Gambling in Texas: a brief history
Texas's restrictive legal gambling environment shapes everything about recovery in the state. There are no commercial casinos, no legal sports betting, and no online poker. Legal play is limited to the Texas Lottery, pari-mutuel horse and dog racing, charitable bingo, and the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle tribal casino in Eagle Pass. Texas residents who gamble heavily generally do so across state lines, at WinStar and Choctaw in Oklahoma or at Coushatta and L'Auberge in Louisiana, or through daily fantasy sports, offshore sportsbook apps, and sweepstakes casinos. The 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions saw serious pushes to legalize casinos and sports betting, and both failed. The result is that Texas treatment systems are built around an out-of-state and online gambling footprint, not a domestic casino industry. Public funding for problem-gambling treatment is modest compared with other large states.
SMART Recovery in Texas
SMART Recovery has a smaller footprint in Texas than Gamblers Anonymous, which is the pattern across most states. There are roughly 14 SMART meetings active in Texas as of 2026, with most clustered in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, and several available statewide via online video. Most Texas SMART groups are general addiction meetings where gambling is welcomed but not the primary focus. A small number of gambling-specific SMART groups operate online and accept attendees from anywhere in Texas. SMART uses cognitive behavioral therapy tools, motivational interviewing, and the four-point program: building motivation, coping with urges, managing thoughts and feelings, and balanced living. There are no sponsors, no steps, and no required spiritual framing. Meetings are facilitated by trained volunteers and are free. For Texans who find the 12-step model a poor fit, or for people who want a secular structure they can pair with private therapy, SMART tends to be the natural alternative.
State-funded recovery resources
The Texas Council on Problem Gambling, based in Austin, runs the state helpline at 1-800-742-0496 and serves as the local affiliate for the national 1-800-GAMBLER line. The Texas Lottery Commission contributes a modest allocation to problem-gambling resources, but Texas does not run a state-funded gambling treatment network on the scale of California's CalGETS or New Jersey's DMHAS program. ICGC-credentialed gambling counselors are available in the major metros but become sparse in smaller markets. SMART Recovery itself is a national 501(c)(3) and is not Texas-specific. Texas has no formal self-exclusion program because there are no state-licensed casinos to exclude from. Many Texans use the self-exclusion programs at Oklahoma and Louisiana casinos as a workaround when border properties are part of their pattern.
Texas state helpline · 24/7 confidential
1-800-742-0496Operated by the Texas Council on Problem Gambling
What recovery looks like in Texas
SMART Recovery's draw in Texas leans toward attendees who want structured recovery without religious or spiritual framing. That demographic includes a meaningful share of younger sports bettors who developed problems through offshore and sweepstakes apps, tech and knowledge workers in Austin and the Dallas suburbs, and people who have tried Gamblers Anonymous and found the higher-power language a barrier. SMART also tends to draw people who pair group meetings with individual therapy, since the cognitive behavioral language overlaps directly with what private clinicians use. Texas SMART meetings often include people working through gambling alongside other concerns such as alcohol or stimulants, because most groups are mixed-addiction. That can be a feature for someone with co-occurring issues and a limitation for someone who specifically wants gambling-only peers, in which case GA or an online gambling-specific SMART group is usually a better fit. The geographic reality of Texas, where the next city is often three hours away, means online SMART meetings carry a heavier share of the load than they do in denser states.
14 SMART Recovery meetings in Texas
See the live meeting map filtered to SMART Recovery on the live meeting map, or open the full SMART Recovery hub at /meetings/smart/.