Destroying my life

Happy Birthday!

I detect some loneliness and reluctance to go outside atm. You love life and want to enjoy yourself but you won't do that burning your wallet at both ends, will you? Slots are great tools to shut of the world but they don't change that cold reality when the money is gone. All addicts have a hijacked mind. You may reason that if you can just get this cash you will solve this problem. That is unfortunately fake news. We have been had by the powers at be and that change is just really an excuse to continue your stay in the fantasy bubble.

I have recently read atomic habits with James Clear and I am a big fan as he asks you to tweak your behavior minutely but frequently so that you may achieve bigger changes further ahead. I recommend you to read or listen to it. It can give you tools that may change every part of your life by doing very small changes that you can handle.

You need to make a real choice now. Ask yourself. How are you living?

You can do it!

Best

C

Hi @adiuuu,

Welcome to the Forum and well done on coming here.

Times like this can be difficult, sorry you didn’t get to celebrate your birthday as you would have hoped to.

Try to think about what support you had in place when you managed to stop gambling for 3 months. Relapse can happen in recovery, learn from it and look at the types of blocks and support you can put in place for yourself to prevent this from happening again. It will get easier with time and there will be better days to come. You have done it before so you can tackle this again much stronger. Try not to be hard on yourself, you’ve had a few changes in your life, you are someone who loves life so it is never to late to celebrate life and to celebrate your birthday. Look to scheduling alternative activities at times you are most likely to gamble. Make it harder to access your money, perhaps you can ask someone you trust to handle your money for a period of time.

You might want to look at the types of gambling blocks you can put in place to reduce your opportunities to gamble:

-Gamstop (Self-exclusion for all UK licensed betting sites) - www.gamstop.co.uk 0800 138 6518 8am-10pm, 7 days a week

- Download a blocking software on to your devices. Gamban is a popular one. You can get the free license by contacting us on our helpline.

-Contact your bank to block gambling transactions

I would encourage you to give our helpline a call, to discuss your gambling 1:1 with an advisor. Please call us on our freephone 0808 8020 133 or on our Livechat.

Take care,

Vanessa

Happy birthday Adiuuu,

Welcome to the forum, I can relate to what you have written here, I use to gamble heavily just before my birthday and even had relapses recently because of it. During my recent recovery I am looking forward to next years birthday without having the mental stress of gambling on my mind…. But I need to remember to take each day as it comes and not fall into old habits of gambling again. It’s hard to stop when you have started but I hope you find the resources and people here who can help you along you’re recovery journey. I hope see you post again and you’re recovery progress.

If you find the website is not doing the trick I would recommend gamblers anonymous physical meetings which can provide a much needed break away from the computer where the problem is concurrently still accruing.

Take care and keep on fighting the addiction

dave101