Building Local Fellowship and Starting a Meeting

With large, established recovery fellowships, starting a new meeting can be as simple as listing it and waiting for people to show up. Building local fellowship in GAA will likely require more outreach, like getting the word out to potential members and the professionals who might direct them to your meeting.

We usually don’t rent a meeting space until we have two or more members who will support the new meeting together. The way to build fellowship is to connect with local people in need of recovery from gaming addiction. There are many such people in every town and city, floundering in halfhearted attempts to fight addiction and moderate their gaming. Over time, they will inevitably run into trouble of one kind or another and come into contact with marriage counselors, student counselors, psychologists, therapists, ministers, doctors, or unemployment agencies. The way to maximize our chances of meeting our local fellow sufferers is to let these professionals know that a fellowship for overcoming compulsive gaming exists and how to contact us.

We suggest making contact with local professionals, starting perhaps with ones you already know. Printed copies of the Newcomer pamphlet can be distributed along with contact information. If you do not feel safe giving out your phone number or email address, you can create a new email specifically for this purpose. Newcomers may also try reaching us through the List of Local Group Emails.

We often make new friends among the people we meet and find strength, encouragement, and accountability in our shared recovery. We gain so much from them, much more than we seem to give, as we relate to each other’s stories and learn from each other’s successes. Together, you and your new acquaintances can sustain a meeting and help the group grow. As the group grows stronger, so too does its individual members.

Meeting Purpose

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop gaming. Each person decides for him or herself whether he or she is a member. We do not have any kind of membership process. Any two or three people who desire to stop gaming and are gathered to support each other in this aim may call themselves a GAA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.

The main purposes of each group are to host regular meetings and mutually support their members. Anyone who thinks they have a problem with gaming is welcome to attend meetings, participate, and seek support. Some meetings are open to family members supporting their loved ones. Visitors without gaming problems are usually asked to refrain from speaking during the meeting.

Learning from Meetings of Other Fellowships

The circumstances, habits, and problems of each of the various types of addiction, such as gaming, drinking, drugging, sex, gambling, and overeating, can vary widely. On the other hand, successful recoveries from addiction (regardless of its obsessive focus) all seem to follow a similar path that deals with very similar issues. Thus we can learn very much from the members and literature of other recovery fellowships.

Face-to-face contact and mutual support with other people in recovery can be a powerful life-changing experience. While a GAA fellowship is yet forming in your area, you can learn much from the existing fellowships. You may learn important lessons on recovery principles, working with others, running meetings, sponsorship, working the steps, and countless other topics. You may run across fellow sufferers from compulsive gaming, as it is not uncommon for people to suffer from more than one type of addiction.

In particular, we recommend checking out open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. All people are welcome at open meetings, while closed meetings are intended for those with a desire to stop drinking or drugging. AA has the advantage of being the oldest and largest fellowship with tens of thousands of locations around the globe. NA also has many meeting locations and decades of experience. Some NA groups welcome addicts of any type to attend and participate. Most AA groups ask that non-alcoholics refrain from speaking during group discussions.

Be aware that many recovery groups in the U.S. heavily promote monotheistic beliefs. If one group seems unwelcoming or preachy, try out another one. Each group has their own personality and is autonomous in how they run their meetings.

Typical Meeting Etiquette

  • Just listening is fine. You don’t have to share if you don’t want to.
  • One person shares at a time. We focus on listening to the person sharing and trying to identify. Having overlapping conversations and responses would be too distracting and difficult to follow. We avoid cross talk.
  • We share experience, strength and hope. Each person shares from personal experience. We generally refrain from theorizing, preaching, or talking about other people.
  • We refrain from advising. We might share personal experience in response to what someone else shared, but we generally refrain from giving advice or talking about the other person.
  • We respect anonymity. Each person decides how much or how little personal information to divulge. Most meeting leaders will ask attendees to treat the meeting as confidential and not gossip about who was at the meeting.
  • Topics are optional. Some meetings have a topic for discussion. They are always optional. Anyone who has a burning question or need for help is welcome to ask. Anyone is welcome to give a brief check-in unrelated to the topic.