Brief Facts About Bettors Anonymous
Bettors Anonymous is a non-professional, self-supporting, truth-centered fellowship of men and women who have joined together to stop gambling and to help other compulsive gamblers do the same. We welcome anyone who has a desire to stop gambling. There are no dues or fees for membership; we are self-supporting through our own voluntary contributions.
Compulsive gambling is an emotional illness, progressive in its nature, which can never be cured, but can be arrested. Before coming to Bettors Anonymous, many of us felt that our gambling was merely a financial problem, or that if we could only win back our losses or manage our budgets better, everything would be fine. In BA, we learn that gambling is only a symptom of a much deeper underlying emotional and spiritual condition.
Our experience proves that lasting freedom from the obsession to gamble requires total abstinence, coupled with spiritual awakening and character transformation. Any compulsive gambler—no matter how far down the scale they have fallen—can attain freedom, self-control, sanity, peace of mind, and financial recovery by applying the Twelve Steps of Recovery and Twelve Unity Steps as a way of life.
The Definition of Gambling
In Bettors Anonymous, gambling is defined as follows:
"Gambling is any betting or wagering, for self or others, whether for money or not, no matter how slight or insignificant, where the outcome is uncertain or depends upon chance or skill."
This includes sports betting, casino games, lotteries, scratch tickets, raffles, stock day-trading, card games for stakes, bingo, dice, video poker, internet wagering, and betting on friendly games or office pools. For the compulsive gambler, one bet is too many, and a thousand are never enough.
The Seven Suggestions for Newcomers
To the newcomer who sincerely wants to stop gambling and find a new way of life, we offer the following suggestions based on the proven experience of our members:
- Don’t gamble for anything. Avoid the first bet, one day at a time. Total abstinence is the only foundation for recovery.
- Attend meetings regularly. Go to at least two or three meetings a week. Group participation is essential.
- Live the program One Day at a Time. Do not worry about never gambling again for the rest of your life. Just focus on not placing a bet today.
- Get a sponsor. Choose someone who has solid recovery time, has worked the Twelve Steps, and is living proof of the program.
- Work the Twelve Steps. Study the literature and work through each Step thoroughly and honestly with your sponsor.
- Stay away from gambling associates and environments. Do not enter casinos, racetracks, sportsbooks, or social gatherings centered on betting.
- Be patient with yourself and others. It took time to create the wreckage; give yourself time to heal spiritually, emotionally, and financially.
The Twelve Steps of Recovery
The Twelve Steps are a set of spiritual action directions—practical things to do for the actual attainment of spiritual awakening, emotional sanity, and freedom from the compulsion to gamble. They work for people in all degrees of financial and emotional wreckage.
1. We admitted we were powerless over gambling—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral and financial inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive gamblers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The Twelve Unity Steps
The Unity Steps protect our fellowship and ensure that Bettors Anonymous remains united, self-supporting, and focused solely on its primary purpose: carrying the message to the compulsive gambler who still suffers.
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon BA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for BA membership is a desire to stop gambling.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or BA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the compulsive gambler who still suffers.
6. A BA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the BA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every BA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Bettors Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. BA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Bettors Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the BA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, and internet.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.