Hi guys
I've been gambling for the past year and what started off as a £5 accumulator (football) every weekend as a bit of fun with my wife has turned into £100-500 daily bets. A lot come in but a lot don't and it's got to the stage if I total all my wins/losses they're probably around equal, so you're probably thinking I'm not that in trouble much. I feel I am, I can't put my phone down, I'm constantly looking at scores and where a bet can be placed next, i get very depressed when I lose money and can't stop until I win it back. I only tell my wife of my winnings and rarely that I lose, I can't afford to risk anymore money now but I don't know how to stop. Self exclusion I manage to get around as I get bored at work and just log in. I know my card details off my heart so can't pass them onto anyone.
Im really worried where this will lead to and how much of our savings I'll risk etc
This is the first time I've admitted im obsessed with it not sure what to do?
Hi ya, you get all the help you can get & use everything @ your disposal to arrest this addiction now before you are no longer roughly equal! This is a progressive disease & it will take all your savings & a lot more besides. Like me, you are a compulsive gambler & for us, we cannot win because we cannot stop š Just because you're not in financial strife yet doesn't mean you're not feeling the same pain that is all too familiar to us š
First & foremost, you need to get your Time-Money-Location triangle broken as you only need to remove one element and you cannot gamble! Self exclude, use blockers (K9 is the free one but Gamcare can advise), admit this to your wife, hand over your finances (I'd be inclined to report your card lost & get someone to scratch off the CVV number on the new one) please just do whatever it takes because if you don't stop now, you will look back on this 1st post & kick yourself!
The road to recovery can be very rocky @ times but no-one regrets being on it! Come & join us & deal with this before 1 year becomes a decade & you're older & crusty (like me) wondering where all your life went! Time to fight for your future - ODAAT
Similar story to me - similar age too, I've been where you are - start a day as soon as I wake up with some bets on junior tennis, then once I aws at work perhaps some Australian footy, Czech youth football, Russian reserves, then some basketball from a country I couldn't even find on a map, onwards and onwards through to the Icelandic stuff at 9pm, and on a bad day a chase on some South American/NBA overnight.
Can I ask - have you actually added up your actual losses? Either via "bet history" or by looking at your deposits vs withdrawals on your bank account? I would suggest you do this and would predict that you might find that you're not quite as "equal" as you think. Look at the odds for a 50/50 on football betting - say over 2.5 goals. For most sites 50/50 is 1.83 vs 1.83. So they make 8.5% margin from a 50/50. So take that on if exactly half your bets win on £500 total staked per day, you lose £42 per day which = £11k per year.
Calculating your losses may give you one of the kickstarts you need. A second should be to read the stories on here, and see how bad the financial situation can become. Then remember that probably >95% of people on here probably have had times where they've not been that much down and have convinced themselves it's not so bad. Only to end up in a mess.
Luckily I managed to pretty much stop before things got too awful moneywise (but it's all relative). Breaking the cycle is hard, and is an ongoing process, but even leaving aside money, in terms of time you gain is worthwhile. You'll become a better person. Not for the first month - during that time you'll be moody, withdrawn etc - but after that.
I undertook counselling which helped (and still do - although only once a month now) to understand - may not be for you, but worked for me. I understand the things which caused me to want to gamble, and so there are days when I have to work hard to not gamble. This is when I come on here, to read for motivation, espeically the stories of the impact on families.
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