Been here before, let's try this again

Hi Adam

Congrats on the 50. Keep going bud. It all sounds positive and you are doing great.

Hi Adam, thanks for posting and if anything I've written helps anyone that makes me happy. Congrats on 52 days and will take a leaf out if your book for setting goals as I am a bit of a drifter and tend to take odaat which works for me but need some long term aims in my personal life too. Enjoy this GF day take care S:)

Congratulations for making it over half a century Adam 🙂 keep up the good work buddy ! It’ll soon be 100 but obviously one day at a time 🙂

Sars

Congratulations on hitting 50+ days Adam! You’re doing superbly well on this journey. Keep ticking off those milestones. Not long until you’re 2 months free from gambling.

DAY 61

This is a VERY quick check in as I am SO busy. Had a lovely weekend away with friends so haven't even had time to think about gambling or even my progress. I'm so happy to be at 61 days gamble free. This is amazing!

Will try and take some time to properly jot down my thoughts this week as I've had a few moments thinking about gambling, and how it's affected me, and how I think it fuels the addictive side to my brain. But this will have to wait till I can sit down and think properly ha!

Now I need to do some ironing for work tomorrow!

It's been a long time since I've posted. Here's an update on my life.

Sadly, shortly after my above post I relapsed - and Christmas came and I ended up even more in debt which gave me a pretty dreadful start to the year. I also had a death in the family which introduced the perfect opportunity for the addictive part of my brain to come out from the shadows.

Luckily, I've had some sort of epiphany and have managed to remain gamble free for the past 37 days and have luckily managed to improve other areas of my life which were keeping me down at rock bottom. I truly feel I'm in a place where I can be strong enough to beat this.

So here we go again. Day 37!

Hi Adam

Sorry to hear about the relapse. Keep repeating that old saying "if at first you don't succeed - try and try again". You are trying hard, you know what you have to do (read back all your posts). Traumas like deaths, bad work days are sent to try you and it is a case of learning to cope with these pressures without turning to gambling. As you know, it might provide 5 mins of comfort but that 5 mins turns into a lifetime of possible debt and misery. Keep your eye on all the positives in your life and keep counting those Gfree days. Wish you loads of luck and a lovely summer.

gamparentanon wrote:

Hi Adam

Sorry to hear about the relapse. Keep repeating that old saying "if at first you don't succeed - try and try again". You are trying hard, you know what you have to do (read back all your posts). Traumas like deaths, bad work days are sent to try you and it is a case of learning to cope with these pressures without turning to gambling. As you know, it might provide 5 mins of comfort but that 5 mins turns into a lifetime of possible debt and misery. Keep your eye on all the positives in your life and keep counting those Gfree days. Wish you loads of luck and a lovely summer.

Thank you for your message, it is very comforting to know someone out there is listening. You are totally right in everything you say. We all need to beat this!

Day 49 today. It's taken me two years but I think I might have a fail safe set of blocks in place. The other night was very tough. I stumbled across a few YouTube videos showing big wins on slots. Enough to pay off my debt, buy a new car and get a chunk of money in savings. Luckily, I now have signed up to Gamstop, manually self excluded from hundreds of casinos, and finally have GamBan on my phone - a lifesafer. In addition - my money is secure and I have a daily allowance paid into my spending account so I cannot spend more than £25 a day. These blocks are excessive but they are necessary.

Now I have almost got to Day 50, I can now start to peel back the layers and look into why I started to gamble and possibly identify the issues I may or may not have. Whilst I am confident I am physically unable to gamble, I am determined to establish my triggers so I can learn more about myself and try and work on these in the future.

Feeling positive 🙂

Welcome back Adam

Glad to see you are feeling better, that in itself is a massive step forward. Compulsive gambling drags us down to feel like "why bother getting help". We lose that self respect that makes it feel harder to stop, whats left to lose huh? Much more time and money is the answer. It'll take what you allow it once you get deep like most of us here. Theres a better life waiting for you mate, put that effort into recovery and you will soon see whats really important.

Have a good weekend.

All the best!