Someone help, addicted to online gambling :(

Hi Alexia

You have come to the right place even if you probably don't think so at this moment in time ! There are a few option open to you but would definitely encourage you to ring the gamcare helpline and maybe attend a local GA meeting,the helpline is very good and will definitely help you at this moment in time ! I personally can't relate to your online slots and bingo as I was a compulsive gambler on horses and most sports but know you will be in a very bad place at this moment. Try to read other people's story's and you will more than likely relate to a lot of stuff people have done and try to take what advice is given as I found this helpful and more importantly talking to people even though there's that embarrassment and ashamed feeling. Your boss doesn't sound like a nice person and seems to be getting his kicks from others misfortune. Things will get better if you WANT them to, but an awful lot of effort on your part is needed. I'm only 48 days GF but feel a lot better than I did when my wife found out everything again and I was booted out of the family home and currently living on my own. Hope my few words help you and look forward to future posts from you.

"It good to talk and take it one day at a time"

All the Best

Darren

Hi Alexia1986

Wecome to the forum and well done for writing all thet down. You are in the right place.

You will learn a great deal and you must start this learning process now.

You keep finding new sites because that is the addiction and you are addicted. At the moment you havent really wanted to stop because you are addicted. The addiction has you ignoring the odds because your pleasure centre craves dopamine and for emotional reasons you want to feel lucky. Indeed the chasing is a mind control exercise in pretending you will be lucky when you feel like it. It doesnt work like that as all the lost money should have made you realise. The addiction is so powerful though that people forget when they starved for a week and do it again

The people who design these slots know all about programming for maximum trance and addiction. The reality is addiction doesnt want you to understand the odds of winning the prizes they tempt you with. The addiction makes you ignore reality for its own dopamine fix. Indeed you may well be playing for escape from stress or depression. The reality is that its the worst and most dangerous way to gamble and it develops compulsive gamblers into wrecks and addicts. Its actually a disgrace the way the develop a red mist and a trance...They imply things are looking up with false wins and near misses. Every push of the button is a random number generator mapped to reels in the same way as picking lottery numbers. The odds of what you are really looking for are thousands, tens of thousands or even a million to one. The tiny prizes are about 1 in 10 but you will still on probability lose 9 times out of 10 and you could lose 10 out of 10 times. The percentage payout means nothing per individual session. You have to read up on these infernal machines

There is no shame in admitting the problem but you MUST now stop and get all the help and support to block everywhere and have your gadgets removed. Its that serious Im afraid....Are you ready?

You boss sounds more than iffy and you dont need people like that around you...Problem is hes your boss so I cant advise you how to handle that delicately other than at some point you will have to politely say to him that you are recovering and dont gamble.

Gambling is a dangerous irresponsible activity and too many gamblers spout the ridiculous banter of an addict.

Gambling has taken your self respect and your pride. You can get these back when you fight gambling and put proper blocks in place.

Im talking about proper blocks though and not things you can bypass on a dull tuesday evening.

Being gamble free is a wonderful feeling. I win every day....every day!...... because I dont gamble!

Best wishes from everyone on the forum

Hi Alexia,

Hold on in there! i was the same, it started with bingo spending 25 quid here and there every few months to spending hundreds every night. i would walk to work in the morning and say to myself i will not gamble today and then in the evening through boredom and like everyone started chasing the wins. I havent told anyone the extent of my problem either, my husband knew i did, just not how much time or money i spent on it. one friday night i just thought enough was enough. i have been gambling free for about 3 weeks now and i am still getting urges to go onto a site and spin, it is sooooo addictive. its the best when your winning but the worst when your losing. i am very much taking each day and sometimes each hour at a time and trying to be more productive with my time. i have self excluded from the accounts i can remember i had, but im still scared that i will start again. how are you feeling today?

I am a slot addict and it's destroying me

You ok Katie? Concerned by above post x

Hi Alexia, as others have said you've come to the right place, we've all been where you are and I have only been GF for just over a month but your story is so familiar and I was only able to stop once I realised that I was not going to win it back, and was bale to put real blocks on place to prevent me from gambling. This involved telling my husband so that he could be an external control, along with counselling(look into it via ink above), blocks on all my IT equipment and no access to funds to gamble. You can do this....

Hi Alexia (I was born in 86 as well so yay for the Chernobyl Generation)

When reading your post I could see myself from a few years back when gambling was a problem for me but it wasn't destroying my life to the point that I would consider stopping it. So basically if you won't stop gambling you will continue losing money, you will continue losing your self-respect and you will continue missing out on life - not only we (the gamblers) are constantly broke and because of that we stop socializing (at least in my case) but also instead of doing what we like/ed we substitute it with this horrible addiction which becomes the only thing in life that still gives us excitement. I think that the problem for many addicts is that when they lose, the only way they see of getting the money back is playing again because they keep in mind how much money they won some other day, we quickly forget how much we actually lose. Obviously, we lose everything over and over again regardless of how much we actually won.

I joined the forum 2 days ago after losing my 2k tax return on Saturday in just a few hours (I have already won much more but obviously I lost everything + money for my rent). Here is my introduction if you want to have a look http://www.gamcare.org.uk/forum/hello-46. Anyway, I am going to give you few tips which might help you:

- don't keep money on your account, whenever you get paid, leave only as much as needed for the bills/direct debits and keep the rest as cash at home, many times I wanted to play but there was nothing on my account so I couldn't, or if you have someone you can trust, explain them the situation and ask them if they would be able to manage your finances (which might be difficult but I think is really effective - I know few alcoholics who do that and it helps them when they get triggered)

- sort out the situation with your manager, I know it is easier said than done but he might actually be the one who triggers your gambling. I have a friend who used to play a lot and whenever he lost he would call me telling me how much he won in the beginning and how much he lost in the end. After talking with him I could instantly feel the urge to play because I was only thinking of how much I can win if I play my "cards" right. So talk to your manager privately, tell him that because of what he is saying you feel like playing and if he still continues to do that you should consider talking to his superior about the situation. Or if you don't want to go through all those unpleasant situations simply change your job - getting your life back is far more important!

- if you gamble again, write down the date and how much you lost on a piece of paper and stick it to your wall so it would always remind you how much you actually lose.

When I used to stick to those rules I was gambling much less frequently, stupid of me that I stopped following them when I thought that I have it under control and it all went down the hill.

also 2 more things:

- I used to work with a guy who is in AA and I spoke with him about my problem. I remember one thing that he told me - "Don't tell yourself that you won't gamble ever in your life again. Tell yourself that you won't gamble tomorrow, and if you don't gamble tomorrow, tell yourself the same thing about the next day" (I don't know if it sounds right in English but that's my interpretation). So the idea is to basically, not put pressure on yourself (which in many times triggers us to gamble).

- the last thing I can advise is the blocks on your pc/laptop - I assume that you use one of those devices because constant registering in new casinos and also playing them on your mobile is really slow etc. I was advised by JMan123 to install K9, I downloaded it (before downloading it you can get a free serial key for home use from their website), installed it, blocked gambling websites and unblocked some others (K9 blocked P**n automatically but I am not addicted to that YET so it's fine to use them :P) but the problem was that I could still change the settings and unblock them because I knew the administrator password. So what I did, I have put some random letters and numbers into Notepad (max. 15 characters) then copied and pasted them into the new password field (you have to copy and paste because you need to repeat it) and set it as a new password. So now I can't change the settings (at least not straight away) and I suppose it stops me from playing to some extent.

I wish you good luck on your journey to getting your life back and I hope to see your journal in the journals section soon. (I am starting my on the weekend).

Hi Alexia,

Welcome to the forum, hope you get time to update this thread on how you are doing.

Gambling on-line was my downfall. Sports betting which in 4 years when from controlled in to free fall. 2015 was the worst year of my life, the addiction had me by the scruff of the neck. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I was totally in denial and carried on. I reached my rock-bottom Feb 2016. So it's not nice to say but I hope you can relate to what I've wrote above. It's virtually impossible IMO to just stop when addicted. You need support and to put barriers in place to prevent you from feeding the addiction. My support was GA, without their support I would have gone back to the bad old days.

One year on I don't know how the hell I found all the time to gamble on-line. Put little changes in to your life. I used to go for walks in the early days of my recovery. Alone, leave your phone at home. Clear the mind, breath the fresh air and taste how good life is away from being on-line. Simple things. Recovery doesn't have to be hard, it is a challenge but hey so is everyday life.

All the best

Alexia I know this was 2 years ago but this is me now

Alexia1986 wrote:

So, I don't really know where to start but the reason I am here now is because I really do feel I have reached my breaking point.

It all started a few years ago playing online bingo (from reading other post's I see it's quite common for online bingo to be a 'gateway' to other forms of gambling). About two years ago I started playing slots in what I would called a 'controllable' manner (£10 maybe once or twice a month, and always withdrawing any wins). A few months in I started being reckless, I had gone from doing 10p spins to £1 spins and depositing a lot more in than what I would withdraw. I kept telling myself 'it's okay you'll win it back'. Needless to say I didn't. I then self-excluded and stopped online slots for about 2 weeks when I then saw an ad on the TV for another site with a welcome offer, promised myself I would 'just do one deposit' and leave it at that. That didn't happen and again I started chasing my losses and depositing more than what I could afford. I also kept telling myself I didn't have a problem and that other people must loose a lot more than me, I constantly tried to reassure myself about my actions.

So fast-forward to now and the previous 6 months have been the worst. I continued to exclude myself from sites but then would find another site and open a new account and start the cycle again (I would usually only last 1/2 days between opening new sites). To be fair the past month I have had two wins totaling to £3k which I would have thought would have covered what I put in this month, I did withdraw this however I would have said I have put around £2.5k of it back in and lost it. Last night I had what I call a gambling 'rage' where I completely zone out from everything around me and just keep spinning the slots, not even caring if I win or not. I'm genuinely scared about this problem, I keep saying this is the last time but I know in a few days or so I'll be opening a new account and starting again. I really do want to stop as I feel like I'm missing out on so much because of this problem (I can spend hours online and I've even changed/cancelled plans so I can gamble). I have not spoken to anyone about this problem, however my manager who I work with is an ex-gambler and he actually encourages gambling at work (he has no access to his finances due to his gambling addiction), I've said to him countless of times we need to stop talking about gambling but he just continues (obviously trying to live his gambling addiction through others because he can physically gamble). I find it really difficult to stop gambling when you are with someone everyday who speaks about gambling and encourages you to 'just put £20 in'.

Sorry for such a long story but I feel a bit better explaining it all as I suppose this is the first stop to stopping.. any advice is appreciated.

Thanks, Alexia

Hi Alexia,

You're not alone. I could have wrote this word for word (except the manager part)

Hes wrong on all levels and you should speak to his manager about this.

You're not alone though, I'm with you. My debt shows it 🙁

Raccch wrote:

Alexia I know this was 2 years ago but this is me now

Me too 🙁

Raccch, please get help. 7 weeks ago I split up with my fiancГ©. We had been together 6 years. He was my best friend, my love and my world. He’s gambled away all our savings. I could have handled that, but he lied about where it had gone. He has lost so much more than money. Please please get help. Had he talked to me I’d have worked through it with him.

Hi Alexia

I could have written your post, it all sounded so familiar. I had / have an online slot addiction, which got so bad I considered stepping out in front of a train, as I couldn’t see any way out. I would exclude from individual sites, but then another one would pop up. I have a good job, but would be constantly broke, and reliant on credit cards .. I was depressed, so gambled to make myself feel better (which in reality just made things worse)

In July last year I registered at Gamstop, and gave not played on online slot game since. I have managed to clear £5k of debt (which is not all of it, but a nice chunk), and my head is just so much clearer. I can’t tell you how much of a difference Gamstop made, it was huge. When I had a urge to gamble, I just wasn’t able to, as I was blocked from everywhere, so I soon stopped trying.. and my life became something else ... it became a life without gambling. I no longer spend my days worrying about money, and feeling sick with stress. I pay £500 a month off my debt, which leaves me with enough money to pay the bills, and have a nice life. For once, Christmas wasn’t on credit .. in fact, I don’t even have possession of a credit card anymore.

Make the decision, register at Gamstop, don’t obsess over what was lost, make a plan moving forward, and learn to enjoy a gamble free life