a different strategy

day 96 - tuesday

thanks to everyone who has posted over the last few weeks !

fast approaching the 100 day mark and i have actually had to force myself to post in the diary today

i can consciously starting to feel myself starting to get complacent

i had anticipated that things would be looking better financially by the end of april and to be honest i can't really see it happening

it would seem i am not really any better off than when i was gambling :/

perhaps it will take longer i have had a few set backs to say the least over the last few months

this week is going to take a lot of focus to stay on the wagon !

so i made 107 days of no gambling saturday

or at least i would have if i hadn't of relapsed and blown yet another 400 quid in the casino after what seemed like the most unluckiest day I've ever had in 22 years of my life

the girl I had been seeing broke up with me

my footy acca missed by one goal

i got jumped on friday night whilst being out and have a lovely black eye to show for it

and pretty much anything else bad you could imagine happened to me

at that point i went into self destruct and was determined to do as much damage to myself as possible

luckily its towards the end of the month and i didnt have a lot of cash left anyway..... that 400 was pretty much everything i had including money i had been saving to go on holiday

not exactly sure what i had done to deserve all that but obviously someone upstairs obviously wanted to teach me a lesson

ive had to take today off work sick as I'm in no fit state to go in mentally or physically luckily i work in a place where they are very forgiving

anyway I'm sat in my flat here on a monday the 17th of march probably at the lowest point I've ever been in my life and all i can think is if i don't laugh about it i will cry

back to square one , or day 2 at the very best where i literally have to pick myself up of the floor dust myself down and start an almighty up-hil battle once more

Hi nipped,

Have just read your diary and like you I am also addicted to slots. Its mainly on-line and casinos for me but fortunately I have no desire or interest in the FOBT machines.

This really is a battle for recovery, I am so sorry to read of your relapse over the weekend but you are not the first and you wont be the last.

The important thing to remember is you are young and you have so much opportunity to re-wire your thought processes and control how your future will turn out, its not going to be easy but even as young as you are and by writing on these pages you have to admit to yourself that you are a compulsive gambler and need help. Unfortunately we are unable to travel this journey alone and need as much support and encouragement as possible from people we trust. I admitted my problem to a close network of family members who have been fantastic in my recovery, I also joined GA to which I am eternally grateful and without this support network I would be God knows. I like you felt I was at my lowest last year but we are capable of going much lower than the gutter, beneath the gutter is the sewers (if you get what I mean), gambling takes us to some very dark places that we would ordinarilly choose not to go to..

You will get over this relapse nipped and will feel stronger and more determined than before, the urges will get less as time goes on, exclude yourself from your local casinos so that you will never be tempted, I have done that and seem to have an inner peace with myself that I no longer want to enter the thieving establishments any more.

Keep focused and start your new year with a stronger determination and willingness to succeed. Have a happy birthday and a totally gamble free year ahead. Take one day at a time and congratulate yourself on each day you do not gamble.

My best wishes to you.

Hope x

Nipped

My heart goes out to you, sorry to hear of your relapse, understandable under the circumstances with one thing and another.

Certainly your weekend is a great example of where when life's bad events hit us hard and we have been used to using gambling as a crutch or an escape for so long we can naturally turn to it again so easily.

Dust yourself down and try and move on as quickly as you can, with both your abstinence and life in general. Try to consider what strategies to have in place to deal with life's downs without turning to problematic gambling.

Day 5

second day Back in work today and im actually quite glad about it - my black eye has almost gone and luckily didn’t arouse too much suspicion or questions in work

Feeling a tiny bit better mentally .........trying not to think about how bad my finances are going to be over the next few months as i know this will stir up thoughts about wanting quick cash

The truth is no matter which way i look at it i have a massive uphill journey to start once again

The one positive i am trying to focus on is that i surely can’t be due any more bad luck over the next few months lol

I think it would be fair to say ive had my lot for the time being haha

Casting back I remember whilst i was betting on blackjack in the casino on Saturday i think in something like 15 hands i didn’t win a single hand :/

Sometimes you just feel you cannot win no matter what you do

Pay day is a week today and pretty much every penny is due out on bills and credit cards

It goes without saying this weekend is going to be a very boring one

First target is 50 days again which leaves me somewhere towards the start of may

i shall see if i can actually make it to 150 this time.......

LUCK

the last fortnight has been emotional to say the least

I'm not entirely sure what luck is defined as however i can pretty much guarantee i haven't had a single drop of it

the last 2 weeks have been filled with relapses , zombie like trances and my head generally being in the clouds

this is mainly the reason why i haven't been posting in my diary for a while , i haven't been ready to stop gambling a part of me thought that this was all just a bad dream and eventually everything would just sort itself out by itself

well unfortunately it hasn't in fact its very gradually been getting worse and worse i estimate i have lost roughly a thousand pound in the last month

I'm running out of friends , my girl has left me and I've got about 6 grands worth of debt to my name

about the only things i have left to my name is that what is in my flat and my car

i left the casino earlier this evening with my last 30 quid in my pocket.... because i hit the point where i knew no matter what i did or what i bet on i wouldn't win it was as if something was pushing against me

i knew then it was time for me to take another long break from the life of a gambler and when i get to 3,4,5 6 months then il have to read back through this diary to remind me that the life of a chancer isn't a pretty one

so there we are tomorrow is the 31st of march 2014 back to square one i go i can't really look past tomorrow at this point it will just make me feel ill

get tomorrow done with and then il have a think about tuesday

better *** on then

Hi nipped - Sorry to read that you are feeling low. One day at a time - that's all you must do now, building up your strength and resolve with each passing day. Perhaps these last few weeks have finally tipped the balance to a new way of life - something to be grateful for, even though it may not feel like that at the moment.

You said somewhere "sometimes I feel I cannot win" - we can never win, because we always lose. No matter what we have won in the past, our default mode is to carry on gambling...and losing, until we re-train our brains to reject this stupidity. Another poster recently told a joke: "How do you make a compulsive gambler a millionaire? Answer: By giving them two million."

Keep going, resolve to seek a better life for yourself, and let us know how you are getting on.

Joanna

Hi Nipped,

I am CasinoRoyaLoser i am very well known in many casinos in London and around the South West Uk. I am well known because i am the high end gambler. My bets are around 100 pounds a spin or 50 pounds a hand on blackjack. I have won so much money grinding it up a night only to return the next day and lose it all within an hour or so. I cannot win! even when i win i cannot win. Took me 3o years to understand that. 8 days i won a jackpot it was a huge one it was called abstinence. I now understand that to beat the casino is not to walk in ever again. I made that choice even know the urge is very strong i want to be a lifewinner. You can do it too! i know it's hard and we think the same we can try make 30 pounds into 500 pounds but problem for us gamblers we will always want more. Day one again for you is great keep it that way choose to win the jackpot everyday. I have won 8 jackpots in a row for the past 8 days and the Casino lost. Feels amazing.

Good luck don't be too hard on yourself just win the abstinence jackpot today and don't gamble young man. Don't think about tomorrow.

CasinoRoyaLoser

Hi Nipped

As with most of us it's all about gettng back up dusting yourself off and starting all over again. You did well getting to 100+ days so now you need to realise you can do it.

I haven't read your whole topic so apologies if you have already commented, but can you not ban yourself from the casinos?

You are lucky in that you are 21 and therefore have the rest of your life ahead. I am 37 and also feel I have enough time to sort things out and come through it.

I hope your missus see's you for what you are and not for the gambling which is like a beast within. It's not the real you as it's not the real anyone. We are all so much more than the gambling that seems to have a hold on us.

We all relapse but I think it's about how quickly we learn from the relapse.

As CasinoLoser says, don't be too hard on yourself.

Make sure you post every day as it will help.

Chirst21

hi everyone

i haven't been around here much over the last month

i guess to put it simply i have been lost in a gambling haze its almost like being high on weed constantly but you just make stupid bets instead of rolling more joints

its weird but sometimes when you gamble for so long in one session you can just hit that point where you know you can't win no matter what you do at that point everything seems so pointless

i am in a mess and wallowing in it isn't going to help so I'm back to day to day posting on here for the foreseable future it seemed to at least give me some motivation a few months ago

i think i am about on around day 8 of no hard gambling but have realised after this weekend i need to cut everything out this time even my football accas , scratch cards everything

will post back tomorrow with some more thoughts

and thank you again to all the posters who have supported me on here to this point

onwards and upwards !

today has been a good day

well a a productive one at least

payday yesterday so had to take care of a lot of bills including a horrible 125 car tax one

fortunately i had budgeted for this so its alright

also went to cancel my holiday this summer in the shop not a nice decision but theres absolutely no way i can afford to even pay the remaining balance let alone go on the thing

you may think i must be feeling awfully sorry for myself but the truth is i am not....... i knew when i was throwing hundreds down on blackjack hands that i was putting the holiday at risk and i didn't care so nothing is to blame other than my own stupid decisions

so im not upset about it maybe i will be but right now I've got bigger things to worry about

anyway so with that all taken care of i headed into college where i worked pretty hard and left feeling satisfied , then straight down the gym for a killer sesh and on the way home i find 40 quid on the floor just outside my flat

so who knows maybe my luck is finally starting to turn 🙂

Nipped

Good to see you posting, albeit after more gambling troubles.

You were one of the few on here alongside myself who looked to continue doing some gambling like football accas whilst cutting out problem areas.

Your recent post indicates that you think you need to cut out all gambling. Wonder if that will be a consistent thought for you now. I thought like that many times during my recovery before managing to get to a point of only placing football and golf bets for the last 10 months.

It can be done, just cutting out the problem areas but it is hard and took me 5 years of recovery before getting to that stage. I appreciate that complete abstinence is the only answer for most but that is also hard.

Consider your options, happy to support regardless.

hey captain ! glad to see you have made another appearance on my diary ....read through the whole thing earlier and noted that you have offered some sturdy support throughout it so thanks for that

with regards to our football accas in fairness i don't think they are a problem and believe me if i even had a few quid to spare at the moment i probably would still do them

unfortunately its towards the end of the season and I'm finding it difficult to predict how the games are going to pan out

i mean if you had asked me this time last week i probably would have put my car on liverpool winning the league but now who knows whats going to happen

so certainty until the world cup I'm going to try too behave myself with them

have you had any winners lately ?

anyway back to my diary think i am on day 11 today ,

really tired this week i don't know what it is..... late nights & early mornings probably aren't helping.... but at least i have 4 days to chill out over now 🙂

no plans as such for the bank holiday weekend absolutely skint and I'm pretty sure I've only just recovered from the last one haha !

scribbled all my debt down earlier and without even touching on some of my wonderful finance arrangements i owe 3.5 K on credit cards and overdrafts which is costing me a lovely 40 a month in interest

going to have to work something out for this quickly a job for the weekend for me perhaps ....

as i may have mentioned earlier in the diary I'm not actually living with my parents any longer so money isn't as easy come easy go as it used to be and shopping in ALDI is becoming the routine

anyway need to get some sleep so will post an update if anything interesting happens tomorrow

night all

Day 19 now

Apologies for my absence over the last week i had meant to post an update all last weekend and yesterday but have been caught up with the little things everyday life brings

Anyway not at all tempted to go and have a flutter this last week didn’t even cross my mind if i am honest , which i am quite pleased about

Not that i have any money to go and have a flutter mind you but still i do still have credit available to me so at least im not dipping into that

I feel slightly powerless in life at the moment as if someone has switched all my engines off and im just freewheeling along ,

i am someone who has always had money and has always been known to have money , ive worked hard for this and im now finding it difficult to say no to things i can no longer afford 🙁

im attempting to write this entire summer off in the hope i might finally see sense and see the damage all these years of gambling has ultimately done to me

all i have ever wanted in my gambling career is that one big win of a few grand to put me on my feet and set me up for the rest of my life , i worked out that in 5 years of hard gambling the most ive ever won is about 500 quid

im not a stupid gambler either ive spent weeks in the past analysing strategies and plans of how to beat the casino ( sad i know)

its done nothing because ive probably lost somewhere in the region of 20 thousand in the last 5 years and thats being generous

so a 500 pound win compared to an accumulated 20K loss it dosent take a genius to work out whos paying whos wages

now fast forward 8 years to when i reach 30 , undoubtedly as my wages slowly rise so will my stakes and so will my debt

so at 30 with an estimated 50K of debt no assets and no way out the future is looking bleak

ive been very luck over the last few years that ive actually managed to keep the binge gambling and a normal life running alongside one another

but now im starting to feel the strain of it all and i really understand why hardly anyone in the casino ever has a smile on they’re face

not a very positive note to end the week on but I've been down today and not in a particularly good mood

i hope a weekend doing some soul searching is going to help

will post back monday.....

You sound like your head is getting to a better place. You are young enough to quit and do something with your life - don't waste the chance and end up like me and others in 25 years time with mountains of debt and your life ruined.