Angel From Montgomery

Hi joan,

Thanks for your lovely message,

Take care and stay safe

Suzanne xx

Hi E.,

I am typing this from an iPad and am hating every second of it so far... Anyway sitting with younger niece while her older sister has a medical procedure. Poor mama and Dad looked so worried.... A few thoughts about gambling but nothing I intend acting on. We are resolved this month to spend any and all extra cash on Christmas. The littlest niece is so shy.. She's trying slowly to catch my attention by lofting her little stuffed bunny we bought for her in my direction. P thinks she's on the autism spectrum. I think she's just painfully shy and will grow out of it. Regardless I will love her up all the same! That's all for now. Living to the fullest today and hoping for many happy and healthy tomorrow's. - joanxxxxxx

Hiya 🙂

(((((((((((Joan)))))))))), that's it for now, i let you rest from my ramblings lol..

Oh yea...watch ya back for those snowballs 😛 😀 :-)))

Later Sis xxx

Morning E.,

Recovery-ieeeeeeeee..... I just edited my last post and that was the only word that I sensed would not be perceived as offensive. Lol. I will try again later when my thoughts are lighter... -joanxxxx

Hi Joan,

I hope u r ok 🙂

I just wanted 2 wish u a gr8 Christmas xx

Heyyyy Sis!!!

Hope all is well over the pond darling. Been in my thoughts recently same as our friend soul..aghrrr..ya wait till i find her lol

Wishing ya a lovely and peaceful New year, we can do it sis!! We will do it cause we are worth it! And that's a fact! very fighting spirit today as ya see (15hrs sleep brought my energy back..hallelujah i missed it lol)

Hugs hun, ya know where i am if something...unconditional

Lil sis Sandra xxxx

Hi Joan,

Just popping in to wish you a very happy new year.

Suzanne xx

Good Morning Recovery Diary:

Not everyone who has left the diaries is off gambling but, that happened to be the case for this diarist. I have no desire to start a new diary.... but, a new day has begun. With every new day is a chance to start over again. P and I have agreed to stop for 90 days. It's not about the money so I won't bother going into the usual rationalizations. It's not about forever because that is in my mind a recipe for relapse. This is old familiar ground for sure but, the attitude is pretty fresh and in spite of everything I do I continue to learn from all of my mistakes. The only blocks we have in place is our collective desire to live. The end result of addiction of any kind is death. The only choice we have then is to recognize the signs, do our best to stare down the urges, try not to wrestle down thoughts because clouds cannot be wrestled into submission, and to control our own actions. The only thing in this bloody world that I can change. My own actions. To be or not to be... That IS the question. That IS the choice. No need to ramble on about it any further. The natural world is a beautiful sight. I plan to go out and walk around in it. Why? Because I am lucky enough to be able to do it this morning. Anybody who woke up to this day is lucky. Everybody on this site who manages to abstain from gambling wins. -joanxxx

Hi Joan,

Your posts are so honest and from the heart, you are still in recovery and you are definitely still progressing slowly but surely, life is too short as you say, why try and climb to the top of an unknown mountain, when high ground is more realistic, today is what we have and today is all that matters, we just have to make the most of every day, and then we can't go wrong.

Take care.

Suzanne xx

Hi Joan.... Good to read your thoughts as always and happy to see that your sticking with your original diary. I came close to flinging mine into the gambling hell hole of doom but changed my mind after a little prompt from Sandra. At the very least its a permanent record of the last 6 plus years of my life. Its almost like writing my memoires by accident if ya get my thinking.

Its not about forever with me either (just living in the day), though I do find myself saying those words when I feel desparate. I don't feel desparate today though I do have an urge to gamble, hence why i am here writing and thinking and pondering.

A "collective desire to live"... what an interesting saying that is. I find that my desire to live waxes and wanes like the wind. Ask me what my purpose is in life and i can't answer it but ask me how many disabled people ive supported in my life to date and the answer is great many. So I guess in the great scheme of things my purpose is being played out day in and day out... and if i have a purpose I need to be alive.

The natural world is a wonderful place, yes indeed. I shall have a very long run in it tomorrow.

Right it is now gone 5pm in my part of the world and i am no longer able to activate my replacment credit card... This means that I am no longer able to walk up the hill and withdraw a bunch of cash on said credit card. Which means I am no longer able to gamble the money away and feel like I don't want to live anymore. A small victory and another day abstaining from gambling.

Keep posting as and when. My ramble ends. Warm regards... S.A 🙂

Thanks Suzanne and S.A

I guess I don't get to the diaries as much as I used to, and it shows. Page 5 ffs! Lol. I guess we are coming up to week 1 of our 90 days clean challenge. I must admit that I am not much of a social media person. I will always embrace this forum and will always view it as a valuable tool for long term recovery. That being said, for me logging continuously onto the forum can have a negative impact on my recovery as well. I become compulsive about it and that is never a good thing for me. I was getting the same way around Facebook. I can have some pretty bad days and logging onto Facebook and seeing all those shiny happy people with thier shiny happy families living nothing but continuous shiny happy lives well.... brought me down even further. I have just recently realized that many of those people are just like me but, are posting only the face they want others to see. Just like "reality" TV shows... there are alot of missing truths lying about on the cutting room floor. I have been accused of taking things too seriously. Lol. I suppose that is true. Not entirely sure what the ramble is about today... but, as for gambling on slot machines? I hope to someday make them like potato chips and Jack Daniels bourbon. Done, and gone! -joanxxxx

Hey Sis,

Heh, shiny happy people lol lol..well definitely this is not fb on this site! 😀 (esp if ya on my tread lol).

Anyway, good to see you heading towards those 90 days of freedom. This is good start.
I started my challenge too and am on one day drink free!! Lol absolutely huge achievement! (I guess i sound like i have a problem here lol..opps).

Ok, jokes aside
Hope your weekend is good to you and the anxiety levels are balancing out. I am back to work for the weekend...sigh..don't wonna go but know as soon as i get there i won't have a choice but to stick around. Some things we just do cause we have responsibilities for.

Stay safe and sound.
Sandra xx

Hi joan, thanks for your lovely message on my thread, I know you don't post much, but it very much appreciated.

Understand about face book, I do go on, but only to see what my family is up to down south as I don't see them as much as I want to.

Pleased to see you feeling stronger and calmer, because recovery is tough going at times.

Take care and stay safe

Suzanne xxx

Thanks Suzanne.

Morning Diary:

Doing ok today. I am currently experiencing withdrawal i.e. fatigue, sadness, increased anxiety, increased urge to eat sweets... blahbity blah... Regardless, we are determined to stay away from the hell hole for now. Our hope is that in putting 90 solid days between us and the slot machines that we will have gotten past the strongest urges and the withdrawal symptoms that tend to pull us back into the quicksand of addiction. Hope springs eternal and I don't take hope for granted. I believe the loss of one's hope is a symptom of end stage addiction with the final stage being death. I am not looking for an amen up in here. These are my thoughts about my own experiences with addiction which by the way, spans over 30 odd years. lol. After 90 days will we expect to be cured? Yeah, no. Probably not. Well, actually HELL NO. But, our hope is that we can retrain our brains so that slots arent the default setting. The challenge before me at this time is that my default setting had always been eating. Now that I have developed Type II Diabetes eating salty, sweet, and fat, is no longer and option. I find myself getting increasingly anxious without my crutches. Yesterday I got out of bed convinced that the boiler wasnt working properly. I got the entire household upset and it was my own self fullfilled prophesy. That poor old boiler continues to work in spite of my attempts to control it to death. What happened was, I couldnt wait the few minutes for the thermostat to catch up and decided it must have S***e the bed. As I said, poor old Bertha lives on in spite of my idiocy. I came clean to P about what's been going on in my mind lately and managed to find calm once again. So, I guess I am rambling here. Lol. The point is I need to find other ways to manage my anxiety level because if there isnt a problem I will create one to justify the chaos in my mind. And that's not fair to the rest of the folk around me including poor old Bertha. -joanxxxx

Yes, no such thing as cure. When I started gambling again after a long spell off it... it was as if the time in between had never happened.

As you say, loss of hope is not far off the end game. When I no longer care anymore I reach an even more dangerous place than am at now. When I went back to gambling after having been in gambling rehab I lost hope for a while and I still have the scars to prove it.

For me when i think of crutches am kind of realistic. Ive never been able to live life with out some sort of crutch. But its like whats the worst and deal with that first. For the last 5 months my default setting has been slots and now am paying for it. Slots cannot be my default setting cos its a one way train to suicide. I see this so clearly at this moment in time.

To be honest and say it as it is my secondary default crutches (in no particular order) are; food, P**n and alcohol. Food i can get away with (for the most part) cos i do so much exercise. I tend to eat whatever, whenever and i get away with it bar a "bit" of a belly. P**n is like slots I zone out, get a brief thrill and then feel a bit ashamed and quite lonely after. Ive got it blocked on my pc now, so not currently a problem. Alcohol use to be more of a problem than it currently is. Nowadays I get drunk occasionally but only in company. I use to get drunk most weekends. Am not that bothered by it nowadays. Am not sure what point I am trying to make here but most people have something don't they, its just a question of how harmful it becomes to ones health, to ones self-esteem, to ones self-confidence, to ones mind body and soul. For me slots is by far the most self-detructive and is most probably the reason that i have never been able to settled down and life a normal family life. On a difficult day this makes me feel very sad but today I say to myself.."well its just the way it is" and i do have it woothin me to make changes.

Am rambling on your diary. Hope you don't mind, am sure you don't.

Your old boiler is my old pc. Its been on the verge of breaking for months but it still keeps going. If it breaks now I have no means to replace it. That would be stressful cos it means i wouldn't be able to come on here. I don't especially see Gamcare forums as a crutch as such. For me ive always found that the more active i am here, reading and writing the less likely I am to be feeding the machines or want to be feeding the machines. Come on here I think. Going on ther slots I don't think I just "do" I just press buttons.

Ramble over. Keep posting as and when. Your thoughts to me always help.

S.A 🙂