John64 the count on the list is from Sunday, so today is your day 301!
Thanks for all the kind words, and I forgot this week is a tough week. Next Saturday the whole nation will go gambling crazy and we all need to be extra vigilant as it will be in our faces more than ever!
I'd like to join the challenge please! My last bet was 16/06/2014 and I found last years challenge really helpful for getting me on the forum and keeping me focused. I've not been great at regularly visiting these past few months, but I am still around!
Wishing everyone every success in their challenges. Here's to a fabulous 2015!!!!
Thanks for updating my total even though I didn't check in. Going to find the next month tough so will be on here a bit more I think. Day 21. No money til payday but payday is 2 days away although my outgoings to several lenders are almost the sum of my wages.
Oh the joys of gambling and the damage it does to your life. Can't wait to be free again.
Bornagain wrote:
John64 the count on the list is from Sunday, so today is your day 301!
Thanks for all the kind words, and I forgot this week is a tough week. Next Saturday the whole nation will go gambling crazy and we all need to be extra vigilant as it will be in our faces more than ever!
Congrats John. A good landmark i hope you keep adding to
I'd like to check in for the week please.
Keep marching troops
tri
think I already have thanks Phil
Thanks Phil, I really appreciative the time and effort you make in organising this group. Your efforts mean so much and I'm sure I speak for all that this is immensely powerful in a road to recovery and a better life. If there is anything I can do to help you please just le me know.
Spent the Easter in France viewing the D day beaches. Was incredibly humbling knowing what our elders have done for us. lovely to walk around the towns of France and not see the barrage of gambling establishments or adverts on the TV.
Finances are so much more manageable now although my debt repayment plan will go on for a few years yet. Still if I was still gambling it was just be getting worse and worse.
have a great week all.
Well 100 days today. This was my first major target i had set when i stopped gambling and had something in mind to what i wanted to buy as a reward. However i have changed so much in these 100 days the reward i have actually decided to gift myself has cost nothing. That reward is the key to a whole new life. Being gamble free has giving me so much over the past few months and is something that will keep giving. I have become a better husband,father,freind,son and person. I now feel healthier, wealthier, happier, wiser, contented and for the first time in years i actually like myself as a person. No need to lie about where i have been for the last few hours or worrying about how i would replace the money i had lost. The big difference for me this time is the way i look at gambling now. Before when i tried to stop i was always wishing i could go back gambling and looked on it as something i enjoyed and was missing. This time with some help i have realised that enjoying gamblingvis an illusion that is created to keep us gambling. I now understand that gambling is something i never enjoyed doing and would only do it to feed my addiction. So if i never enjoyed doing it then i will not miss it now and that is my way of thinking. When ever i get a thought of gambling now i treat it not as i wish i could place one bet but treat it as i am so lucky i do not want to gamble any more. So will spend today with the people i love and have a few coronas later to celebrate and heres to the next 100.
Great post Greggsboy brilliant to read about the difference in your life and mindset, keep it up!
Pinky333 all you need to do now is make another post checking in and you will be added to the challenge.
Hi Phil sorry for missing check in. Away with the wife and kids for Easter. 31 days gamble free. Bit worried about National weekend as we usual have family round and make a bit of a soy of it. Some of them don't know about my addiction.
I'm checking in at day 43, on my way to a european city for the weekend. Bit of a strange story really, I've organised a trip with work colleagues and they have all paid, the only problem was....when I was gambling late last year I used the money to feed my bad habit.
I have a lot of recovery to go and being 43 days I'm very proud of my efforts so far. Not been to a bookies or online in 43 days!! So here's to another 43 days. Hope that by the summer I can balance my bank a bit and get some debts paid off. I have a looooong way to go but this board helps when I am feeling down. Hope everyone has a good weekend, I'm hoping to catch my favourite team on the TV this weekend and enjoy the fake without a temptation. Thank you everyone.
Hi All, quickly checking in and will be 317 days GF this Saturday! getting ready for a wee break - so can't write much but good luck all in reaching your personal milestones and don't forget why you are here every week checking in!! Great retention rate though - and well done e1 who has / will reach the 100 days of 2015! Keep marching forward to a gamble free future. Kind regards, Cliff
Afternoon everyone,
Checking in on day 11 and feeling the benefits already from not gambling. It has been tough so far but I am extremely determined to do this and turn my life around. I've started keeping fit again and eating healthier which has gave me another goal to work towards and keep my mind from gambling.
It has only been a short period of time so far however things are looking up. This site has assisted me in so many ways also which I am truly grateful for.
Thanks.
Scott x
Whoop whoop I'm 70 days 10 weeks gamble free!!!
Checking in on day 106.
Well done to all fellow soldiers. Great to see so many of us reach treble figures.
This is my first time posting so I'll introduce myself and how I got myself into a little bit of trouble but I'm now two days clean!
But basically my first exposure to a casino was September 2014 but I managed to control myself in there. My friend had just started university in Sheffield and me and another friend of ours went down on the train to go see him. There'd been talks that we'd visit the casino and at 1am in the morning we did. We got signed up and went straight in and I loved the big, wide envoronment and the bright and colourful lights and we went to the roulette table. I'd been 18 since July but never really done anything for it, like I don't drink much because it doesn't agree with my stomach so therefore I could do something else now that I was 18 and that was to gain access to a casino so it was a good buzz.
We placed £5 on red and red came in and we doubled this fiver. But at that moment in time I knew it was time to stop as my luck would quickly run out but my friend insisted we placed another and he did, we agreed on black and the ball span, it landed on red so we lost our money. Fortunately seen as my friend forced me into making the second bet, he gave me my initial £5 back and that was the end of that, I felt no other intentions to ever visit a casino again. And I don't even think I would have been bothered about losing that £5 either but I'm not too sure.
Anyway Mid-February this year, I was bored one Sunday afternoon and decided to place a football bet online. I deposited £10 into my account and put £1 on Bradford winning the football and they did win 2-0 giving me £3.60 returns so I was £2.60 in profit and I loved this excitment of making a bit of money just by predicting the football and did it all afternoon winning money and losing some and at the end finished in £2.29 in profit.
I don't know what quite gave me the urge to carry on gambling but I decided to play their online roulette where they gave me bonus money. I ended up making around £10/£20 on this game and decided to call it a day and I knew I'd had enough. But they wouldn't let me withdraw my money due to the bonus they'd given me until I wagered £460 more and I kept betting so I lost this limit but in the end I lost it all, including the £10 deposit.
I felt awful for losing £10. I'm only a student and the only income I have is whenever my family give me money here and there. But I basically kept depositing money to try and win this £10 back and a few days later decided to give up trying once I was £120 down. "Why was I bothered about £10?" I kept thinking to myself but after this I didn't gamble for a few days and whenever I did, it was only £10 every now and then.
But one weekend I won it all back! I'd started putting money on 0 because it was popular and ended up withdrawing nearly £200 back into my bank account. It was so easy to win back that I decided to continue playing and I even got it up to £70 more and I was talking to my friend on here really enthused about how I'd paid back my gambling debt back and even paid off things I'd bought for myself as well and borrowed from my savings for. But I found it so easy to gain this money, I got greedy and ended up losing the £70 I had in my account and then when I tried to win that back, I lost the £200 I'd won the night before.
Again, I just carried on playing every now and then and I ended up playing one Saturday. I wasn't bothered about £100 of the previous losses as they were wins anyway but I was bothered about the initial £100 I'd lost that week in February, but this time I did end up losing another £100 of my own money so I was £200 down now.
I'm not allowed to say the name of who I was using as I wrote a post yesterday and it was starred out, but I'd walk through the city centre and walk past numerous of this brand of bookies each day and it would remind me how stupid I was to be bothered about £10 and how I was £200 down just by chasing that.
Last Monday I started playing again and won some money on it and decided to call it a day but I was just bored whenever I wasn't gambling and so I continued playing and lost it all again. Luckily I continued playing and managed to win most of it back. Out of deposits and then my winnings I lost track of it but I think I won my original losses back but I was very lucky to not lose more money. I was also going away in a few day's time and had a final football bet on for Tuesday but England and Italy drew and I'd bet on England so I'd lost that.
With going away I thought with the limited internet and knowing I'd won my losses back as well as nearly losing more, I thought it might help me ride out the feelings to gamble but unfortunately it didn't. I placed a few football bets as well as losing £10 on roulette, but I didn't bother with that £10 until a few days later where I lost £100 in various, smaller deposits, which was only this Monday. After losing these, late at night I did a bank transfer from my savings account where I have money in there that I'm saving up for a trip to Amsterdam, and after transfering to my card, I made a £100 deposit into my account and wagered some large amounts to try and win it back. I lost this £100 so I placed another £100 in and again, nearly lost all that. That second £100 left me with just £5 in my account and I was nearly in tears and my heart was pounding. I had a panic attack and it didn't help, especally when I am on tablets for anxiety as it is. Fortunately I was lucky enough to get my money up and make some larger bets and these larger bets came in. I was up until 3am gambling and playing this game to try and get myself back into the position where I was before..I didn't get to my target but thought it was enough to call it a night, and withdrew this to my bank and left £10 in my account for another day.
I played the next morning (Tuesday) and lost this £10, and made another deposit of £10 and lost that so I deposited my £100 winnings from the day before..I was lucky enough to get up to £400 with this but again got greedy and played all day. I was so close to losing this money as the £400 got down lower than £100 and it took a range of ridicilously high bets to get me up to this amount of money again, I was lucky. But I carried on and even managed to get £600 into my ccount and knew it was time to stop and withdraw now because I'd made a profit and thought trying to get anymore would be greedy and a risk. I withdrew the money to my bank account and had no intentions of withdrawing it.
The next day I had an email from the site yesterday (Wednesday) saying due to my email regarding technical faults on the Monday night/Tuesday Morning, and me losing some bets, they'd credited my account with £101 and was sorry for the inconvenience. Straight away I logged into my account and withdrew the money. Later on in the day I was tempted to reverse the withdrawal and play with it but I didn't and I was proud of myself for this. I simply had no desire to gamble after I was exhausted from my panic attack and how horrible I felt when I nearly lost all my money again.
Last night most of my winnings came into my bank account and I took great pleasure in allocating bits of it back to each of my savings accounts. It's so nice seeing large amounts again especially from making a profit from the bets. I worked out how much spending money I had left for when all payments came in and others went out and figured out I'd have £35 and I just had this feeling that one day I'll get bored and I'll deposit this into my account, lose it and then try to win it back and as a way of coping I'm just thinki ng of spending it on other things like booking my theory test for driving so that I can take my test when I'm ready and also buying myself a nice new pair of sunglasses instead. I'd rather lose my money buying things that will have a use to me unlike gambling where I lost the original £10 and got nothing from it. Apart from experience when it was too late.
With the way I felt the other night, I've scarred myself for life I think. I felt horrible and never felt that bad in a long time and knowing I felt like this has put me off gambling for the last few days. One of my friends said he liked how I wasn't ashamed to admit I got addicted and I told him that I want to just warn people how seriouslt addictive it is, just one casino visit that I made didn't get me hooked but then later on I did. I told him to keep away from it and never, ever get in the mess that I was just in. I was lucky to win it back with profit when it could have so easily gone the wrong way and I could have no money and no savings right now. I want to keep that money in my account as a reminder. One of my close friends joked with me on the day I won the £600 saying "Least you don't have to work for your money ;)" And I told him with the way I felt the night before, I would rather have done a day's work than to ever feel like that again.
So yeah, that is my story. I'm two days clean and I hope to report back this time next week and say that I'm 9 days clean because I think that will be my longest on record. Before posting this I was close to putting some football bets on but I managed to keep away from it. I think providing I can keep my mind occupied elsewhere I might be able to fight this! All my winnings are locked away in my savings and I don't want to withdraw them for gambling, only ever for my trip to Amsterdam and other things in the future that isn't gambling related.
I just hope all of us here who are fighting can stay strong and keep away from these devilish games!
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