Need help and support to finally stop gambling

Hi everyone,

I am new here, but unfortunately not new to gambling. I have tried to get rid of this addiction on my own, but have finally accepted I can't do it by myself which is why I am here.

I have a fiance and a 8 week old baby plus parents who have worked really hard to give me a good life. I feel like I am betraying them by gambling and I want to change for good.

I first started betting at university after my housemates brought back some football betting slips, and the worst thing happened I won a lot of money to start with and thought it was a good way to earn extra cash while I was studying. I guess you all on here know how that goes and before you know it you are hooked into the cycle.

The stakes escalated and I started chasing losses. The first problem was sports betting and then I got really addicted to playing poker online for around 18 months. I have not played poker for around 5-6 years now, so I have at least managed to get rid of that part of my gambling addiction.

I have quit sports betting several times in the past and abstained successfully for around 6-7 months at a time.

The major problem I have is betting online, I never really go into a bookmakers.

The other issue is that I am self employed and work on a computer so I am connected to the possibility of the betting sites 24/7 which makes things worse.

I have tried self excluding on all the sites more than once but they make it easy to reopen or just open a new account. I have about 4 seperate accounts with the same bookmaker - I know it is my own fault and accept responsiblity for what I have done but I also think the bookmakers are morally bankrupt, they claim to have these protection measures in place for vulnerable people but they dont enforce them - but then why would they.

I have used some blocking software but that is not great because it can be disabled or you can do a reinstall of your system and it is gone.

From today I am trying to put as many physical obstacles in the way of gambling as possible although I know that is not enough and the urges will still come, I hope it will help me to keep better control.

I will list the physical barriers I am trying to use here and if anyone has other suggestions please share them.

1. I have set up site blockers, and used the BT parental controls on my home internet to not allow gambling sites on any devices. I plan to get my partner to create the password for this and not tell me so I can't unblock the software myself.

2. I have recently opened a bank account that is a cashcard only account with ******** that allows direct debits so I can still pay bills from the account but cant spend money online.

My plan is to pay off the overdraft on my regular debit card account with ********* and close it so I have no bank card that I can use online.

3. I also have two credit cards, the ideal situation would be to pay them off with a loan and make loan repayments straight from my new ******** account, so I would still have the debt but no card to use. Unfortunately I dont think I would get the loan at the moment. I am wondering if I can ask the credit card companies to block any further spending on the cards? Is this something they would agree to do?

If anyone else has any ideas or suggestions for things that have helped them stop gambling online please let me know and I'll try to use it.

Thanks for reading and maybe these are not the right words to sign off with here but... good luck to everyone who is affected by this... I wouldn't wish it on anyone.