Can't cope anymore.

I keep posting in the forum whenever I have urges. It helps me, though. Since I joined this forum I only have had one relapse so far. Good luck to you.

Hi tbm1906

Welcome to the forum.

Taking the first step on recovery is hard because gambling becomes a lifestyle and something you do without even really thinking. Unfortunately, it often seems to take a particularly bad loss or other situation like a partner finding out to jolt people out of the haze of gambling and cause them to really seek out help to quit gambling permanently.

£8000 is a serious amount of money for most people but if you continue to gamble it is extremely likely that will continue to rise and you will look back on the day you had “only” lost £8000 as a dream situation.

I don’t know what your personal situation is but a few bits of advice I was given which have really helped me:

1. Accept the £8000 is gone. It is never coming back just as if you had spent it on a holiday. Consider it the cost of learning you have a gambling problem.

2. Gambling self loves secrecy as it allows us to make the totally irrational decisions we make while gambling. If you have a partner or family, confide in one of them and ask them to help you manage your finances – you must not have access to unsupervised money at least initially. This might be tough. Telling my wife was one of the worst days of my wife due to the utter humiliation and self-loathing I felt for myself. It did however make this my Day 1 on the road to recovery as I could not face going through that again.

3. Realise this is not a short-term problem. We have become compulsive gamblers and our brains are now hardwired that way. You are not going to reach a point in say a year where you will be able to gamble responsibility again.

4. You have to want to actually stop gambling rather than just want to stop losing money.

5. You will most probably go through some fairly unpleasant emotions as you try and get through at least the cold turkey part of stopping gambling. You may have feelings of despair and self-loathing when you think about what you have wasted in terms of time and money and you may well have significant urges to gamble again with your mind trying to tell you that gambling was not that bad really. Got to fight these and focus on something else – get a new hobby, go to the gym, get back out and see all the friends you were previously ignoring whilst you were gambling. I started speed walking every night just to get myself away from technology and challenged myself to quicker each night.

6. Get yourself some blocks in place. There is Gamstop for online stuff, SENSE for physical casinos and various pieces of software to block access. Also if you have someone helping to control your access to money that will help. Important thing to remember though is blocks on their own will not stop you gambling as you will always find a way around them if you are really determined. They are merely an inconvenience which might stop you long enough to come to your senses before you do something stupid.

7. Many people find it useful (indeed vital) to talk to someone about their gambling in order to get to the bottom of the reason why they gamble. I got some counselling through this website which was challenging but ultimately did help me understand my behaviour. Others will swear by GA but I have no experience of this.

Good luck and keep posting. Remember you are not on your own.

Muststop123