My story, and help needed.

Hello, newbie here with my story and somewhat of a first step to stop my addiction.

I had a friend many years ago who was a gambling addict, I used to look down on him and think ‘what a looser’ why would anyone waste there money like he does. He even stole from me one time and was forever borrowing money and finding ways to get more money for gambling….at that time the most I was willing to loose was maybe £1 on a scratch card once in a blue moon if that. That was some 10 years ago.

Fast forward to 5 years ago (2010) and I joined the Royal Navy, a great career I thought which would set me up for life. During training at the naval base there was a bar for social occasions, next to the bar was a room full of fruit machines, there must have been at least 20 packed into a room no bigger than a public toilet. My mates from training would buy drinks and then chuck a few quid in the machines, before I knew it I was joining in gambling just a few quid here and there, but with not much else to do on the base and not much entertainment I slowly became a more frequent player on the fruit machines, as the weeks passed I started to feel uncomfortable of the amount of time we would be spending in there, but yet I was being drawn in each time. It became a social activity. A further few weeks later and we got some shore leave and one friend who was a fellow fruit machine player suggested we went to the bookies so he could play roulette on the machines, I had never played it in my life and he placed a few quid on a few numbers and he won £72 with one spin, I was amazed after pumping £20/£30 in fruit machines to possibly win the jackpot of £35. I had to try these amazing machines I remember thinking.

As the months went by I slowly ditched the fruit machines and was hooked on roulette, to the point where I was spending all of my wage on them, then came the introduction of payday loans, my credit history was clean as a whistle so I was getting multiple loans from upto 7 lenders at a time, my debt started to spiral out of control, I became depressed and the only thing that stopped it was when I was in my bubble on the machines, nothing else mattered when I was playing. A year later and my naval career had come to an abrupt end. Kicked out for being irresponsible and I had told the Navy about my addiction and how it started from that room with the machines. None of that mattered.

In 2012 some months after being forced out of the navy I was only gambling what I could get my hands on, then my older brother was brutally murdered and I sank again, I sold everything I had that was worth value, I stole money from friends and family, I lied, I cheated, anything to get money for gambling. I have now been a addicted since that day I put my first pound in that machine in 2010. I’m 32 now and my life has never been the same, I am under a debt relief order and have nothing, I tried to attend GA meetings but I felt it was like a god related cult, it was not for me, I told my doctor but no help ever materialised, I called Gamcare and a woman rang me back some days later but then told me I couldn’t get help just now as she was not allocated to my area and for me to call Gamcare back but it was hard enough the first time to actually take the plunge and find help so I fobbed it off and never called back.

There have been some very dark moments when I have lost a month’s wage in hours and wanted to end my pathetic life, I thought of all the different ways to do it but in the end I never did, I was too much of a coward to even take my own life. I still gamble today and each time I loose I say “right this is it, NO MORE, I am never doing this again now” that is until I get money again and I seem to ignore my own advice. I have tried all the self-excluding from shops, but there are multiple towns so I end up going further out to gamble, I have tried self-excluding from on-line casinos but there are literally thousands of sites for gambling.

What next I don’t know, I don’t gamble to the point where I want to end things anymore because now I just don’t care, I get a numb feeling, as if the £500 I just lost didn’t even matter, I used to get angry and upset but now nothing but numbness when it happens….”I’ll not gamble anymore now I have lost this” are my famous last words.

So what I want to know is from people on here that have stopped, how? And what did you do to stop?