Never had a big win in close to 15 years slot play

Is 50k big? Is a million big ? Either way u would still have to work, you'd still live in the same house, you'd still cook the same food. Seeking the win which u would quit is pointless as u never would have enough. Either way what's the point of giving up work we wouldn't be helpful to society if we didn't work? And if we are not looking for the big win to give up work what are we actually looking for?

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Do u want carry on working? Do u want a bigger house? Do u want a nice car? Its all materialistic, its what we are programmed to want to make society work and the world go round. Lets just go to work untill we cant anymore and enjoy life for what it is.

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Adam, Great words true. Yet, for me the 50 grand would not be 'that' big in that I always hoped I could get back losses and get some sercurity so I could continue in life , as you say, and feel safer and secure. AAlso, I, like many wanted to recoup losses and I thought that even getting half of what I lost would be significant and I'd stop at thaat point. But the big win never did come for me. And after reading countless stories of large wins it seems that most just end up in the same amount of debt as the win. What a vicious cycle this compulsive gaambling is. This theme of the big win dream seems common. It's not even really a dream but more of an illusion. sadly. Having nearly 15 years of losses I do sometimes wonder how others have won that much aand more... even if they did put it all back. Guess I did not wager high enough. oh boy, I think that my wager were high enough... way too high but not high enough for that larg eof a win. I'd better not focus on an investigation of 'this' topic, that's for sure. Just odaat... freedom. tara2

Hi tara2

I have just come back to the site today after having a major relapse and found your post interesting. I have also never had a big win despite gambling for more years then I can remember. But when I really think about it, even if I did get that big win I would still probably think I could win more and gamble every last pennny until I'd lost it all which is the case for many of us on here. It doesn't matter how much we win, we still don't have the control to walk away and not out it back and in fact from my own experience, the bigger I have won, the more reckless and destructive I become when on a binge and I'm sure I'm not alone on this. I tell myself that I just need a reasonable win and then I'll stop but in reality when I really think about it, I make it to be about the money but in actual fact, it's not really about the money it's about the escape and the thrill I get at that moment until I come crashing back to reality. The only way any of us will ''' win big" is if we stop gambling for good and use that money for better purposes. We will never get the money back we have lost so we just have to make peace with it otherwise we drive ourselves crazy.

Hi anon, Glad for your response here. I know that there must be many of us who never had big win. Also , your words about 'the binge and being reckless and destructive'... I becaame a reckless binge gambler and this was and is a very hard reality becuase I alwaay have had months clean time an dthen a binge so true recovery is harder to see because it's a binge pattern. I'm 4 months slot free so I'm really staaying close to recovery. I bought my last scratcher at the end of the year. For now it's odaat. But, I do wonder how many more people on here have never had aany kind of big win. I never have and I need to close the door to an future experiments. tara

I don't play slots so never really dreamed of anything like that. Whenever I tried in the casinos I never won anything period, it really did eat my money. Never liked them after that.

I do dream of a lottory win, but I don't play it.

In that way urgh, you are so lucky. I don't know what kind of gambling you did but to not be involved with slots nor have any interest is a blessing, even if a small one. You see, it's pretty much the only kind of gambling I did. tara

Hi Tara. I had a big win. Not enough to get even a quarter of my losses back but a lot of money. and it was the worst thing that could of happened to me. It increased my gambling so much and lost all of it and chased the win for several years and only got deeper in debt. I am a compulsive gambler who loses whether I win or lose. The slots always get it back and so much more.

Carol.

Nope and the truth is I was never gambling for any amount that would have made a difference to my life. I have done a lot of thinking during recovery and I speak about this addiction now as a drug addiction. The money was a much lesser factor and it was something I used to get into my trance. I equate it to a drug fix and a stupor/trance while drugged. At the worst of my addiction I didnt know whether I was high or low but I was zoned out. The come down was not being able to play any more then realising it was food money.

To be frank I didnt know whether I was gambling, having fun playing or chucking it away. What I was doing was getting a fix of some sort. There are no coherent thoughts after a short while for a compulsive gambler like me

At some earlier point I had a fleeting thought of money but I wasnt really playing to win money...I was using money to keep playing and I didnt want to go home...I will say that again...I didnt want to go home....or anywhere else

The drug was the expectation...the dopamine...call it what you want...The chemicals which make us feel something and drive us. I cant even say it was a high....more zoning out and escaping from real life

I had low self esteem. I was lonely, lost and shopping for items like clothes had lost all its meaning to me....I wasn't going anywhere anyway.

I craved the slots and the maximum I could have won in town was £500. However I was usually playing on 20p so the max was often far less than that. I never really won because I was thousands of pounds down every year. What I really craved was escape from my fears and lack of direction. Something away from trudging aimlessly along the main street. I wanted to see those reels spinning.......even getting into the warmer environment of the bookies/arcade was a factor. Crazy as it sounds, a cheap coffee some flashing lights and the promise of expectation made me feel special and part of something

So when I see the new people joining the forum they are extremely confused what is causing them to gamble to extinction...greed? the big one?... luck?...stupidity?...an addiction they are trying to understand.

My considered view is that gambling now needs to be treated like a dangerous drug thats being sold. Medical experts already have it in the same chapter. They ban certain drugs for a reason and Im saying that gambling acts on the mind in effectively the same way

Its not being treated with the seriousness it deserves and we all know the reasons for that

Your comments please

Best wishes to everyone on the forum

I couldn't agree more. I barely ever played high stakes anyways. It was just a means of 'switching off', not having to face all the s**t the powers that be seemed to enjoy throwing at my pathetic self. It always started with wanting to be 'in the zone' as long as possible, and ended with me wanting it to just be over so I could go home and pity myself.

I probably got hooked on my first try, a small win that was enough to pay for my dinner and a few drinks extra. Even though a few weeks passed until I did it again, this was probably the only time ever I spent a win on anything else but my next fix.
I had a win every now and then, but it was nowhere close to what I owed anyways... didn't really matter... I was on autopilot and it got straight back in.

Now I know that money never really played a role in this. It was just a useful tool to convince myself as to why I'd go there in the first place, although I knew deep down that I wouldn't leave until there's nothing left (or the shop closed).

Maybe that is what left me confused for so long... not being able to tell why I actually did it.

The preferred way society deals with this subject is ignoring it, but I think for the majority of people (including some in politics) this is mainly down to unawareness. Afterall, I'm quite sure that I don't know anyone who has ever personally met a compulsive gambler...

I never had a 'big' win and I know that from what I've read it typically only increases debt to get a big win. Still, I hear of so many people having these large wins. I never had a large win in around 15 years. The sick part of my brain has tempted me to do high risk gambling. I suppose logically , this makes a high win more probable but it also makes huge loss an debt more probable than the win. In the past year I was headed towards escalating my wagering pattern to 20 times more than my largest bets which had been 2 to 5 dollars. I was betting 2 to 5 dollars and ruining my myself more and more. I could not longer place smaller bets. In my head I forsaw the fantasy of high risk gambling developing. I am so grateful to have halted. I am so grateful , even though I've had a couple slips. I am so grateful that I held back on the higher risks and kept coming back to recovery. It's not easy but I'm here. It's been a little over 4 months since my last slot zone binge mistake. Thaat was a sad day. The most I ever put into those bandits in one day. Escalation! It had to stop. Now as of Jan. I am also not buying scratcher tickets. The biggest win is the odaat way of winning in other ways. I still see that fantasy of hitting the big one in the back of my mind. I'm admitting to it and big time remembering the reality of the situation. Facing reality. tara2

We need to start getting legal advice.The FOBT advertise as saying random.THIS MACHINE IS RANDOM.A scientific student has claimed this is wrong.Surely this is false advertising and they have falsely taken money off thousands of people.