Hi,
Hopefully I've finally hit rock bottom with my gambling and today is the first day of recovery.
I have always enjoyed gambling, primarily on sports and have at times got lucky. This luck has given me confidence that I can pick a winning bet which had lead to my problems. Even as I as I type this I have a voice in my head that if I'm a little more careful and a lot more disciplined, I can be successful with my betting.
I have been in control of my gambling for years but following a break up last year, my living costs dramatically increased and disposable income decreased. I had been having a small bet on the football on a weekend.
I started following tipsters and strategies and while I knew these were not guaranteed winners I would start looking for my own bets to win back any loses. The £20 bets turned to £50 which turned to £100 and so on. When things were looking really bad I'd lump on £1000-£1500 and the problem with this was that I did not always win.
I've "found strategies" to win on roulette and stayed up all night playing online. Again, I got lucky to start with and thought I had cracked the system until I lost £5000 in a matter of minutes.
I have borrowed money from my credit cards to fund this and for weeks thought the only way to pay these back was to win the money back. Again, the voice in my head is telling me I've just been a bit unlucky and I can win back the losses with a bit more disciplined betting. I know this isn't the case. I've lost around £40k in the space of three months.
I feel like I've wasted so much time this year gambling, it dominates my thoughts all day and regularly stay up until the morning betting making every other aspect of my life suffer.
Some betting sites put restrictions on my gambling but those were around 2k a month and there are so many, it's easy to just swap between them and lose so much more.
Part of me is annoyed with the credit card companies for increasing my credit limits and allowing me to take enormous money transfers but I know the responsibility lies solely at my own feet.
I earn well so will be able to pay the money back but it's going to take a few years.
Hi Mate. I feel your pain. Why do we do it!!!! You must try your hardest to not get involved in any form of gambling at any level. We all think that we can win and this will solve all of our problems. In fairness I have won lots in the past that should have put me in a better position but guess what, I gambled it all away. It takes a better person than me to win and keep it. I suppose it’s like being an alcoholic in that you can’t just have one or two. That’s the way we’re programmed and we must do our best to resist. I’m 55 and have no assets. I don’t k ow your age but don’t turn out like me.
Good luck.
You're wasting your time trying to win it back. Not because you will definitely fail to win it back, losing is actually the better option. But because if you were to win it back, it is 100% guaranteed that you would gamble it away, and then lose more trying to win that back, and so on, and that "win" will have planted another seed in your brain that you can "win" back your money. It's an illusion. No gambling addict ever quit after a win.
If you won the £40k back, it would be be gone within a week or two, or a month. And you'd feel even worse than you do now.
There is only one way to win at gambling: forget about the losses and STOP FOREVER.
@5r3tv6dp1q Hi,
Thanks for your reply. You are 100% right, I think I’ve known this for a while but it’s taken a while to accept.
A month or so ago I hovered my finger over the Gamstop button and thought “I can get out of this myself”. Over £20k later and the real prospect of having to sell my house I wish I could go back to even that moment.
The cycle is exactly how you describe it. A win or two, use the winnings to bet, lose that and chase it with more borrowed money.
im on day two now which is a start. I don’t actually feel like gambling today, the realisation of what I’ve done and what my near future look like is really hitting home.
When I’m thinking back I’m picking points where I’d wish I’d stopped. Now I need to make sure that this is the stopping point and I don’t look back in a few weeks wishing it was
@chp8nx4lej that's how it was with me. I lost £4000 in a couple of months after my gambling escalated from small bets to bigger ones (having never gambled previously in my life). One night I won it all back, cashed out and swore to not gamble again. But of course I did what all gambling addicts do and left the door open, I also hovered over Gamstop but thought "nah it's fine". Two days later all those winnings were gone, partly due to that big win making me think I could do it again, and more money, and a few months later I was down another £15,000 (and worse than that all the lost time, sleepless nights, anxiety, depression etc). It required getting on Gamstop and also putting gamban on every device (even old phones sitting in drawers) to stop it.
We all look back at points where we wished we'd stopped but we can't go back in time. But you can stop NOW. Don't make this another point where, in a few weeks or months or years you look back and think "I wish I'd stopped THEN". Now is the best time to stop (because the past times to stop aren't possible). Not next week, or next month, NOW. £40k is how much it cost you to stop. It's a hard pill to swallow but better than £80k, £150k, 10, 20 more years of losing everything and not living a normal life. In the grand scheme of things it's a small price to pay if you can stop forever. Good luck with your journey.
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