Some History
Used to play a lot of poker (and gamble on other stuff) in my youth. Mostly won on poker when sober, but had a major alcohol problem which led to me losing a lot of money and running up debt. Got that cleared and got my life on track, didn´t gamble at all (not counting a few relapses when drunk) between 2008-2017. Summer 2017 - when I had the feeling my drinking was mostly under control since I didn´t get drunk a lot - I went to play some cards with friends, got very drunk, then played slots, then went to the casino and played poker, and in the early summer hours I sat in my car and drove the 15 km to my home. I think I lost about 1500 EUR, most of it from my company card. I am the sole owner, so I didn´t lose anyone else´s money and my accountant somehow managed to write it off, but this was a real wake-up call.
It was the first time ever driving drunk and I have always been very strict with regards to driving after drinking (except for having a beer with dinner and then driving home, but then I am below the legal limit). Knowing my past behaviour, if I would keep drinking it is only a matter of time before I would to it again, since once I cross a boundary during drinking, I am bound to do it again. And if I do it again it probably only is a matter of time before something bad or really bad happens. So I quit drinking. First few weeks were a bit tough, but all in all it was a breeze and I feel so much better not using alcohol at all, and I have no cravings whatsoever, and a really good mindset with regard to this.
Gamble, Gamble! The Fall, Part 1
Without the looming threat of drunken mishaps I decided that I could start playing live poker again. So instead of going to the pub, I´d hit the casino once a week. At first, everything went great and I was winning, building a bankroll, and also putting money into the family budget (I always put aside part of my winnings so they are of use in case I lose it all). However, I was also playing slots, roulette etc. - mostly to wind down after a poker session, or while waiting for the game to start/waiting in line for a place at the tables etc.
For a while, everything was well. I was doing OK at poker and didn´t take any big losses at the slots / table games. And then disaster struck. I had lost my initial buy-in of 200 EUR and was on my way to the cashier to withdraw more money. I opened my wallet and noticed I still had a 20 EUR bill left, so I put it in a slot on the way to the cashier´s cage. Decided to play unusually high (2 EUR/spin) and of course hit a big jackpot for 2500 EUR. And afterwards I also had a great poker session, cashing out a 700 EUR winner for the biggest gambling win (3200 EUR in one session) of my life.
From here it started to go downhill. I became cocky and arrogant, which combined with some bad luck made me lose at poker. I also started playing online, where I lost money. And I started playing online slots. One lovely summer evening I went to the casino and dropped 700 EUR at the poker tables. I was steaming. Then I went to the roulette table. Like all compulsive gamblers, I can still remember the final dagger - the ball bouncing out of 0 and landing on the number 26, wedged between 0 and 3. I had been playing on the low numbers all night and now - being stuck a lot at roulette - I was betting huge, probably 50-100 EUR/spin or so. And a win would have netted me around 2500-3000, back in black.
A few spins later I finally left, the first wise choice of the night. I had put most of my bankroll of 2500 into the family budget since we needed the cash, so around 2000 of the losses were withdrawn from my corporate card. Thankfully I did go home before doing more damage, at that time I had around 10 000 accessible on that card.
Half-Assed Recovery and the Fall, Part 2
I did not tell my partner about the losses, although our deal was for me to be open about my gambling. A few days later I lost a couple of hundred online (playing slots) and a couple of hundred more at a gambling hall. And this was it - I was done. I came clean to my partner, closed most of my online accounts and decided to stop gambling. This was in July, 2018.
By September I was gambling again. Only poker, max twice a month, with a monthly budget of 200 EUR (one buy-in for cashgames), leaving my wallet at home. At first things were OK, but I soon realised that it was just too little. I was longing for gambling, I was obsessing about it, I couldn´t handle losing my allotted 200 EUR on the first of the month and then being without gambling for a whole month.
By December, I was slipping. Some online slots here and there. I was however winning at the poker tables. After a three-week vacation to start the year, I was back and itching to gamble. This coincided with my wife being away more on weekends due to work, which left me with more opportunities to gamble when at home with the kids. Our son still needs a daytime nap and if at home, we parents use this time to relax and allow our daughter to play games on the iPad or to watch cartoons, but instead of firing up Football Manager 2019, I fired up online casinos.
In February the crash came. It started with me bringing 500 EUR to the casino instead of 200 (I withdrew funds earlier in the day and left them in my jacket, so I would have more than just one buy-in). I lost my first poker buy-in, but with the next one (which I shouldn´t have had) I won, so I went home with 1200 EUR for a total win of 700, my best session in 2019. Gave 500 to the wife. Next week I lost 500 (brought 500 of the money I had won earlier, no degenerate lying this time). But during the weekend I decided to just play a little slots and online poker. Got buried in the online poker quickly, upped the stakes and lost. So then I switched to slots.
I was in for something like 1600 EUR total when I hit a big jackpot for 1400. In the end, I cashed out 1200 EUR. However, of those 1600 EUR, around 1400 were from the corporate card. The next week I was scheduled to go to the casino on Saturday, however Friday evening wife was away, so when I put the kids to bed I wanted to "just place a few bets". And so I did - sportsbetting has never been much of a problem for me. Fired away 50 EUR in bets, then some online poker, lost a hundred or so, and then... slots.
I went to bed at 1 AM, 500 eur poorer. Woke up with my son at 6 AM the next morning, while he was watching cartoons (if he wakes early in the weekends, we usally nap while he watches cartoons) I decide to take "just one 100 EUR shot to win it back". 2 EUR/spin, so I can hit it big if I win. An hour later I have lost another 800 EUR from my corporate card, putting my total loss at 1500.
That evening, I go to the casino with 200 EUR, and another 500 I had pocketed earlier. Like a lying degenerate piece of s**t, a feeling I had more and more often during the last weeks, but I did my best to ignore it and rationalise it ("Gambling paid for my daughter´s bike, so what if I lose a bit more than I say I do? I give back when I win.", "We´re fine financially, this loss doesn´t really hurt us!", "Hey, I am the main provider for the family and I earn good money at the moment, and I have no other vices. I should be allowed to have some fun too!") in order to keep gambling.
I ran my 200 EUR up to 700 quickly, but then I lost a few pots in standard spots, before making a horrible play and losing the rest. Instead of quitting, which would be the smart choice, I bought in for the rest of my cash save a spare 50 for the slots, which I proceeded to lose in two coin flips. Didn´t hit the miracle comeback on the slots either, so there I was - stuck for 700 EUR, heading home before midnight, P****d off at a lot of things.
The Time for Real Recovery is Now!
On my way home, I banned myself from the casino I play poker at. So for a year I am excluded there. I have also closed all online accounts I had on all the sites which are licensed where I live. This does not prevent me from playing on foreign sites though, not sure if I can self-exclude from other casinos somehow? However, I do feel that I finally am in the process of changing my mentality with regards to gambling in the same was as I did with alcohol. And with alcohol I am perfectly fine, so I am hopeful that I will be able to get through this as well. I am not the type of person that copes with cravings well so the important part is eliminating the cravings, otherwise I am bound to cave in sooner or later. Luckily, quitting alcohol (and before that cigarettes) has given me mechanisms to deal with this.
Yesterday I read the thread on here titled "How Much Have You Lost?" and it was a real eye-opener. On this forum alone there are so many people that have lost everything due to gambling and that is where I am headed if I don´t do anything about it. This latest gambling spree has cost me around 2500-3000 EUR or so, mostly from my corporate credit card. Depending on how my accountant can manage to write this amount off, in the worst case scenario the loss will double (if she needs to write this money off as salary paid to me or something like that) due to taxes. Or maybe I can get some fine if the tax agency does some checks, I don´t know, but I refuse to worry about that now. Private funds are largely untouched so the financial harm isn´t that big, but I am happy to have found this forum so I have some place to share my thoughts and read about others in similar situations.
Oh, and despite all of the above, yesterday my brain was trying actively to trick me into gambling. All kinds of dirty tricks, mind-games, promises of a quick score to win it back and so on. But I stood my ground. Right now the urge is much diminished and I know that the longer I go without gambling, the less withdrawal I will face.
Today is Monday and I haven´t gambled for a whole day and I will not gamble today either.
Mind Games: Projecting
The brain is very interesting when it comes down to addictions. One of the main tricks - which often is very effective if you do not recognise it - is projecting the behaviour of healthy individuals on yourself.
"Hey, if you limit yourself to 3-4 beers", my brain would say when I quit drinking, "nothing bad will ever happen to you. You never f**k anything up when drinking 3-4, hell, even when drinking 6-7 you rarely mess things up. Just have to keep away from the blackouts, you know, and you´ll be fine. Look at your mates, they can handle it without problems!"
This is a very sneak way of trying to get you back to addiction. The reasoning is in a way correct - when drinking 3-4, everything was fine. It does however ignore the most important part of the equation: an addicted mind will sooner or later find a way to go way past the self-imposed limit of 3-4 beers, it is just a mtter of time.
My brain is now trying the same tricks with regards to gambling. "Hey, you know, your main problem is online gambling and in a way slots and live table games", it sneakily says, "but poker is more or less okay. You are a break-even poker player at worst, and this is factoring in how prone you are to tilting, so you just need to cut out the online gaming and casino games and you can go back to poker. You like playing poker, so why not play only poker?"
Again, this statement has a lot of truth in it, but it disregards the most important aspect of them all: no matter what limits I set and how hard I try it is just a matter of time before I start with the destructive behaviour again. This last time it took 3-4 months before I started playing online and also slowly started to gamble on other games than poker when at the casino, and in the end I was pocketing money before going to the casino so I had more to play with than agreed upon (but I did leave the wallet at home as agreed).
It is important to realise this. If I visit the casino to play poker, it is just a matter of time before I decide to "just play a few tournaments" online, which in turn will lead to "just kill some time with the slots" or "play high-stakes heads-up PLO" which in turn will lead to losses. Or, even worse, to a sizeable win which will allow me to increase the stakes (and therefore the inevitable losses when the downswing comes).
On another note, much less cravings today. And not as frequent feelings of loss, looking back at positive gambling moments and lamenting that I won´t have them in the future as yesterday, so we are heading in the right direction.
Ak123 thx. for all time you put into that detailed sharing. It's so good for us to think it through and share our personal history up to the present to give ourselves a wake up call over view. And, it really helps others in way we never will know. So thx. Please keep sharing and reading through the posts. I always like to suggest calling a Gambler help hot line to talk to a volunteer who might actually be a counselor or a recovering addict themselves. It feels so good to hear a voice and know that they are listening to your story and that they have some leads to other forms of help. I have been at this recovery for a long time and recent months have had a stronger resolve. keep coming back and please check out other resources for yourself. There is alot of help available. tara2
I have clicked "alert a moderator" in error
Tara2: Thank you for the kind words. I will keep writing here to keep track of progress (or lack thereof).
Control and Addiction
Maybe I am just a lucky person but gambling has (at least as of now) never affected me in a way of total loss of control. I do not know if it would be just a matter of time if I would keep gambling and I do not intend to find that out for myself, but when reading other recovery stories I must say that I can consider myself very lucky.
First of all, I have not gotten into debt or lost a fortune compared to my income. Second of all, I can keep walking around with cash and cards on me, I can walk past a gambling establishment without intense cravings to play. I do not have to worry about losing every cent I have on me. Third of all, I do have some sort of control regarding my gambling although it is only three of four days since I last gambled.
These are actually very major positives to take with me. The only drug where I totally lost control at times was alcohol. In my youth, I lived without credit cards for several years simply due to me knowing that I otherwise would be prone to lose my entire paycheck when coming home drunk. And I really wanted to continue drinking.
And right now I am feeling fine. Before sleep, in a half-dream state, I am reliving past gambling experiences or fantasies, and I am dreaming about gambling as well. Mostly positive dreams. Like how I made the correct call at the poker table and won a huge pot when my opponent was bluffing. Sometimes my brain plays out future fantasies of me winning huge at the poker tables. One semi-dream had me continuing playing after my 2500 EUR loss last Summer, and of course I hit big a few spins after the time I decided enough is enough and left the casino in real life.
However, these are just dreams and half-dreams. From my experience with nicotine and alcohol, I am actually embracing them. My brain gan get its gambling fix in my sleep all that it wants as far as it concerns me and with time these dreams should become less frequent and resulting in a "What the f**k did I just do? Oh... just a dream." type of reaction after waking up.
Things will only get better if I abstain from gambling. Oh, and for the record to any readers of this diary, to any of my activities I will not apply the strictest of definitions for gambling. I will keep watching and attending sports events (although I will not bet on sports, but I might for example bet with a friend rooting for the other team), I participate in trivia nights where there is a fixed participation cost (and non-monetary prizes for finishing top three), I also play a skill-based card game that is sometimes played with money exchanging hands (rating tournaments for this game stipulate a minimum limit - this is due to the nature of the game, if played completely without money it often makes sense to take huge risks in the end, which ruins gameplay) and I will not quit this unless I notice that it starts pulling me back into problem gambling territory. I do not really care about "days gamble free", what I care about is being free from problem gambling. If you have a problem with this, I think that my diary will not be the best read for you.
Anyway, today is Thursday and in a few days time I will have been gamble free for a week.
AK123, I imagine that some people who have 'problems with gambling' may not be addicted? Is that what you are saying about yourself? Because I read your header 'CONTROL and ADDICTION'. That is an oxymoron . If you are addicted then there is no control. This is the nature of addiction and why we seek help. tara2
On Gambling Addiction and Luck
If you are reading this line, you are lucky. Very lucky. You have hit that 100:1 longshot. Why? You might ask yourself. Why should you consider yourself lucky? You are on a forum for recovering gambling addicts. What longshot are you talking about?
Well, for starters, you are alive. That´s a good start. Most likely you were born in a first-world country and had an upbringing without starvation and war. You are reading - which means that you are literate. Not only that, you are reading an internet forum, in English, which means that you have internet access, which in turn means that you have a computer or a modern telephone at the very least. Most likely you have some type of roof over your head, and the probability of you being killed during an air raid at night is very minimal. Chances are that you or your family members will not have to suffer rape and torture during the coming years. Oh, and you probably have a job, where you work a certain number of hours (government-limited) and receive a paycheck. And even if you don´t, there are government programs that help keep you fed even if you don´t have a penny to your name.
Basically you are extremely lucky. You have all of this - things that you take for granted, but things that you have just because you lucked out in the birth lottery. You weren´t born and raised in a war zone. You didn´t become a child soldier.
I could go on and on, but I think I have made my point. For me, a turning point in my life was realising how much of it all is due to nothing but pure and dumb luck. Because this helped me understand how much hard work really means. Although this might sound as a contradiction, it really isn´t.
Basically your life is a giant ball of variance, of unknown and random happenings. Once when I was 18 me and a friend were high and wanted to score more drugs. Our sober friend drove us. He had his license for a few weeks and was a horrible driver. He was doing 220 km/h on roads where the speed limit was 90-110. I had a classmate, his brother and friends were drunk and chose to drive from one party to the next. His brother lost control of the car and crashed, five kids died. The roles could have easily been reversed and it is down to nothing but chance. There is no rational explanation to why we got home safe but the other five kids died, nothing but luck.
Right now I am 35. I have a succesful business, two kids, financial security and a lot of things going for me. However my biggest client by far I found by pure chance. While there is no saying how my life would have progressed without this client - maybe I would have found another client that would be in to some new thing called cryptocurrency and maybe I would have bought 10000 BTC at a few dollars a piece and by now be set to retire with millions in my bank account - chances are that I am much better off now than if I had not met this client. Nothing but luck.
And we can do nothing to change this luck. If we are born in a war zone, tough luck. However, what we can do is to work hard and to try to put us in a place where we have the opportunity to make something good out of the times when we are dealt a wining hand, while minimise the damage when we are dealt a losing one.
Variance does not mean that struggle and hard work is meaningless - on the contrary, it makes it that much more important to put oneself in a position to maximise the gains the few times we have the chance to get lucky, while minimising the losses all the other times when we aren´t. By working hard we increase the probability of something good happening. In the same way that we increase the probability of something really bad happening by gambling.
By putting myself in a position where I do not gamble I exponentially increase the probability of my life being good. This does not guarantee that my life will be better off without gambling. Hell, I might have been dead without gambling - for all I know, my last casino visit was the reason I wasn´t hit by a car. That, however, is very improbable and I am very aware that if I gamble, the probability of my life taking a major turn for the worse will largely increase.
And since we cannot foresee the future we have to play the probabilities. And the probabilities are always stacked in favour of not gambling.
tara2 wrote:
AK123, I imagine that some people who have 'problems with gambling' may not be addicted? Is that what you are saying about yourself? Because I read your header 'CONTROL and ADDICTION'. That is an oxymoron . If you are addicted then there is no control. This is the nature of addiction and why we seek help. tara2
I am not really sure. I would consider myself addicted to gambling since I have a hard time stopping if I start, it consumes an increasingly large amount of time, it takes over my thought processes, it has me longing for the next gambling session, and I often start increasing the stakes after a while. And I think that these are all signs of addiction.
At the same time, I do have control. As I wrote, I have never when sober "accidentally" frequented a gambling establishment, all my visits have been premiditated. Just today I had lunch a hamburger place with a slot hall/bookie next door and the thought that I could enter and gamble didn´t even cross my mind. The fact that I in my pocket have access to credit cards with a lot of money on them doesn´t bother me and I do not feel the need to relinquish them, since I will not gamble. And even during my two worst episodes, I have regained control after a while and walked away, instead of chasing the losses until the bank is empty.
Is this contradictory to being addicted? I do not know. If so, maybe I am "only" a problem gambler and not an addict.
Keep coming back and sharing and reading. Please take into account that compulsive gambling is insidious. Glad you are here. tara2
You might find it interesting to look into the PGSI questionnaire. This divides those with gambling problems into low risk, moderate risk and ‘addicts’. You sound like you could be on the borderline of moderate risk, heading into addiction (you may have crossed the line already).
The way you describe your gambling behaviour is very similar to mine, not quite full-blown destructive addiction (yet), but with numerous red flags and episodes of mental turmoil which point towards it. Spiralling stakes from 2- to 4-figure bets in a few weeks every time I decided to start again after a break, checking odds 10 times a day, being on my phone constantly distracted at work, not being present in conversations, losing interest in any hobbies or indeed any activities at all, getting angry at wins “I should have put more on” and not minding losses “oh well it was a value bet at the time”. Being profitable made it very hard to want to stop, but it finally got to the point where the escalation to seriously considering 5-figure bets and the risk to my mental health wasn’t worth continuing any longer.
I have now banned myself from all gambling via Gamstop. It took 1 month for the fog to lift, and 5 months for the random urges to stop. I’m now much happier being finally free from the constant obsession in my head. I now get a lot more sleep and have restarted various hobbies. Even finally went to the dentist to sort out a tooth that had been rotting and bleeding for over a year, but which I apparently never had the time to fix because lying in bed doing my gambling ‘research’ was more important.
You, and I, clearly have a gambling problem, i.e. we can’t gamble like a normal person does, as it messes with our heads too much. We may or may not have crossed that line into proper compulsive behaviour, but if we continue, every time we get a big win, you know the stakes will escalate even more the next time. It will never be enough. For me, I will no longer bet, because I genuinely fear the consequences of winning.
Tara2: Thanks, I will keep sharing.
Brucey: It sounds that way. I Googled the questionnaire and I had taken something similar a while back and gotten similar results - at risk, but not too far gone (yet). I have also banned myself from all sites licensed in my country, as well as all live casinos and gambling halls, although this "ban" does really only work in the big casinos (where you get your ID checked upon entering) and not in the slot halls, since there they check your ID first if you win big (several thousand EUR) and cross some sort of tax limit where the winnings are to be reported. This I hope won't be a problem though, since the few times I have visited slot halls have been planned and I have no problem walking past them.
I do recognise the distractions, with sportsbetting much less so but with casino games/poker the mind is drifting to gambling constantly. And the degenerate behaviour of "I need a quick break from work, oh, I'll play some online slots" and then half an hour is gone. Luckily I am the boss & owner of my company but when I think about it, that really is degenerate behaviour and something I would not tolerate in my employees (if I found out that somebody has been gambling at work during office hours I would have a long and serious talk and probably set up some sort of activity tracker on their computer).
With sportsbetting I don't really have these types of problems, since I usually bet quite small (5-20 EUR per bet) and oftentimes just check the fixtures when I wish to bet and fire some bets. I tend to keep away from live betting (unless it is bets at half-time on a game I'm watching). The main problem with regards to sportsbetting are the other offerings - poker, casino games etc. - that are only a click away. And as soon as I start, the cycle repeats itself - and last time I ended up playing slots online that I usually had reserved for casino play, where I had only a limited amount of money with me.
However, this might also just be a trick my degenerate brain is playing on me to get me back on the betting track. Start with sports, then graduate to casino games. Of course, being self-excluded from all licensed casinos in my country helps, but there are loads of other casinos to play at - no matter how you'll never be able to self-exclude from everything, so the change has to come from within. No matter how many blockers you put in place there will always be this new casino with this new payment method that you will be able to play on.
Not holding credit cards & cash is not an option for me since it would make it very hard for me to run my business if I had no access to money so I need to make sure I don't get that far down the rabbit hole.
Weekend Update
I have not placed a bet for more than a week now. Which is a good thing, I guess. Come Saturday, I was feeling intense cravings for gambling. I was puzzled as to why, but then I realised that during my latest gambling cycle I played a lot when my wife was away and kids were watching cartoons. And here we were on a Saturday morning, alone with the kids who were watching cartoons, but instead of pressing buttons on my phone like a degenerate I was feeling anxious and angry.
I also had a close run-in with gambling yesterday. My favourite football team was playing and I wanted to watch the game but since it was a first-round cup game it was only available via stream on b****5. So I logged in... and to my surprise I saw that my balance is 60 EUR. Turns out that I had placed a bet I had forgotten about that won (I thought I had lost the balance I had there), luckily I am self-excluded from everything except sportsbetting there, and even for the sportsbetting I had put in a 30 day timeout when I decided enough is enough. So I had no way to wager the money and the urge wasn´t really there either, since thus far sportsbetting really hasn´t been my poison of choice - with regards to sportsbetting, I am more or less a "normal" gambler. However I need to stay away anyway since the step from the betting to the casino is so small.
This morning I withdrew the balance. If I had not been excluded from casino games this could have ended up badly since I might have thought "just a few spins and I´ll quit" which would be followed by "d**n, I missed everything, this money I found was for free anyway so I can keep going" which would turn into "I am running so bad, but one hit and I´ll recoup all my losses, I´ll just deposit 50 EUR and try to get it back" which if course very well could turn into "I am already in for 400 EUR, so a hundred more won´t really matter will it?" and to a huge setback.
Afterwards I had a good but exhausting weekend, and I was feeling very depressed yesterday evening/this morning. Pretty sure this has nothing to do with gambling, I am going through a rough patch mentally right now for no particular reason and I am stuck in a negative cycle of passivity, unhealthy eating and low energy. Of course, everytime I excercise I feel energised and good, but I have failed to get into a regular excercise routine since my January vacation which is hurting me in lots of ways. But it is easier to play the victiim and self-pity card than to do something about it....
Anyway, need to get back to work. Have a nice and gamble-free day!
Yo, I know you are feeling low , wonder myself if we have to go through a grieving process when we stop. Particularly when it fell into our daily routine, which is a constant reminder and the addiction demons trying to entice us back. Think you should well and truly focus on your successes this weekend, took a lot of determination not to play even if not the site another , and too withdraw the money , the demons would of liked you to have left it and come back when the 30days was up, by blocking up each avenue we stand a better chance of success . So my friend, bloody well done you fought the addiction and won the battle . I know you have the strength to win the war . Believe.........Shiny:-)
Thanks a lot for the kind words, Shiny!
Yeah, the money was really a shock to me and it is bad that it was there, because it instantly started a process of "it´s only betting you know and you are unable to play casino games on that site, so it´s really OK" in the brain. But I don´t want to close the account completely since they are basically the only legal place to stream a lot of sport events.
Anyway, the money is withdrawn so hopefully this will take care of things at least for now. When the 30 days are up I should be able to just renew the cooldown period although every login is probably a risk if I do not have it activated.
Some Random Thoughts
Yesterday I walked by the casino I used to frequent a lot. Did not feel an urge to gamble, did however feel a sense of loss and some remorse over having self-excluded for at least a year. I think after a year I can re-apply if I want to, if I recall correctly.
Every day I walk by several slot halls and never feel the urge to gamble. I think I have been to them only once while sober, and that was only because I promised my wife I wouldn´t go to the casino, haha. And it wasn´t really fun, lost some money in like 30 minutes or so. f**k that s**t. Haven´t been since then (a year ago or so). But it is important not to get complacent, if I would start to frequent them and fall into live slot gambling it would be much tougher to recover since there are so many, and as I wrote they do not check your ID unless you win really big (and they need to file a tax report) or look underage so basically my self-exclusion wouldn´t mean anything.
Yesterday my brain also had a grand scheme to relapse into gambling. Since the casinos where I live are off limits due to self-excluding, my brain devised a cunning plan of gambling when visiting my hometown (which is in another country), something I do 2-4 times a year (mostly business trips, however I try to plan them so I go when my hometown footy team plays at home).
Whatever, it´s a decent fantasy, however extremely unlikely to happen. When visiting for business I rarely stay more than one night and this night is almost always spent with childhood mates and I cannot imagine me bailing on my friends just to go gamble.
I have gotten enough sleep two days in a row, I got some excercise in on Monday, I am feeling rested and optimistic, and gambling seems like such a waste of time. Why would I even want to set foot in a casino again? This is a good day, however there will be bad ones as well. But whatever, let´em come!
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