bad situation .. again

Thankyou 🙂

I'm not one for "signs" you know, but I might just have had one, even though it sounds ridiculous.

I've been budgeting - again - which is all i ever seem to do, and while I wait for this payment from the DWP tomorrow, I was looking at being £2.10 short of what i needed ideally.

Just £2.10.   So, almost inevitably, the 'twitch' started    "Only £2.10.  £3 if you round it up.  One spin .. just one.   One and i'll withdraw".  And so on and so on.

This had been going on the the last couple of hours and, sadly, I succumbed.   Made the deposit to the website, but when i refreshed the page, the balance was the deposit plus an additional £20 quid.

It took me by surprise because I assumed it was some kind of free or bonus bet - considering the amount of money i've dropped on that site over the past few months, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like that to keep me interested.

Thought i'd check to see if it was a free bet by trying to withdraw it and it let me do it.  So i'd made £20 quid by doing absolutely nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I know this is absolutely not something to be "proud" of.   At all. I succumbed to the temptation again, which is not the way forward, but I can't help but to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.   I do have a weird, black sense of humour like that I suppose.

I've just been to write "day one" on my calendar (again) but this time it really is going to mean something.   

Withdraw your money.

Stop gambling.

Stop making excuses.

Almost everything you’ve said reminds me of my mindset. I’m only 150 days GF but don’t recognise those feelings anymore. Like you, I have a somewhat black sense of humour and also felt a calm when the game was up. I look back and laugh at myself. You should do the same, but you need someone to be brutally honest with you.... you haven’t given up gambling yet.

You must. You know you must. I haven’t a clue how you’d do it without blocks in place because I couldn’t. I wish you all the best but you really need to want to stop and because of the nature of this illness, blocks are absolutely integral to success.

I understand what you're both saying, I really do.   It's unfortunate that I fell at the first hurdle, so to speak, but this isn't something I can just switch off overnight.   I am committed to stopping this and I will.

Good. I’ll be watching progress and giving you kick up a**e if needed.

it is exactly what I needed years ago and I wish someone had told me straight. 

Just checking in on you pal. How are you getting on? 

I agree blocks are paramount. I thought for a while I could do it off of sheer will power, how wrong I was. This wasn’t like going on a diet, or keeping up sessions at the gym, this is addiction! 

However badly I wanted to stop the addiction was like the devil on my shoulder telling me ‘go on one more time to win it all back’ I cannot stop without initially not being able to physically gamble. 

If I have a crazed day where I try to log into sites, or open new sites I know it will not be possible anymore. This is what keeps me safe whilst I work towards understanding why I have this horrible addiction. 

I truly believe now recovery has many levels and many steps that need to be taken, I didn’t realise this before.

I do wish you the best of luck stopping but I am genuinely worried about you, as your mindset (although wanting to give up) still has a real element of denial to it. Which reminds me of myself back when I knew deep down I wasn’t ready to give up.

keep coming here for support