Hi, ive been battling gambling addiction for just over 10 years, and recently my life has been hell!
ive been in and out of g.a with no real success, ive attended cognitive theropy in london, (400 miles from where i live) for an initial session then telephone sessions without success, and tried hypnotherapy with no success at all.
I managed to stop for around 7 months without a single bet, and i slipped back into it around a month ago. Since then ive been off work, tried to take my own life, and everything has been a downwards spiral! I think what makes it worse this time around is the fact ive gone from being gamble free for such a nice length of time and being happy, to being in the same boat i was in when i was gambling, with the big black cloud over my head.
I cant explain how happy i was without the gambling, and how more focused on life and work etc, but i just want to get back that way and everytime i try to stop gambling with it being a few days or a week, i just seem to give in and gamble again, because im thinking of the losses and trying to win it back.
I think everyone has their own reasons for why they gamble, whether it be escape the pressures of life and stress, or for money reasons, i just dont know how to stop anymore.
Advice would be appreciated, but like i say ive tried alot of things, inc banning myself from bookies, and installing software. Im really in the s**t financially and already been bankrupt once i dont fancy doing it again, as for the past few years my credit rating has been bad, one day i do actually want to be able to buy a house and at this rate i wont be able to.
Hi anonymous, welcome to the forum 🙂
Sounds like a tumultuous journey you've had there, can I ask, when you were in & out of GA how many meetings were you doing? There are people @ my group who have on occasion done 6 a week & I remember from an AA open meeting, people being told to get to as many meetings a week as they drank. I can't speak for the cognitive therapy but I know for a fact hypnosis is not a solution because I tried it myself. I was mortified to hear that @ £200 per session he couldn't make me do something I didn't want to & I had never experienced a life without gambling @ that stage so I didn't want to stop, just wanted to stop losing.
If you've gone back to it again it's because what is broken in you still isn't fixed but you have a baseline now. You know you can abstain from gambling, you also know life is better when you don't gamble, it's time to let go of your losses. All the years I kept thinking the only way to get straight was to use the one thing that had caused my financial problems in the 1st place kept my nightmare alive for about 3 decades...Drawing a line under them has allowed me to move forwards. There is no cure for addiction but we can learn to manage it, no-one else can make you do this, it has to come from you & it can - ODAAT
What a great responce. Where i live we only have 1 meeting per week, thats on a monday. The next nearest meeting is an hour away. I dont know why g.a didnt help, but i did everything right, i went through the steps, well until step 6 or 7 i think. I dont think meetings were strong enough, i heard alot that the meetings we have where i live were poor in comparison to other cities meetings. I just dont know how i managed to stop, all by myself for 6 months, but i'd like to go back to that way, its just how!? I think i just had enough and convinced myself that online live roulette was a fix. Theres alot of youtube videos showing live roulette games where the ball jumps out of the number it lands in, looks magnetised! I think that is what convinced me last time. Also i found out 'why' the likes of l*******s, coral, p********r etc studio's are based in latvia, because their gambling isn't licensed and they can get away with cheating i heard. I think all of that was enough to put me off, yet i forgot this so quickly and got sucked back into it. Fortunately roulette is my only real downfall, im not really into anything else. Its hard because i do actually enjoy the thrill and buzz it gives you, and the escape from real life, but i hate the comedown off losing.
I'm gonna ask it because if I don't, others might...How long would you spend gambling in a session? There's someone on the site @ the minute who travels 80 miles to a meeting. I completely identify with what you are saying...My closest one is literally a few miles away & I baulk @ the idea of travelling to others . Daft thing is, the meetings I can't be bothered to travel to are all within my self exclusion zones...Go figure huh?!? The question is, how bad do you want this? GA isn't a miracle cure either (shame, I was kinda hoping that would be too)...Working through to Steps 6 or 7 isn't committing to it the way you need to commit to recovery.
Of course you love gambling, I did too, despite the damage it does...Who doesn't love a fairytale. Thing is, it's a mirage, an illusion of our own making, we ignore the pain it causes or quickly forget it because we get so tunnelled vision on the prize. Fixed or not, if you play through any amount of money the times that we play it through with even a 97% return, there's only 1 winner & it ain't us. We can't win because we can't stop! And just because roulette is you current poison, doesn't mean it will stay that way because if you figured out how to cut that out but don't figure out your mind, chances are other stuff will start to become more appealing. I'm not clued up on the other type of therapy available, (only that psychodynamic has been suggested to me), do you have a support worker after your suicide attempt or a GP that you could talk to? This is a vile, progressive illness & the recovery process can be long & bumpy but I'm yet to hear 1 single story where anyone says they went back to gambling & it was brilliant. We can't control our gambling so we only get the highs & not the lows, the only way to win is to not place a bet in the 1st place - ODAAT
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