch sports while changing channels constantly, listen to the radio and make phone calls. When I asked him to go with the children and me to the park or to someone's house, he yelled that he works hard all week and I am begrudging him his only hobby. He never gave that up to spend the day with us.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers always seem to be submerged in one serious financial or emotional crisis after another. Sometimes the crisis endangers the family's lifestyle or assets and sometimes it affects only the gamblers' quality of life. Regardless, the non-gamblers often make the unhealthy choice of not allowing the gamblers to experience their own crises and instead proceed to find ways to fix the situation. The behaviors shown by the non-gamblers may include: Co-signing notes; Lying to creditors and employers; Asking family members for money; Making restitution for bad checks written by the gambler; Making excuses for the gambler; Paying the gamblers' debts; Compromising their own credit; Doing whatever is necessary to keep the gamblers out of jail; Making life more manageable for the gamblers.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gambler will play as long as someone will pay.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“I was standing in the way of my gambler's recovery by treating his symptoms with bailouts and sympathy, taking on his responsibilities and softening his consequences. He couldn't feel how bad his illness was because I was helping him numb the pain it caused him.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“I thought, "How could I NOT cover the checks?" I didn't want him to ruin his credit.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“My husband lied to me about why we needed money and in turn I lied to my father about why we needed money. My father took out a bank loan to give us the money and gave the payment book to my husband. When my husband missed a payment, I lied to my father, telling him that I forgot to pay it.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers withdraw from participating in normal interactions and relationships and eventually are assumed to be incapable of taking on family responsibilities or exhibiting socially acceptable behaviors.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“[The gamblers] are seen as withdrawing from conversation, isolating themselves, or refusing to attend family functions. They often retreat to gaming, watching sports, etc.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The non-gamblers come to believe that the gamblers are not capable of better social conversation, better social interaction, or involvement in worthy pursuits. They may attribute this to reasons that have nothing to do with gambling, such as exhaustion from work, bad childhood experiences, lack of confidence, etc. The unacceptable behavior becomes the norm in this environment, and the non-gamblers settle into believing the gamblers are ‘incapable’ rather than ‘ill.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“My aunt remarked to me how silent my husband always seemed to be. He never participated in dinner discussions and often retreated into the bedroom when the family was together. Once in recovery he emerged as a man with the ability to join in conversation and not run off to his private world. I had come to believe he was incapable of socializing. I came to understand that retreat was what he did as a gambler.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“I had lost all respect for my husband. I came to expect nothing from him and nothing is what I got.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers' fantasies may range from grandiose plans for the future to desperate dreams of solving a financial or emotional crisis.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Even in the face of current losses, the gamblers are convinced that the next bet will result in a win so huge that all debts will be paid, and there will be money left over to buy that house, or take the family on vacation, or buy the new car.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“In the gamblers' minds, a win buys respect, soothes a loved one's anger, salvages relationships, and makes past disappointments disappear.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“With the dreams in their heads, the gamblers are immune to the reality and pain of the current desperate situation.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Years after my husband stopped gambling he was speaking at a combined GA/Gam-Anon meeting. He mentioned the time he phoned me after he left the racetrack to tell me that he won and I was going to be able to buy the new winter coat I needed. I never received that call. The fantasy he created that night was so real that years later he remembered it as if it really happened.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“Gamblers hide the compulsive gambling so well that the non-gamblers are unaware of it. They may be aware of recreational, affordable gambling, but have no idea that the gambling has gone beyond that. The gamblers use access to family funds, business funds, credit lines and credit cards to gamble and use the love and trust of non-gamblers to their advantage.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“The gamblers calculate exactly how much time spent with family and friends, how much loving attention given to them, and how much money spent on and with them will be enough and not draw awareness to the time, attention and money that is being withheld.”
Source: GAMES COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS and WE PLAY Second Edition
“One bedrock tenet of the Oxford Group, however, would influence AA for years to come: an absolute opposition to medical or psychological explanations for human failings and thus a complete prohibition on professional treatment of any kind.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“[They] also developed some theories of their own, including the notion that alcoholics were “in a state of insanity rather than a state of sin.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“When Bill Wilson sat down to write Alcoholics Anonymous, he first prayed for guidance. The Twelve Steps themselves reportedly came to him in a single inspiration. (He identified the number twelve with the Twelve Apostles, and felt that this was a fitting number.)”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“So devoted were AA’s early members to burnishing the reputation of their fledgling organization, in fact, that when when one member, Morgan R., secured an interview on a widely popular radio show, members kept him locked in a hotel room “for several days under 24 hour watch” out of fear that he would drink before the show. When the interview went off successfully, another early backer, Hank P., mailed twenty thousand postcards to doctors, urging them to purchase Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Silkworth, a supporter of AA from its inception, was quoted [as saying], "We all know that the alcoholic has an urge to share his troubles. . . . But the psychoanalyst, being of human clay, is not often a big enough man for that job. The patient simply cannot generate enough confidence in him. But the patient can have enough confidence in God—once he has gone through the mystical experience of recognizing God. And upon that principle the Alcoholic Foundation rests. The medical profession, in general, accepts the principle as sound.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“[Jack Alexander] underscor[ed] what remains a widely held belief among many AA members: that only an alcoholic can help another alcoholic: “A bridge of confidence is thereby erected, spanning a gap, which has baffled the physician, the minister, the priest, or the hapless relatives. . . . Only an alcoholic can squat on another alcoholic’s chest for hours with the proper combination of discipline and sympathy.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“When the Big Book was first published in 1939, the American Medical Association, bewildered by its tone and inflated claims, called the work “a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation. . . . [T]he one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases went even further in 1940, calling AA a “regressive mass psychological method” and a “religious fervor,” writing: “The big, big book, i.e. big in words, is a rambling sort of camp-meeting confession of experiences, told in the form of biographies of various alcoholics who had been to a certain institution and have provisionally recovered, chiefly under the influence of the ‘big brothers of the spirit.’ Of the inner meaning of alcoholism there is hardly a word. It is all surface material.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Throughout AA’s history, its members have often embraced any literature that references disease, whether degenerative, genetic, or biochemical. AA favors the term disease because it fits with the description of alcoholism as a disease in its own literature. It also supports the foundational notion that an addict’s behavior is uncontrollable (“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol”). Ultimately the mechanism of the disease (and whether it is strictly logical to embrace it, given AA’s own views) has been less important than the word itself.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Harry Tiebout, [Bill] Wilson’s personal therapist [assured] the collected members that AA was “not just a miracle but a way of life which is filled with eternal value.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“It wasn’t long before the court systems began to mandate AA attendance for drug and alcohol offenders. AA won a landmark decision in 1966 when two decisions from a federal appeals court upheld the disease concept of alcoholism and the court’s use of it, despite the fact that there was scant precedent for a US court of law to assign itself the power of medical diagnosis. Although later decisions would rule court-mandated 12-step attendance unconstitutional, judges still refer people to AA as part of sentencing or as a condition of probation. Dr. Arthur Horvath, a past president of the Division on Addictions of the American Psychological Association, summarizes the current legal status of this practice: "If you have been convicted of an offense related to addiction, it is common to be ordered to attend support groups, treatment, or both. It has also been common that you would be ordered, not just to a support group, but to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) specifically, or to another 12-step based group. Based on recent court decisions, if you have been ordered to attend a 12-step group or 12-step based treatment by the government (the order could be coming from a court, prison officer, probation or parole officer, licensing board or licensing board diversion program, or anyone authorized to act on behalf of the government), you have the right not to attend them. However, you can still be required to attend some form of support group, and some type of treatment. These court decisions are based on the finding that AA is religious enough that being required to attend it would be similar to requiring someone to attend church. Five US Circuit Courts of Appeal (the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 9th) have made similar rulings. . . . The 2nd Circuit Court decision states that AA “placed a heavy emphasis on spirituality and prayer, in both conception and in practice,” that participants were told to “pray to God,” and that meetings began and adjourned with “group prayer.” The court therefore had “no doubt” that AA meetings were “intensely religious events.” Although some have suggested that AA is spiritual but not religious, the court found AA to be religious.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“A recent paper looking at state-sponsored physician health groups (for doctors who have problems with addiction) found that “[r]egardless of setting or duration, essentially all treatment provided to these physicians (95%) was 12-step oriented.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry