Gamblers Anonymous<\/strong> is an international peer-led twelve-step fellowship for compulsive gamblers, founded by Jim Willis in Los Angeles on 13 September 1957 and introduced to the United Kingdom in 1964 by Reverend Gordon Moody MBE. Within our trust framework<\/a>, Gamblers Anonymous sits at the peer mutual-aid layer of player protection \u2014 a member-led recovery community with no professional staff, no dues, and no fees, supported entirely by member contributions.<\/p>\n Jim Willis was an alcoholic who used his Alcoholics Anonymous experience to model GA on the same twelve-step framework, with favourable publicity from Paul Coates of the Los Angeles Mirror helping the first meeting attract a small founding group. From there GA expanded across the United States and internationally, reaching 23+ countries today through semi-autonomous national branches.<\/p>\n The Twelve Steps adopted from AA are largely intact, with one notable gambling-specific adaptation: Step 4’s “moral inventory” was rewritten as a “financial and moral inventory” because debt sits at the centre of compulsive gambling. GA also chooses its own language \u2014 members and literature use “compulsive gambling” deliberately, in preference to clinical terms like “problem gambling” or “gambling disorder”.<\/p>\n Meetings are the core of Gamblers Anonymous. They are peer-led \u2014 no counsellors, no therapists, no paid staff \u2014 and run on a strict first-names-only anonymity convention. The UK branch covering England, Wales, and Ulster holds meetings every day of the week, with several formats available depending on what someone is looking for:<\/p>\n The UK branch’s principle is “no appointment is needed, just turn up.” Globally, GA runs in-person meetings in cities across the United States and 23+ countries, plus virtual and telephone meetings for those who cannot attend in person. Open Meetings, held at least annually by most groups, allow friends and families to attend recognition events for members marking gambling-free milestones.<\/p>\n Gamblers Anonymous is a recovery community, not a clinical service. The clearest contrast in our cluster is with GamCare’s helpline<\/a>, which provides trained advisers, one-to-one treatment, and statutory regulator-recognised structured pathways. GA offers none of those things by design \u2014 its strength is peer support from people who share lived experience, framed within a twelve-step recovery model that includes a spiritual “Higher Power” element familiar from Alcoholics Anonymous.<\/p>\nHow GA Meetings Work and Where to Find Them<\/h2>\n
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How GA Differs from Professional Gambling-Harm Services<\/h2>\n