Hi All,
Today has been one of the longest days of my life...........
I'm 21 and have gambled since I was 18 mostly on the weekends doing small football bets £20-50 a week. Sometimes I'd win sometimes I'd lose I wouldn't mind either way as it was for 'purely entertainment'.
I started a new job (better pay/career path etc) 2 months ago, and have been really struggling to deal with it fitting in, understanding the work etc. I also broke up with my girlfriend of 4 years a month ago (probably caused from the new job).
I started to notice I was gambling during the week now, and raising the stakes to 'keep my mind off things' when I got in from work. This is when things really turned nasty for me, when my football bets lost I'd deposit the same amount of money into the live casino and win it back doubling my money again and again till I got it back (yes completely foolish). I had been doing this since March and had won just over £2k stopping once I'd got my money back if my sport bet lost. Sometimes I did a £400 blackjack hand just to make sure my bank stayed the same.
This was starting to scare me a bit, as I knew one day what if what if I lost 10 hands straight etc what then?
19th April 2016 was the day for me. I was sick today off work, and went on p********r placed a couple of bets for tonights games and deposited £100 in the live casino. Hand after hand I lost, switching to roulette none of my numbers landing. Without noticing I was down £2.5k before HSBC rang me to check if it was fraud. I answered there questions and they let me carry on, I had lost full control £2k more £2k more £2k more - boom card declined (thank god I use debit cards). I have £256 left from 3 years worth of savings.
It hasn't sunk in, I have called gamcare support asking for advice with the matter. I have spent the day in disbelief and have cancelled ALL betting sites for atleast 5 years now, reading forums about help etc.
------
I live at home with my parents and my job pays £20k a year, on a good month I can save £700-900 a month. The thing that's really getting to me is the fact that I need to now spend another year (April 2017) to have what I had in my bank account just 24 hours ago. I don't know how I'm going to react tomorrow at work, I'm struggling there as it is with the workload and the pressure.
My question to you guys is what's the best way to keep positive? I am disgusted with myself and hope I can keep my head down and rebuild my life and take this on the chin at a young age and learn from this, I know it's going to be very hard specially the first few weeks specially in 10 days when I get paid again and realise I'm missing an extra 0 on my bank account.
3 years of work blown in less then an hour. 19/04/2016.
Any help will be appreciated.
J
Hi J , I just read your post and wanted tto say Hi and welcome, also well done for admiting you have a problem as thats always a difficult thing to come to terms with .
8.5 k ? is a fair whack of money , it hurts when we look back and see what weve done , I know because I was where you are 7 months ago when I stopped gambling .
Look the money can all be replaced , it takes a bit of time but you need to look at this as a life lesson , an expensive one but hopefully at the young age you are , one that will serve you well !.
You asked " How to keep positive " ? Honestly everyone's different but you just have to take positives where you can , from the fact that You've made the decision to stop , the fact that your'e money will start being saved again and that you won't be getting into heavy debt which will happen if you gamble again simply, because its a downward spiral that never ends well !
The main piece of advice I would give is to let it all go , you have to accept that the moneys gone and your not going to chase after it anymore because that just keeps you in the cycle that you want to break .
Don't beat yourself up , whats done is done so draw a line under it , someone much wiser than me said " it's ok to look back but just don't stare "
You have your whole life in front of you , put this behind you and as much as it hurts walk away and start enjoying the good things in life again !
Maybe think about starting a diary on here ? It's a great place to chat amongst other likeminded folk , no judgements just sound advice and support when you need it !
I wish you well my friend and look forward to speaking with you soon !
Alan
ALAN 135 wrote:
Hi J , I just read your post and wanted tto say Hi and welcome, also well done for admiting you have a problem as thats always a difficult thing to come to terms with .
8.5 k ? is a fair whack of money , it hurts when we look back and see what weve done , I know because I was where you are 7 months ago when I stopped gambling .
Look the money can all be replaced , it takes a bit of time but you need to look at this as a life lesson , an expensive one but hopefully at the young age you are , one that will serve you well !.
You asked " How to keep positive " ? Honestly everyone's different but you just have to take positives where you can , from the fact that You've made the decision to stop , the fact that your'e money will start being saved again and that you won't be getting into heavy debt which will happen if you gamble again simply, because its a downward spiral that never ends well !
The main piece of advice I would give is to let it all go , you have to accept that the moneys gone and your not going to chase after it anymore because that just keeps you in the cycle that you want to break .
Don't beat yourself up , whats done is done so draw a line under it , someone much wiser than me said " it's ok to look back but just don't stare "
You have your whole life in front of you , put this behind you and as much as it hurts walk away and start enjoying the good things in life again !
Maybe think about starting a diary on here ? It's a great place to chat amongst other likeminded folk , no judgements just sound advice and support when you need it !
I wish you well my friend and look forward to speaking with you soon !
Alan
Hi Alan,
Thanks so much for the tips! Really appreciate it. I've been scratching my head all evening worrying regretting it, this really helped. I'm going to keep my head up and not look back once I wake up tomorrow.
Cheers for making me sleep easier tonight!
Hi J,
Wow. That certainly was a short, sharp lesson. But, you have done exactly the right thing in firstly self excluding, and secondly coming on here. It would also be a good idea to put more barriers up, for example downloading k9 (which is free I believe) on your laptop to stop you accessing other online gambling sites, this will stop you opening up new accounts if you have any silly ideas about trying to win back your losses (which most of us have done). There is a live chat session on here nightly, that newcomers seem to find really useful too.
Al is absolutely correct, you are young and have your whole life ahead of you. If you can put away the amounts you mentioned above, your savings account will be looking healthy again in no time but please don't become complacent, now that the bug has got you once, there's no saying it won't strike again so be on your guard. Use the time/money/location triangle, if you take just one of those things away you simply cannot gamble, if that means giving your savings account access over to your folks it would be well worth it, even if just for the short term.
You've had a really stressful couple of months with the new job and fitting in etc along with the break down of your relationship, it must feel like everything has changed and your 'release' from those feelings of angst was to gamble. In a few months time, the job will feel like a breeze and you will probably feel like part of the furniture, lol! Things will get better, but you do have to commit to recovery completely, small bets lead on to bigger ones as you have found.
Best of luck, this is your worst that you will feel if you give up now, so the only way is up!
Twinklyr
twinklyr wrote:
Hi J,
Wow. That certainly was a short, sharp lesson. But, you have done exactly the right thing in firstly self excluding, and secondly coming on here. It would also be a good idea to put more barriers up, for example downloading k9 (which is free I believe) on your laptop to stop you accessing other online gambling sites, this will stop you opening up new accounts if you have any silly ideas about trying to win back your losses (which most of us have done). There is a live chat session on here nightly, that newcomers seem to find really useful too.
Al is absolutely correct, you are young and have your whole life ahead of you. If you can put away the amounts you mentioned above, your savings account will be looking healthy again in no time but please don't become complacent, now that the bug has got you once, there's no saying it won't strike again so be on your guard. Use the time/money/location triangle, if you take just one of those things away you simply cannot gamble, if that means giving your savings account access over to your folks it would be well worth it, even if just for the short term.
You've had a really stressful couple of months with the new job and fitting in etc along with the break down of your relationship, it must feel like everything has changed and your 'release' from those feelings of angst was to gamble. In a few months time, the job will feel like a breeze and you will probably feel like part of the furniture, lol! Things will get better, but you do have to commit to recovery completely, small bets lead on to bigger ones as you have found.
Best of luck, this is your worst that you will feel if you give up now, so the only way is up!
Twinklyr
Hi Twinky,
Thanks so so much. For not just spending your time but the amount of thought you put into this. Really has helped me so much, and whenever im on a downer I will re-read this as motivation. So kind thankyou
🙂 Get some sleep and wake up in the morning as someone who used to gamble.
Night J,
Twinks x
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