Hi I'm 27 & for a while I've realised I've got big problems with gambling, It started 3 years ago when I started playing poker, before long I signed up to ********* & the first day I won 3k, the next day I lost that plus 2k, for the next few months I lost more money until I finally banned myself. I'm not sure how long it took me but I started going to casinos to play poker, I didn't lose much but it opened me to a world of roulette, I started betting 500 on red or black, had really good days but also had really bad days, I think I worked out last year that I gambled roughly 12k away, in the end I started to bar myself from casinos, it worked as it restricts me from going but there are still casinos that I hadn't been too, I was doing well with the casinos until I found a new one in London, I went there tonight & blew 1800 in 30mins. In between the casinos I started to bet large on football matches, I went through two different scenarios, one being large bets on the favourites, the biggest bet I made was 9k on Barcelona to win, luckily I didn't do to bad with these bets but I knew I had to knock it as I was betting so much money, the second was betting accumulators, correct scores etc, although the bets were smallish I still racked up lots of losses in a few months. This is money I've worked very hard & saved for, no one knows what I'm going through because for all that I have lost it's not affecting my life (financialy). This is the first time I've told anyone about my problems, gamcare are going to arrange for me to meet a councillor & I'm pretty sure with the right advice I can kick this. Good luck to anyone out there with gambling problems, you can't win, not in the long run.
Hello Rikki,
Welcome to the forum.
You've noticed a pattern that when you limit your access to one type of gambling, you have tended to become involved with another type of gambling and to spend large sums of money again. You have a sense of the amount of work you do in order to earn the money that you're spending on gambling, and you regret that level of spending.
You haven't told people in your personal life about it yet, so well done for telling your story here on the forum, and for contacting GamCare and being willing to discuss it with a counsellor.
Please feel welcome to continue using the forum, if you like you can start a diary in the 'Recovery diaries' section. You could also browse the 'Overcoming section' where there are many interesting threads and lots of advice for recovery strategies shared among peers.
Take care,
Adam.
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