The Gamblers Anonymous

The vast majority of counselors regard involvement in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) as essential for successful recovery.

According to gamblers Anonymous, the Fellowship of Gamblers Anonymous was founded in 1957 in Los Angeles by a recovering alcoholic and gambler known as Jim W. He was joined in this effort by another gambler, Sam J.

However, this starting date is in dispute. According to other unofficial accounts, it began in 1947.

What became of this initial effort is unclear, but the GA that began in 1957 has been in operation continuously since that time.

GA is a private, non=profit organization that exists for the purpose of helping compulsive gamblers live their lives free of gambling.

GA groups are self-supporting and do not accept outside contributions. There are more than one thousand chapters worldwide.

The GA recovery program is a '12 step' program similar to that of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) which started in 1935.

Some GA chapters are also informally affiliated with in-patient and outpatient treatment hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and a wide variety of addiction treatment and counseling programs.

The overwhelming variety of addiction treatment and counselors encourage and even insist that their clients actively participate in GA.

Because GA does not record attendance and gambling activities of its members (it takes the anonymity seriously), it is extremely difficult to evaluate how successful it is in helping its members achieve recovery.

Two other groups are affiliated with GA: GamAnon for family members and friends of compulsive gamblers, and GamaTeen for the teenage children of compulsive gamblers.

Given Jim W.'s Familiarity with AA as a recovering alcoholic, it is not surprising that the GA recovery program is modeled after AA's '12 Step' recovery program. However, it differs from the AA program in several important ways.

In most communities, GA meetings tend to occur less frequently than AA meetings. Also, GA places less emphasis on systematically working through the steps. Consequently, there tend to be fewer step meetings.

GA's strength lies in its reinforcement of the idea that the compulsive gambler's problems are shared and experienced by other people. That is what makes it a self-help group. How it accomplishes that involves what has been called a 'selective adaptation' of the AA model.

Compared to AA, GA has a different perspective on 'spirituality'. AA's 12 steps make frequent reference to God (for example, 'made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understand Him', 'Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.'

GA's 12 Steps make less frequent reference to God ('Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs') and when the word God is used, it tends to be qualified in various ways.

According to Browne, one of the reasons for this is that Sam J. was an athest.