I’ve not meant to be negligent with my gambling blog. Writing and sharing in GA meetings are key to my recovery.
As is staying away from casinos and not placing a bet.
Don’t Gamble for Anything. As the book says.
Life has demanded much of me lately. Pushed me into corners where I didn’t and don’t want to be. People around me at “home” have been not nice. Long stories; here’s neither the time nor place to go into any of them.
It is, in part because of the stress, reason to reconnect to this blog by an addicted gambler in recovery.
Higher power. It came up tonight through reading of the literature and personal share(s).
It’s got me thinking.
How do I conceive of a higher power (be it mine, yours or another’s)?
Do I believe in a higher power?
Do I believe in God (whatever it means to me and here’s a hint: I’m brazenly unconventional and unreligious)?
Higher power.
I’m not speaking of those moments, rare and far between, through my life where a divine presence made itself known or interventions occurred — lifesaving interventions — that were irrefutable signatures of our maker / Maker.
Even a doubter, questioner, skeptic, debater and cynic — wow, that’s a load rolled into one person!! — could not debate the way out of spectacular events that defy logic and reason. I didn’t need to be convinced that Someone(s) or Something — a Force Greater than I — was at work in those rare episodes. I lived it. Experienced it. Saw it with my own eyes.
But — ever that “but” reflecting my doubting and debating nature — a belief or awareness or consciousness of a power greater than myself is at work in the comparatively unspectacular, even banal, day-to-day living is a hard pill for me to swallow.
What evidence was there of God when I prayed fervently for a winning slot machine or a jackpot to at the very least recoup my losses and lift me from a suicidal despair and darkness of my gambling?
What evidence was there of God or higher power when I prayed for the strength to walk away, just walk away, with at least $5 in my wallet instead of one emptied entirely?
What evidence was there of God or higher power when I pleaded for the strength to stop gambling? To NOT go to the casino this week, this day, this minute?
Where was God or my higher power when in absolute darkness and broke I could see nothing NOTHING but a yearning for one more bet. Just one more spin.
Just a little more spare change extracted from car and wallet — void of all paper bills — so that I didn’t have to stop gambling and experience the horrific aftermath: despair, ruination, self-hatred, self-disgust, self-brutality and, ultimately, suicide that I never quite found the courage to commit. But ohhhhh the fantasies of how I’d do it never let me rest!
“I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to a normal way of thinking and living.”
Disregarding the word “normal” — I’m really not normal in any sense of the word! – it seems that I’ve arrived at Step 2 — without even intending it!
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over gambling and that our lives had become unmanageable.” No argument there (though I do take issue with the word ‘powerless’ and that’s a whole other topic!).
What would my higher power — if I have one — look like? (Notably in my daily life, not in the thick of a crisis that could cost me my life.)
How would it feel?
What name would it have?
Would it be male or female or androgynous or something else altogether? Like neutral divine?
And if there is a higher power, does this power know me? Personally? Is my higher power for me and here to help me, specifically, through my life?
If there’s a higher power, does it see my woes and suffering? My hopes and broken dreams? Dose my higher power want to restore to me wholeness? Hope? Visions? Dreams renewed?
What is a higher power designed and tasked to do in anyone’s life?
Guide us in becoming our better selves? Our less damaged selves? Our healing and/or healed selves? Just what exactly is the purpose of our higher selves? For if we cannot do it ourselves in this lifetime — and I was taught to do EVERYTHING myself and to need NO ONE, not even the (admittedly fucked-up) mother who gave me life? I hate that I even needed milk or feedings from her.
I have no answers, only questions. A lot of questions about the higher self. My higher self, if indeed she/he/it exists.
I guess, doubting Thomas that I am, there’s really only one way to find out since someone telling me that the higher self exists isn’t convincing. Even if that person’s someone I hold in highest respect and regard.
I’ve got to find out for myself.
The same way that I as a child had to find out for myself that that blue flame on the stovetop really is hot and does burn. No one could tell me or convince me otherwise.
I had to find out for myself and if in the process of placing my hand on that fire 100 times scar tissue formed, well, so be it! In my own way and time, I’d come to know with certainty that the flame burns that I know that I know.
Higher power.
Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to a normal way of thinking and living.
Because “normal” is not something to which I aspire plus it means something different to everyone, I tweak that to:
Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to a healthy way of thinking and living.
One more tweak:
Step 2: Came to trust that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to a healthy way of thinking and living.
(It’s not the first time that this writer-and-editor has tweaked, corrected, edited and improved upon parts of the GA book that are poorly or incorrectly written.)
Step 2: Came to trust that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to a healthy way of thinking and living.
Yes, I quite like that version.
I want to come to know that power. Not intellectually (though that too) but in inner knowingness. I want to come to know that there is a power greater than I — a higher power that is mine and for me, specifically, uniquely and particular to my life self and cause — in that way that I came to know that a blue flame on a stovetop really does hurt and sear the skin!!
My doubting Thomas nature will never recede; I want only for a trust in life to develop. And a relationship with my higher power is I think a key to that growth.
Wow. For someone who’s not blogged here nearly enough, guess I kinda sorta made up for it tonight! ‘Night now.
daily living
bad bets 