Gambling at 19

If I could go back and tell myself to go on this site at 19 I would of saved myself and loved ones from so much pain. My advice is if the strength to gamble is extremely strong when you have time money and access then try to spend as much time on this site reading the stories on here and conversing with others to get a idea of the addiction to avoid even further pain and misery.

you might not realise now but you may of caught on to the awareness that you have a addiction, it might not be this rock bottom you’re at now that the penny drops but i hope you can realise it will eventually happen. Better to try to stop now than later when it can get harder and more painful. 

I hope this helps and I hope others comment too. 

dave101

Hi

Thank you for your sharing and questions.

Being so young if you take recovery seriously now and keep going to meetings you can save causing your self a  lot of pain in the future.

I have lost count of the number of times I went back to gambling.

Each time I gambled I just made things worse.

Each time I gambled I was on a high and it seemed like I lied in so many ways.

But I lied to my self.

The adrenaline high I use to think was happiness and excitment.

Now I understand that I was isolating my self and being self destructive.

When I went back to gambling I did not want to go back to the recovery meetings.

In time I got to understand my emotional triggers.

Take care stick with your recovery

Dave L

At 19 its just an expensive lesson you have donkeys years to make more money

whatever you do just make sure your completely banned from every site you possibly can 

Gambling cost me well over a 100K during my 20's and quite possibly my soul mate 

Not even close to remotely worth it. 

You started this journey young but you are also doing something i didnt do when i was young-get help.

The fact you are on here before it truely takes over your life means u acknowledge the problem

Read the stories on here will be sufficient to let u know how it can lead to litterally destroying your life.

Put the blocks in place online gamstop etc. You are young enough to retrain your brain. Once u have put the blocks in place if there is a parent or sibling you can confide in they could help u manage it initially.

Such a positive thing to get help and write on here. I wish I did that twenty years ago. I've probably lost over £65,000 in the time I've been gambling. I wish I'd gotten help twenty years ago.

So pleased for you that you’ve come on here and admitted this.  That’s 1 month salary lost, I know it’s hard to lose that but just write it off now as money lost, an expensive lesson to help you not lose 100-1000x that in the rest of your lifetime.  Like others I didn’t get help when I was young and financially I’ve set myself back years when it comes to money compared to my friends.  

you will never be the gambler that beats the system, no one does, some get a big win early on and think they’re different, they’re not! They just lose even more in the long run with this deluded mindset