A Daily Choice

I am 29 years old and have been gambling on a consistent basis since I was 18 years old. 

I know it sounds weird, but I have often relied on gambling and losing my money as a control mechanism. I know, subconsciously, that when I play I’m going to lose. But I do it because it often feels like losing all my wages every week is just about the only thing in my life I can control. 

Anyway, today is my second day without gambling after relapsing. I had quit gambling for an entire month after reading Allen Carr’s book, but the urges got the best of me. Since then, I’ve taken out 6 loans mounting up to £2,000 in debt. Yesterday, I decided to withdraw my savings which were coincidentally £2,000 after losing most of them (over £10,000) to gambling, and paid all my debt off with it. I am now at £0, but thankfully I am at least debt free and have a clean slate. 

The fact is, you can read all the self-help books you like, go to as many meetings as you want, and have as many therapy sessions as you’d like. But the only way you will ever stop gambling is by not gambling. It’s as simple as that. Not even a penny. Not on the lottery, not on scratch cards, not on football. Nothing. You just make the decision to not gamble every single day for the rest of your life. It has to be an active decision that you make every single day and I am here to make that commitment. 

It’s scary. The scariest part is knowing that you can quit for years on end and build yourself up to financial security, and then randomly ruin all that progress by making a different choice on any given particular day, in order to control your inner world when it starts to feel like you’ve lost all the control of the world around you. 

I have come to understand this addiction is the most insidious of all. It’s one of the only addictions that is often advertised on TV and the sponsors of some of the biggest sporting sporting events in the world. Every single day, you are confronted with your addiction. Every day, you must make a choice not to give in to the temptation. 

Right now, I’d rather die than gamble again. I don’t want this to be my life. I don’t want to be this person. I don’t like the person I have become. I want to do and be better. I refuse, out of pure principle, to ever lose another penny to gambling. 

So yeah, this is day 2 of the rest of my life. And it feels good. 

Day 2: Today I have made the choice not to gamble.