Cryptocurrency Addiction

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my gambling story so far on this forum because the addiction I have been trying to overcome is still relatively new to most people.

I started trading stocks in 2021, then moved from stocks to trading Cryptocurrencies shortly afterwards. I went through a lot of moments where I would argue with my partner about lost money and each time he told me not to trade again, I couldn't help but put my money back into the markets. I finally managed to stop in April 2022 because I needed to save some money to move house. I stopped trading for around 7 months, then started trading again just after moving into the new house.

From November 2022 to March 2023, I did well with the market, but this gave me a false sense of security and I became too overconfident with my trades. I bought some expensive gadgets with the money still in the crypto exchange thinking that it wouldn't disappear, but then a couple of months later, I lost half of my investment and decided to quit again.

In April/May 2023, I got talking with some former colleagues at a work event, and they asked me if I'd ever used a form of Cryptocurrency. I had no idea what I was about to get myself into. They told me about a project that I should invest in and I did. The project initially made me some money, but then the dopamine rush got to me again and instead of taking the money, I became overconfident again and a few days later it was completely gone. A few weeks after that, the "dev" for that project left and shut down all the websites and pulled the liquidity. From that moment, I have just been on a steeplechase to try and get my money back.

From May/June 2023, I my trading became more aggressive, and I have just been throwing my money into another form of cryptocurrency. Anyway, some of them made me some decent gains and some of them were scams. More of them were scams than legit projects and two of them lost me a lot of money.

I keep a spreadsheet of all my profits and losses, and at this point by June 2023 I was at a loss, whereas in March 2023 I was up.

The chase continued throughout summer where I was hitting a series of big wins then a series of scams which would take me straight back down again. From July 2023 onwards to October 2023, I tried to trade more strategically and was steadily coming out of my losses, but it was never enough to just quit altogether. In September 2023, I had almost pulled myself out of it so I was only down by a certain amount. At this point I should have quit, but I kept going. By the end of the month, I had lost doubled that again and had another ugly conversation with my partner. He told me never to do it again, but my addiction had already taken a hold of me.

By October 2023, I was furiously trying to get my money back and ended up on another trading website to look for newly created (non-audited) coins, which is even more dangerous because almost every token on this site in particular is either a Rugpull or a Honeypot scam, however, I wasn't fazed.

At the end of October 2023, after steadily pulling myself out of my losses, I almost hit a lucky streak as I bought a coin which blew up a few days after I bought it. I sold it for profit, but if I had kept hold of it for another 2 days, the same amount of tokens I had would have been worth times 60 times that. I felt sick and I was very angry and frustrated. The day after, I hit a lucky streak with one token and made a profit in one trade. I had also made some gains on some other tokens prior, so I was in a position to withdraw an amount in cash (which I should have withdrawn because it could've helped cover a majority of my debts between my credit card and overdraft combined. However, I got caught in the heat of the moment and remembered that I withdrew the previous token 2 days too early and missed out on a significant amount of money, so I stubbornly put the amount back into the same token I withdrew it from. Unfortunately, the morning after, the potential profit turned into a loss. That day, I felt sick, I cried and I was having suicidal thoughts. I told my partner that I was leaving home to stay with my family and told him what happened via text, but he said it's ok and that he will speak to me later.

Later that day, we spoke and I had taken the day off work because I felt too sick to leave the house or do anything. He told me again not to trade ever again and that I don't need to chase money because we live comfortably. I have relapsed twice since that conversation and lost more money due to depressive withdrawal symptoms, however I have now withdrawn everything and deleted all my trading apps.

I feel terrible because I didn't realise that my passion for trading would become an addiction and I never imagined losing so much money. Since I started trading in 2021 to now, I have lost a tremendous amount of money in all sorts of trading websites and the crypto market. 

There have been several days where I have been unable to function without staring at the charts, thinking about my next investment, unable to sleep to keep up with all the peak trading times around the world in different time zones, worried about not being able to keep an eye on my portfolio if I have other commitments and hiding losses from my partner which killed my self-esteem.

I am currently on my journey to rehabilitation and undergoing CBT and I have set up a payment plan with my partner to support me with getting back on track.

If anyone else has suffered cryptocurrency addiction and been through something similar, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.