I have not done that....yet.

The very first g.a. meeting that I attended….

I was hurting so badly.

I knew I was in trouble.

The debt….I was beginning to drown in it…..

It was when I first acknowledged that…things were bad….and not getting better anytime soon.

Not unless I did something.

A few months prior, I had called the number on the back of my Platinum Players Card…the girl talked to me for a while…but bottom line was…’get to a meeting’.

No way I was doing that….I didn’t.

Several months later….
Everything was worse.
*I* was so much worse.

There was a noon meeting…I could make that one without anyone knowing.

There were three other people there….

I sobbed…..

This ‘program’ discouraged ‘bailouts’….I was really hoping for a loan…

This ‘program’ said I could never gamble normally again….I was thinking…they could teach me how to CONTROL my gambling.

I really didn’t WANT to quit.

Not FOREVER.

A lady at this meeting…she was running the meeting…we talked for a bit…one of the things she asked me…was….

‘Have you ever left your children alone so that you could gamble?’

My children were very young at the time.

VERY young.

Of COURSE I hadn’t left them alone.

I said to her “oh no….I would NEVER do that.”

She simply replied “Yet.”


She pissed me off.

A lot of things about that day pissed me off.

How dare she imply that I would EVER do such a thing?

She doesn’t know me.

I am a wonderful mother..and I would never…NEVER…leave my children unattended so that I could gamble.


And although I gambled, off and on, for the next six years…I am thankful that I can say that I did NOT ever leave my children unattended so that I could gamble.

But…

Now I understand…

I understand the ‘Yet.’


There are many things that I didn’t do in order to gamble….

But…no longer do I think that I am ‘above’ such things.


I have talked to people…who have done all sorts of things in order to gamble….things that I would NEVER do.

But then…

I have actually DONE some things that I would never have thought I’d have done.

Many things.

And I now understand that this illness is progressive…..that if I continue to gamble, my thinking will become more and more distorted….and I will NEED to gamble more and more….and I will justify things….that are not justifiable….as I have done in the past….

I now understand that….what I am willing to do…what I am able to justify….escalates over time.

That…things that I would NEVER do….things that…appall me to think about doing….can easily become commonplace….as my thought processes malfunction and mutate.

If I choose to return to gambling..I know that I am accepting a condition where…..anything that I have NOT done in order to gamble….I have not done YET.