Issue #4 · April 8, 2026

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for continuing to use GAmeetingFinder.com.

The site is only a month old, yet we're already setting new traffic records. Because of that growth, we've upgraded our infrastructure to better support you — ensuring the site stays fast, reliable, and available whenever you need a meeting.

As the gambling epidemic continues to grow, so will our commitment. We will keep expanding our resources and bandwidth so that a meeting is always within reach — any time, day or night.

What's New This Week

We've rolled out a few small improvements to the site:

• NEW Milestone celebration overlay — if you're tracking clean time on your account, the site now celebrates with you when you hit a milestone (24 hours, 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, and beyond). A small thing, but milestones matter. Don't have an account yet? Create one in 30 seconds to track your clean time, save your favorite meetings, and get the milestone celebrations as you hit them.
• NEW Modernized typography — we refreshed the site's font stack with DM Sans and Space Grotesk. Cleaner reading, especially on phones, and a look that feels less generic.

A Couple Friendly Reminders

• Block gambling ads — as you scroll the homepage, you'll see a small banner pointing to our block gambling ads guide. If you're looking for meetings, you're probably also someone who'd benefit from cleaning up your feeds.
• Submit a meeting — from earlier dev work: if you know of a GA virtual meeting that isn't listed, you can submit it here in 30 seconds. Submissions are reviewed before going live.

The Research Library: What The Latest Studies Actually Say

More importantly, we're doubling down on something bigger: our Research page.

Public metrics on problem gambling are often outdated or incomplete. That's why we built an evolving research library — grounded in the latest peer-reviewed, medical-based findings — to bring transparency and clarity to a topic that's too often misunderstood. The page is already live, and we're continually improving it as new 2025 and 2026 studies are published.

To keep it current, we're taking a distinctly modern approach: leveraging AI agentic research to continuously surface the latest peer-reviewed studies, government reports, and clinical findings the moment they're published. Agents do the heavy lifting of scanning journals and public health releases; we curate and verify what makes the page. It's a new way of lifting the veil on a topic that has been opaque for far too long.

If you've ever wondered whether what you're going through is "really that serious," the data provides a clear answer. Here's some of what's in there right now.

It's bigger than people think

• 20 million American adults reported at least one problematic gambling behavior in the past year (NCPG NGAGE 3.0, June 2025).
• 15% of adults ages 18–34 show concerning gambling behavior — nearly 8x the rate of adults 55+.
• 48% of men ages 18–49 have at least one online sportsbook account.
• Globally, the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling estimates 450 million people are harmed by gambling and 80 million have a gambling disorder.
• 60% of all gambling industry revenue comes from people gambling at harmful levels (WHO Gambling Fact Sheet, December 2024). The business model depends on addiction.

Sports betting legalization is doing exactly what you'd expect

• A JAMA Internal Medicine study (February 2025) found internet searches for gambling addiction help increased 23% nationally after the Supreme Court opened the door to legal sports betting. Pennsylvania saw a 61% jump after online sportsbooks launched.
• In Maryland, the rate of disordered gambling rose 42% in the three years after mobile sports betting was legalized (University of Maryland School of Medicine, October 2025).
• Each one-unit increase in sports betting frequency raises a young man's odds of problem gambling by 64% (Mancini et al., Journal of Gambling Studies, June 2025).

It's a brain thing, not a willpower thing

• Modern neuroscience confirms gambling disorder shares the same core mechanism as substance addiction — dysregulation in the mesolimbic dopamine system. The reward circuit gets rewired (NIDA Director's Blog, November 2025).
• Two recent EEG studies (Yılmazer et al., October 2025; Çınaroğlu et al., January 2026) identified distinctive brain connectivity patterns in people with gambling disorder — frontal hyperconnectivity paired with posterior disconnectivity. A machine-learning model trained on EEG patterns can now distinguish gambling disorder from healthy controls with 73.7% accuracy. We are getting close to objective biomarkers.
• The prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain that handles impulse control and risk assessment — isn't fully developed until around age 26. Sports betting apps are marketed directly at the population most neurologically vulnerable to them.

It rarely shows up alone

• A 2025 review by Sharma & Weinstein (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience) found that more than 90% of people with gambling disorder have at least one co-occurring mental disorder. More than 60% have three or more.
• Compared to non-gamblers, people with gambling disorder are 4.4x more likely to have a substance use disorder, 3x more likely to have major depression, and 8x more likely to have manic episodes.
• A Swedish nationwide register study (Journal of Gambling Studies, July 2025) found that people diagnosed with gambling disorder die on average 7 years earlier than matched controls. Suicide is the leading cause of death among male cases. WHO data shows people with gambling disorder are 15 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.

Treatment works — when people actually get it

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the strongest evidence-based treatment. Meta-analyses across 29 studies show significant reductions in days gambled, money gambled, and overall severity (WHO, December 2024).
• An intensive 3-month outpatient program in Croatia reported 76% gambling abstinence at end of treatment and 81.5% at the 6-month follow-up (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025).
• And yet: only 7–12% of people with gambling disorder ever seek any kind of help. Globally, the WHO estimates fewer than 1% get formal treatment.

That last number is the one that sticks. The treatments work. The research is clear. But the gap between people who need help and people who get it is enormous.

If you're reading this and you've already taken the step of finding a meeting, you're already in the small minority who didn't ignore the problem. That counts for a lot.

Explore the full Research page →

What's Next

• Ongoing additions to the Research page as new 2025–2026 studies are published.
• Continued partnership outreach to treatment facilities and state councils.
• More meeting submissions being reviewed and added to the directory.

If this newsletter helped you or someone you know, forward it. And if you need a meeting right now, find one here — available 24/7, no signup required.

Have a suggestion or just want to say hello? Email us at [email protected].

Have a Good 24.
— gameetingfinder.com