Something I must get off my chest

The following is very long, please don't feel compelled to read it. I wrote this for myself, and I'm posting it here mainly to get it off my chest; you won't believe how much I appreciate the opportunity to do so. This place has helped me more than you can imagine over the last few days and I bet I speak for countless silent lurkers when I say that too.

I am an addictive person, I've been addicted to countless things in the past, from relatively harmless things like video games and tea to smoking etc... I always said to my friends that gambling was one thing I would never touch because I knew how impulsive I can be. I knew I would so easily become addicted.

Looking back, perhaps there was something underlying that eventually drove me into it. I'd moved out of the flat I shared with friends and into a room in a shared house in South London with strangers, I quickly made friends with them and I didn't feel depressed, but perhaps there was a slight feeling of isolation, of a desire to change my life, which drove me to try out these 'online slots' which I had heard so much about.

I tried them out, I made quite a bit of money to start with (everyone does, right?) and it swiftly became a regular thing in my life. I won with some regularity, and I made myself forget the losses that went with them. Every month I would withdraw a few hundred in winnings, knowing in the back of my head that overall, I was in the red, significantly.

I never seemed to bankrupt myself entirely though, because if I ever did run low, payday loans were there (those evil, evil things) and I would always pay them off at the end of the month.

Here I am, 4 or 5 years later, things have got worse. I've defaulted on countless payday loans, I've probably got CCJ's against my name (I developed a fear of opening post), I've been through 4 different jobs in as many years, I've had to move back to my parents as I cannot afford rent. I'm holding down a stable job now and making relatively okay money, but none of my friends or colleagues can understand why I can't afford to move out of my parents, why I can't afford nights out, why I'm always borrowing money to make it to payday. It's all down to gambling.

This month things came to a head, I received a low paycheque (I work on commission) and as always I stupidly stuck some into my online casino account in the blind hope that I could supplement my income for the month and miraculously, somehow got my account balance up over £1000 within a week. I withdrew a large portion of it and gambled the rest, again making it up to £1500. I was ecstatic, I was walking on air (despite being down an unthinkable amount over the last few years). I carried on gambling my winnings, making bigger and bigger spins, £12 spins, £25 spins until it was all gone. I started pumping the money I'd withdrawn back in to try to win it back and lost that too until my bank account balance reached £0.

Here I am, finally admitting what I knew all along but ignored thinking that sooner or later, I'd hit one of those jackpots. ("Randeep has just won £340,000 on mobile slots" has been plastered all over that site for over 2 YEARS now). I have a problem. I've had one for years. It IS the reason my life has reached this low. It's the source of all of my problems. I need to stop lying to myself, making excuses, lying to my friends, my family and admit it. Gambling has ruined my life and I can no longer paper over the cracks. I must relish the challenge of rebuilding it, and I do.

I've borrowed some money from a friend which is precisely enough to cover my petrol until the end of this month and I've been reading these forums since I began googling 'compulsive gambling help' the moment my account hit £0 a few days ago.

At this moment I am fighting that urge to put just £10 (JUST £10.. I laughably try to justify to myself) into my online casino account, just in case I can recoup a little bit of my losses before I walk away.

Instead, I'm here, writing this.

I won't be confiding in my family, they will feel betrayed. I won't be confiding in my friends, they will judge me. (Trust me, they will, although I always pay them back, they've all gone out of their way to lend me money over the years under various lies). I must fight this alone. All of your posts have helped me and for that I can never be more grateful, some of them I have read and re-read over and over until the early hours in place of gambling until daybreak, chasing those losses.

I guess I'm only really writing this to articulate it to myself, to get it off my chest. None of you will know how many silent lurkers you have helped. That's the other reason I'm writing this. To let you know that.

If you've read this far, thank-you. I don't need you to reply, I know your sympathy is there. I know you've been through the same. I'm grateful for your openness, and for this place, and every time I go to type in my login details to those evil websites I am diverting myself here instead. I will continue to do so.

Never again do I want to feel that aching feeling of dread, the beads of nervous perspiration dotting my forehead at 3am while everyone else sleeps peacefully, that countdown inside my head of "I still have 10 spins left, surely I'm due a bonus", or "perhaps that jackpot is ready to pay out". The ironic snigger to myself as my account hits £0 and I instinctively hit that 'deposit' button.

There's a girl who wants to meet me for a drink next week, a beautiful Russian girl. I can't afford it, but gambling is not the way to pay for it. If she's worth it she will wait until payday. I can lie like the best of them, and I can buy myself a week.

I'm 30 years old, and I'm in a worse position than I was when I was 20. Gambling did this. Gambling won't fix it. I know that, my conscious mind knows that, my sub-conscious is still refusing to accept it but for once in my life, I'm determined that my conscious mind is going to win.

If you made it this far, thank-you for reading and apologies for the monologue. Whatever brought you here, stay strong, enjoy life, it's too d**n short to give away to strangers.