Feeling confident to change

Hey all,

I've seen some of you guys on the chat this week which has been such a big help already to get my head into a good state of mind and hear some stories from other people.

I'm 21 and have made a bit of a mess of my life. I started out when I was 19 when I'd bet on football every weekend. One day I thought I'd try the casino and won £1,300. It was a great feeling - I could buy loads of presents for my family for Christmas and then buy myself stuff I wanted. Fast forward a year later and I've managed to get myself £12,000 in debt annoyingly winning all my losses back several times over only to lose it again.

I managed to give up before for around 50 days. That took a lot of financial restrictions, I basically couldn't touch money if I wanted to but allowed myself an allowance to buy food. Whilst this worked, when Christmas came round it kinda fell apart as I needed more money to pay for gifts. I'm now determined to figure out the deeper reasons and get control of urges. We all know how it feels to sit and plan out how we are going to pay off the debts and how we are going to work really hard - then an hour later we've convinced ourselves it's a good idea to gamble away £500 because we'll "definitely" win it back.

So, this time round whilst I am at rock bottom, I'm feeling confident and practical to overcome this. I'm hoping this forum and the chat will help me keep on track and hopefully I'll be able to beat this.