2018 is going to be my year

Stay strong Sean, know what gambling is and what it can do and it does not give a s**t if it wrecks your life at all. Money has gone but look to the future with your wife to be and dont let gambling take anymore from you.

Wow to think it has been over 6 and a half months now since i last gambled. Whats happened to me????

Thinking about everything that has happened this year and looking back on my gambling habbits, there is an amazing difference.

I turned to GamCare as i knew i could no longer face this demon on my own. After speaking with several members of the GamCare team it was recommended that i should receive the group counseling. Me being me was being pesamistic thinking this will never help me.

So the week came to start my group counseling. I checked my email and got the link to log on, through the week leading up to this i was thinking off 100 reasons as to why i should just stop this nonsense (at the time) and just deal with it myself. After logging in and being greated by the counseler i was still feeling down and thinking this was useless. But minutes later the group was formed and everyone had been introduced.

After about 10 minutes of hellos and who we were we all started discussing the topic which i believe was triggers and before i knew it time was up and the session was about to finish. After saying our goodbyes we all left the session, immediatly after i felt like i had achieved something and that made me think of the 1 reason to continue, its to stop gambling.

So now i started looking forward to the sessions it became an important part of my week. The next session was great and we as a group all accepted to have our details sent out to all the group members. We all contacted each other outside of the group sessions and are still in contact 3 months after the groups have finished.

As scary as it may seem when you are trying to stop gambling there is real help out there and the group sessions have worked their magic on me and hopefully can do the same for any compulsive or problem gambler who is reading this and has not taken those steps to recovery.

I know have more money in the bank then i did when i was gambling (apart from paying off debts) and im able to enjoy the spare time i now have instead of gambling it away.

I really hope this can inspire and help others go and get the help they may need to overcome their problem with gambling and i will try and creat more updates. hopefully on a weekly basis to let you all know how life without gambling really is.

Sean

Great post Sean, glad things are going well for you mate. You are invested in recovery and are enjoying the fruits of your labour as they say. Keep up the good work.

Thanks TM1985, I am surely invested in my recovery but i still know i have a long road to walk yet. Take everyday as it comes!!

Well this is a bit of a weird one today but goes to show what opening up and being honest with others can do. I was at work today and the majority of my coleagues know about my recovery from gambling. I had one coleague today come and ask me directly for advice as they have just found out that their partner has developed a gambling problem and they did not know what to do. Just hearing their story reminded me of where i was 7 months ago and i advised them on what they could do and where they could go to try and get help. But this also this really opened my eyes as to realise how my partner must of felt when they discovered i had a gambling addiction and had lied for so many years. This situation has made me even more determined to be successsful in my long term recovery but also to look into ways of how i am able to assist others in the same situation as its a great driving force to your own success. All i can hope for is that my coleagues partner can get the help she needs to start recovering from this nasty addiction and they can start getting their lifes back on track.