At the Bottom

You should be thankful that you got bailed out, and should focus on your family as if you carry on gambling it will take your famiy off you and it wont give a sh it. Then it can focus when your down to take you further in, gambling probably never totally ruined my marriage but it played a good part. Dont feel sorry for yourself and find your own method of not gambling, put blocks in place and if you get urges do something else it will be hard it is for everyone trying to stop. But a six week old son your a very lucky man enjoy these times and dont let gambling take all that joy from watching your son grow up. If i were you your sole purpose should be to pay your folks back as getting bailed out may think your ok, but if you had to pay that £27,500 cc debt it would take a long time. Also your mood changes when you gamble you think you can mask it but people close to you wont accept your just having another bay day again. Stop enjoy your family plan holidays enjoy life and forget gambling. Good Luck.

Hi giant loser it's good you're trying to get help. You need to call gamcare for some sound advice and maybe dare I say it go to GA. I'm wondering why you let your parents pay your debt. It's sets you free to go back and start again. If you borrow from a bank you have the constant reminder. Your parents need support too, there are many at my gamanon meeting learning how to say 'no'. My husband was gambling when my children were born too. I remember sitting in the building society remortgaging our house when my daughter was 6 weeks old. Everyone had been lying to me, bailing him out so that it didn't stop. I hope you are paying your parents back. This is your debt. It's not good you got bailed out at all. Get some real help today if you really want to stop and then you can be honest. Just for today.

Thanks for your responses. Really helpful. You are right. I really need to pay them back. I know why they have bailed me out, and it is guilt on their part of some things that happened years ago. But I am in my 30s, successful and have a great young family. I can't take their guilt as a platform to support my stupid actions.

What I can't understand is why I relapsed. I had gone 14 months with not a single desire to gamble. I thought I had learnt my lesson. I have huge amounts to lose due to my profession. It is remarkable that I have been willing to risk my family and career for a guilty online demon. The sad fact is that over the last month I have twice been up £10,000 and said that was enough. I won £12,000 on a single spin on a slot. Once you have started the wins are never enough.

I feel sick to my stomach. I know that I will have a financial review at work in 24 months and the thought of having to explain a gambling loss again is not something I want to comprehend. I know that the thought review will keep me clean for the next 24 months. I had one 6 months ago and that is what probably kept me clean for the first 14 months.

I got home last night and looked at my wife feeding my baby boy and felt sick at knowing how I had broken her trust. I know I can be a better person.

I will plough on. Interestingly the last time I came clean a sense of relief of it being in the open followed. This time I don't have that because I am petrified my wife will find out. I just can't tell her though.

Well, another day done not gambling. Short term the shackles are breaking, I just can't stop thinking about my stupidity. To put your family and career at risk is a ridiculous thing to do. Why didn't I just stop when I was £10,000 up - I guess that would potentially have even been more dangerous and made me think in a years time I could do it again. It was always going to end in a loss. It could have even been worse.

I really don't know why there is not a mechanism to self exclude from all UK gambling sites, or for banks to block transactions to them. I have no interest in going to a casino or bookies. It was always online, on my phone, with what doesn't feel like real money.

It is still difficult to comprehend what I have done. I know it is not the end of the world, but I think of how much better my life would be at this point had I not been weak for a couple of months.

For me it is not the money, it is the guilt and lies. The money will come, I earn enough and given my wife the majority of it. The guilt is overwhelming, combined with the fear of my wife finding out.

Every day is a new one, and every month will be a step closer to the debt dissapearing.

Hi Giantloser (I'm sure you aren't by the way!!)

I can feel your pain. Agonising over telling your partner is the thing I struggled with the most.. Especially when you've been there before and promised them it won't happen again. Particuarly if they've been good to you in the past and you can't bare the thought of losing them, particuarly given that you have a new young family to think about. It's really tough when you start thinking about what they'll say / think about your actions.

However, the cycle won't change unless you do and for this reason I think you need to ideally talk to her about what has happened or at the very least say you are struggling with an addiction and put up some decent barriers/blockers. You may not be as fortunate as me and have someone who will take on the burden of managing your finances but you should at least try and make it more difficult to gamble as there doesn't seem to be anything in place? I won't comment on the handouts you've been given but if you have easily dodged previous bullets, you're likely to try the same again.

I know you mentioned sending screengrabs of credit card statements etc. to your family but if you are a compulsive gambler you'll probably do something else down the road to get around this, i.e. a new credit card. Not to mention that your family won't understand the addiction so even they'll ease up on 'checking your financial activity'.

I know that telling your partner about more lies and secrets seems horrible but you've admitted yourself that money isn't really the issue here and that everthing can be managed in that respect, so at least that won't a burden for her. You may be fortunate that she wants to learn more about addiction and why we do these crazy things too?

Good luck buddy but don't do this alone.. it's not possible!!

P.S. If your real vice is online gambling just do some easy stuff like order new bank cards and get someone else to scratch off the CSV number on the back. Self-exclusion across ALL platforms is really hard to maintain but simple stuff like that will help.

Hi Giantloser,

I just want to comment on what you had written above:

"it was always going to end on a loss"

I think this is key to realising the compulsive nature and why we can't gamble ... No win will ever be enough to bring peace of mind for a cg IMO..money is relative and for me its not really about the money, not deep down.

I think part of the addiction can be the risk, risking being found out and having it all come crashing down, yet getting away with it, it can be part of the adrenaline high but its part of the sickness.

Its this that will rob you of everything if you don't fight it.

I am with you, on day 0 here but hoping to get to day 1 tomorrow.

Wishing you all the best in your recovery,

4D

I think the adrenaline is definitely something.

I have been looking at my recent episode and can't believe some of the simple measures the gaming industry could put in place to help. We must all take personal responsibility, but I think there are levers of corporate responsibility that may assist.

For example I temporarily self excluded from one site due to excessive gambling, yet I could bounce to another site in the same group the following day, open an account and deposit £15,000 in the space of three days. It would be so easy for a group to block an email address from opening another account on a sister site in a period of exclusion. But I suppose they are there to make profit. As we bounce around losing money from one site to the next.

The way I feel at the moment I kind of what to get involved with improving the environment for those that have problems and fighting the industry to make it harder for people to feed their compulsion. Sadly that would mean being fully out in the open. Something I can't yet do.

So many measures would make the industry better, but less profitable. Should a new customer, on a cool off from a sister site honestly be allowed to make those kind of deposits?

Won't bring my loss back, and it has kicked me in the teeth to show me my real stupidity and weakness, but might protect some others who are not quite there yet.

Hi GL and welcome :)).

There's a lot the gaming industry could do to protect us more and quite simple things would make a huge difference , that being said at the end of the day it's just amoney making machine but we have a responsibility to ourselves not to try and get around blocks or exclusions we put in place in order to seek out new gambling opportunities when the urge strikes again , blocks afford us some thinking time and nothing more so it has to be about ourselves creating change in our live's where we do something else with our time in order to get over those urges and ride out the storm . " Nothing changes if nothing changes " and how can we expect things to be any different if were still looking to gamble ? .

I have been on a very long car journey today. This has given me some time to reflect on the past, and look at the future.

I have come to the conclusion that I am going to treat the instances of gambling as two very expensive lessons in stress management. I am in an odd position where I have only gambled for about 6 months in my life, both two periods of three months. But have lost the equivalent of a months wages each month for that period. I have no idea how it went from zero to everything in such a short time.

Gambling really is all consuming. I have worked out that in both periods it was not about the money. It has never been about the money. I was buying adrenaline. The feeling of getting myself out of a hole, was actually the biggest kick. Being in profit wasn't exciting. Getting out of the red was. It was therefore always going to end with the last bet being in the red, unable to get out of it.

I guess the adrenaline is my coping mechanism. It's what I turn to when stressed, lonely, or just bored. That covers both of my periods of gambling. I don't know why I crave the adrenaline so much. I guess it makes you feel alive. The key for me will be to find it elsewhere. If I managed for 33.5 years, not sure why I failed in the 6 months of gambling. But whatever the weakness was, it's not coming back.

nit Hi Mate..I do understand where you coming from. I've was the same one winnst a casino this year got me hooked and started to play online at the got in debt..rest us history. Im now finally free of the temptation...it will get better slowly..please join a gym, play old school games online and keep posting here..watching out for the free bonus emails. I'm paying back my debt as no one can bail me out... keep strong.