11 more steps

D. and I both came to an awful realization this weekend. Something I'd been joking about is actually true for both of us.

It happened like this. We went away for the weekend. We got a cool book on cd to listen to on the drive, I'd packed candles & bubble bath, he was going to make steaks. Everything was set. Until that awful urge set in and we headed to Shreveport on Saturday to gamble. On the way there, we did stop at a neat old house/museum for a tour and talk with the curator, something I never expected D. to be interested in. He was especially fascinated by the Dr.'s old medicine bottles, morphine, laudanum, etc. An ex addict never changes some things, we laughed about it.
But, the casino experience, well....let's just say there were a lot of promises to myself broken. We didn't spend every penny we've got but we spent more than I told myself we would and we went back to the ATM 3 times! I told D. not to tell anyone about the trip, especially my sister. I was ashamed of myself.
Then it hit me. I'm addicted to gambling. The phenomena of craving was there. I get a "high" from winning. I break promises to myself, I don't stop when I say I'm going to. We left with nothing, after being up several hundred, as usual.
Now, normally we gamble, we lose, I get depressed, D. gets mad. This time, I talked to him about how I was feeling and he was realizing the exact same things about himself. We talked for hours. We're going to look for a church, we both feel that AA isn't enough for our spirituality anymore. We talked about what we want in a church. We don't want to be the richest or poorest, the most or the least tattoo'd, the only bikers, etc. We just want to fit in.
We talked and talked about changes we need to make in our lifestyle. Mature things like not blowing every penny we earn. It was great, we never got around to the candles or bubble bath bur our marriage was renewed just the same.
Now, we've done the 1st step on gambling, only 11 more to go.