Help with stopping gambling

Hi Miscjoe,

Sorry to hear you are having a difficult time.  Please contact the helpline if you would like 1:1 support and to look at some of the options available to you.

Best Wishes

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Hi Joe, I have had success in leaving gambling behind for the last 2 years. I have not gambled now for nearly 2 years but before that, I gambled for around 20 years, the last 8, I was totally addicted and gambled every day.

I struggled to let go of gambling because I wasn't ready to give up. For the last 5 or so years of my addiction, I hated gambling but I still did it. I tried so hard to self exclude but would end up opening new accounts, feeling backed in to a corner at my own decision to stop. 

As soon as I self excluded, I felt relief but it was quickly followed by resentment, so I always ended up quitting for a short while, then seeking out new places online to bet. Gamstop was a game changer for me because I knew that I was never going to head to the bookies as you did.

As you have probably already found it, self exclusion from the high street bookies is much harder to impose as they do not uphold their end of the bargain either and often allow players who they know are excluded to come in and lose their money. The idea is that both parties keep their bargain, you don't go in but if you do, they don't allow you to bet. Often, neither of these things happen. 

I can't tell you how many times was the last time until it finally was! It took a lot of work and a real shift in attitude to make me quit Joe. I also desperately wanted to avoid GA because I have social anxiety, not because I was ashamed of going. If you want to avoid it because of the stigma then you should remember that there is no shame in having a gambling addiction. That is what gambling is designed to be. It exploits people who are vulnerable and when it happens, society can make you feel like a low life, a good for nothing. Addiction affects people from all backgrounds. It does not discriminate and you should feel no shame about what has happened. People don't choose to become addicts. The addiction often fills a void in a person's life and when it does, the addiction takes over that person and robs them of the person they are. It isolates them and cuts them off so that all they have left is the addiction. Don't let it get that far, Joe.

Here are some of the things that worked for me:

Change your mindset. Stop believing you can win. The longer you play, the more you lose. That is simple fact. You cannot win in the long term but an addicted gambler cannot be satisfied with any win and cannot handle any loss, so no amount of either will stop us gambling.

The way to stop is to change your thoughts. You cannot win back your losses. Accept the money is gone. If you don't then more will follow. I initially lost just a few thousand over the first few years, small bets, nothing crazy, but I couldn't stop and turned the losses into nearly £40,000. I still owe about £13,000 in debt.

Stop thinking of isolated times when you won. This keeps you gambling too. You have not won anything because the overall effect of gambling is to lose money. It allows you to win now and then to keep you on the line....it throws you the odd few hundred to soften the blow of losing thousands and we fall for it.....we are happy that day, because we still view it as a win. This is what keeps the cycle going, Joe. Think about it this way, if I handed you a tenner, and took £50 off you, would you be happy about it? So why are gamblers like this? The answer is simple, because it still registers as a win in our addicted brains.

Change the way you think and you will be able to see the sense in stopping Joe. Get angry, they design it to be addictive. They set you up for a fall and when you become addicted they act like it shouldn't happen and put the blame on you which makes you angry and depressed when really that is what it is designed to do. The gambling companies tell people all the time to gamble responsibly but they do not advertise responsibly. 

See if you can find the book by Allen Carr, 'The easy way to stop gambling'. It is really useful in helping you to break the thoughts that make you carry on gambling and helps you realise how stupid it all is. The thing is Joe, people often gamble to feel happy like everyone else, and they let the machines beat them down so much that when they do get thrown a win, they feel total elation, and that false hope is restored and their addiction continues.....People might gamble to be happy like non gamblers are, not realising that if they just stopped gambling, then they would feel good anyway. It's such a stupid cycle to get stuck in.

Well done to you for having the courage to try to stop. It is not easy and there may well be plenty of falls along the way, but as long as you keep trying, then you will get there Joe. I never thought I'd make 2 years after gambling every single day for 8 odd years but here I am, offering you the advice I wish I had all those years ago.

Give it a try and see how things go. Don't beat yourself up if you relapse and remember in order to relapse, you must first have made the all important decision to stop which ultimately means you are trying. Fill your time with lots of things that make you feel good and that are positive and constructive. Buy yourself something out of the money you would have wasted gambling and let it show you the value of money again.

Take it easy Joe and keep things simple. One day at at time is all it takes to give up gambling. Put as many measures in place as you can and remember to get those bookies to enforce your self exclusion. They are breaking the law if they don't! Many banks now offer the option to block your cards from gambling transactions. If they don't, ask them for it.

Don't let your right hand undo what your left hand is doing. Switching to the bookies on the high street will not change anything. You will lose there just the same. Stand by your decision to quit and you can save yourself years of heartache. One thing you will never get back is time, Joe. How I wish I could change that.

So many good wishes to you.

Hi Lost & Found,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, I appreciate that.

What you say makes sense to me and I can see the truth behind the 'fun' of gambling. I suppose I know the words but haven't managed to walk the walk yet.

My initial problem was online, I started off gambling with £20-£50, won around **** and I was forever chasing the high of a big 'win' again but in the process was loosing hundreds removed link I was moving house around the time and would need a mortgage, knowing this I realised I had to stop due to the transactions on my bank statements, the only way I could stop was to sign up to gamstop and self exclude. To replace online, I started off at the bookies and arcades, only ever using cash.

Of course, I've had 'wins' but only ever ended putting it back into the machines. I would find myself chasing my losses. I know that my 'wins' are only ever a small amount of the money back that I've lost, and like you say, the cycle continues. In my mind, I'm banned from the bookies, therefore I don't think I could bring myself to reenter, partly due to the fear of a staff member calling me out, which would be quite embarrassing. I only ever use the one bookies and the only one arcade, I suppose I feel comfortable in these places. I actually only ever play one game on the fobts. I'm not sure if I'm addicted to the game and gambling or whether the two merge into one.

Thinking about it in my head, I think the monetary aspect of gambling has been lost on me, it doesn't matter if I'm up or down, I just want to play. Which I suppose is dangerous bearing in mind these machines are designed to take as much money as they can.

Luckily, I'm not in debt and I'm sure my losses are low compared to some other peoples, but I estimate it at around £12-15,000. I know I cannot get this back. But I think of it and wish I could of done something else with that money. I suppose, I have to use the fact that if I quit gambling, in 12-18 months, I could have this amount of money sat in my bank or better yet have paid it off my mortgage.

I've tried to discover the route cause of my gambling, I think it is escapism. From work, family life, responsibility and in a weird way to try minimise stress, but I understand gambling just causes more stress. Thinking about it, I may have just conjured up the above to try and justify why I started gambling, maybe I started initially to try and win money for my house and the disease took hold and gave me the above justifications to keep me hooked in.

Today so far has been gambling free, I know I will make it today. I know that I can get to two weeks (I've been to this point before), but it's the long term I want to succeed, otherwise, I loose a lot of money and the cycle starts again.

I've installed a day counter app on my phone, I'm hoping eventually I get enough days, that I see too much value in that number to loose it, if that makes sense. The only place I can gamble is the arcade, and I must say, I hate the place. I don't particularly like the staff, the other gamblers who go there (maybe because I see that's the patch I'm currently on), I know that may seem obnoxious, but I try to frame it like that to stop me going there, sometimes when I drive past it, I stick two fingers up, it's funny but it's quite gratifying.

Writing out the above has helped, it does help to write down what you think, so again, thank you for allowing me to do that and I hope I haven't bored you.

I will keep re-reading what you have said to me, because I know it is the truth and I will try and take strength from your words. You will now be part of my conscious. 

Congratulations to you as well for being nearly two years gamble free. I'm sure your life is much better now than what it was and I hope your words of wisdom that you can share with fellow sufferers makes you proud. 

Joe, it is lovely to hear back from you. I can relate very much to sticking fingers up to the bookies. We love it but we hate it too! I used to change channels every time an ad came on because it would either be a trigger for more gambling or a trigger for anger. Now, I force myself to watch it when it's on and I learn to see the stupidity in it. I have read a lot and watched a lot of stuff online to help me grow strong against the machines. They are powerful but what you will learn Joe, is that no one can force you to bet. You are not out of control, remind yourself of that. Even with addiction, you still make the choice to bet and you can always choose not to. Somewhere along the way, the thought creeps in to bet....you sit on it a while and entertain yourself with the idea....and at some point you decide to give in. This thought pattern can be broken by using the techniques that I mentioned earlier. I have even gone so far as deposited money and still withdrew it again. There is always time to walk away from a bet, even if you are on your way to the shop. I could feel the resistance creeping in for the last few years and knew that betting was not what I really wanted to do. The good thing about now is that although I still want to gamble (because I have conditioned my brain to want to)I have lost the impulse to bet. It is the impulsive nature of gambling that is so dangerous, especially online. You can lose thousands in seconds and you don't even have to get dressed to do it!

How many times have you wished you never opened that laptop, or walked down the street? How many times do you wish you never placed that first bet, because once you do, you're either going home with a win or you're going home with nothing. Even if you win, how long will you keep it, a day, two days, then back it goes...I wouldn't even have chance to withdraw my winnings before I would cancel it and send it back to my balance and of course, I would lose it all. They want you to, that's why that feature is there.

Sadly, hindsight is all we tend to have after the money is gone. What I try to do when I am thinking about betting is imagine the balance in the corner of the screen reading £0.00. That is how it looks before you bet and that is how it will look at the end of your gambling session. Thinking like this helps deter me from making a deposit and you can use this for the FOBT's as well. 

Remember that gambling is nothing more than legal pick pocketing. They throw you a few quid so they can slowly bleed you dry. It's like bats numbing the cattle they are feeding on while they drink their blood! Sorry to gross you out, but when you think of it like this, it helps.

I know what it's like to have to keep this to yourself. I gambled around my partner for years, small bets, just for fun....he carried on being able to gamble normally but something changed for me, my bets grew large and I started going upstairs to gamble alone and lying about losses. I took out 7 credit cards to pay for expenses like food and bills so that my partner wouldn't know we were losing money. I didn't gamble with the cards but I used them to pay for everyday things so he didn't know we were short. I used to panic every time the post came, trying to get to bank statements before he did.....it was awful. Most times he would fall asleep in bed and I would just lie there staring at the ceiling, heart racing, throat choking, worrying about all the losses and how I would pay for it all. In the day, I would have to smile and be jovial so as not to blow my cover. I couldn't risk him finding out because all I ever wanted to do was have the chance to win it all back.

I am glad that you don't have debt, Joe. That is good because it will help you leave gambling truly in the past. That has always been a problem for me as I still owe so much so my gambling stays with me. My debts cost me so much more in interest rates and the debt really helped fuel more gambling because of the pressure I was under. Not having debt will help ease the pressure on you.

It's funny you say you only played one game because I always used to only play roulette. Same old boring game all the time. I had access to hundreds of games but never played them.  I didn't even like it, I just switched off and was able to immerse myself in it, like you say, it was escapism for me too. Sitting there, just endlessly pressing 'spin' in a trance, like a machine. 

It does stop being about the money for many people, Joe. It is just about game time. I think you don't see the figures as real money on a screen and that is how it is so easy to throw it all away. A win is just credits to play longer. That's all. 

Stay strong and take things slowly. Be good to yourself and remember that you can choose not to bet. It's okay to think about betting and it will be like that for a while. I still do most days but I choose not to. It gets easier but it is best to stay busy and get your hobbies back in your life. It's amazing how much you stop being you when you gamble. It takes far more than just your money.

Day 3 of my recovery. Using this post to jot down my thoughts.

I've noticed withdrawal symptoms, agitated, annoyed and short termpered. Seem to be taking it out on the people closest to me.

Temptation is there almost to try and stop the above 'mood', however I know that is the addiction trying to get the better of me.

I'm guessing these feelings dissipate the longer you remain free of gambling. Just being free of it for a few days shows the depth to which it can take hold of you. 

I find myself wondering how gambling is legal, bearing in mind the consequences it can have. Legality may be a bit severe but I would certainly question the ease of access. I suppose it's all about the money for the powers that be, a tax on everyone who dares enter this world.

Looking forward to day 4 and eager to face the challenge head on, although I feel somewhat anxious for the tests ahead.