Help required

Hi Sean, welcome to the Forum and well done for posting what you have here,

Firstly, you are not a fool my friend - in fact, you are the opposite because you have recognized that you have something in your life that you have little or no control over, and you want to stop.

There are times when you see winning as the answer to all of your problems, when in fact it causes you many more than if you actually lost; you crave the euphoria of winning, like everyone else here including myself until I stopped over five years ago, after gambling for twenty years.

If you win, all it does is make you crave more of the same at higher stakes, which invariably leads to losing. If you lose, you face soul-wrenching desperation to regain what you have lost, which then leads to losing and then spending money that you don't have.

Nothing you ever do in life will ever change that lose-lose scenario; the best thing you can hope for when you gamble is to lose a small amount and walk away, which is enormously difficult for a compulsive gambler. If this is the case, then you have to ask yourself what you are trying to achieve; you have an element of control before you start but once you do, you are lost.

You have a demanding life; it is very common for people to come here when work and home pressures increase - they turn to gambling because they need some sort of outlet or mental space, away from the constraints of your everyday existence. This is what you must change my friend - you have to find another, more postive and constructive way of dealing with how you feel. I did when I stopped; I found that gambling left gaps that I needed to fill so now I do charity work, go hiking, take exercise, write, sing and much more - your time is limited understandably, but there are always options my friend, and you need to do more to find them.

You want to stop, you want to move forward as you say; if that is truly the case, then you need to draw a line under your past, accept that gambling is something you are effectively mentally allergic to and move on with your life my friend. You are not a bad person, you are an intelligent person and a good Father from how you write; you struggle with urges and you need an outlet I said, but nothing is worse than how you feel right now and things will only start to go more and more downhill if you don't tackle it head-on.

Seeking professional help won't put your job in jeopardy - Gamblers Anonymous is exactly that; you don't have to reveal who you are or what you do. The GAMCARE helplines are the same, and so is this Forum; you are never obliged to reveal anymore than what you are experiencing.

Sean, you are a good man, a young man, an intelligent man who has a fortunate life; you should be proud of yourself, not ashamed, for coming here and speaking as you have. But what you can't do is bury your head in the sand and ignore the problem - you have created and chosen a life where people need to rely and depend on you; you are entirely capable of giving them that and being the very best husband and father that there has ever been, but you must give everything you have towards stopping, right now, immediately because you could be weeks or months away from making things much worse and doing irreperable damage; the vast majority of people come here when it is far too late - you haven't done that, you have the chance to put things right - that chance won't be there for much longer so take it, grab it with both hands and walk away from gambling for good.

Things may seem bad now, but if you stop, I can guarantee that you will look back at this moment in years to come and breathe a huge, huge sigh of relief that you stopped when you did. Value it, cherish this opportunity my friend.

JamesP