DaveUK - New Diary

Dave

Fella thanks so much for writing and sharing that post ,it is so true all of it,I myself was an avid follower of the fobt,I graduated from the fruit machines to them and so did my losses.

Self exclusion has had a profound effect upon my own recovery,it really is a gift to ourselves,the one selfish act I allow myself in life today.

You are right in what you write too regarding the compulsive gambler has to want to stop for themselves,no amount of loss would have stopped me in honesty,it took facing losing my house and family for me to seek help.

That comes in the medium of self help, I fully understand but with folk like you walking the same journey and sharing such great insight I have my own resolve added to

For it I salute you.

Keep adding to those twenties,a great idea.

Duncs stepping forward never back

Have not updated my diary for 3 months as not much to say.

The only machine I put money in is a bank machine - far less stressful and never lose !

Have saved back getting on for 3700 against my inflated target of 6500 (lost about 4-5k) over 8 years.

I cannot say enough how much better life is without the roulette machines. Don't miss them at all although know it would take just one go to get the bug again. I believe urges are a natural instinct and the trick is not acting on them.

Will check in again once I hit the 4k mark.

Dave

Thanks for all the encouragement and hard / honest words. After almost 4 years of giving up there's little more to say.

I won in the end by stopping and for me it matters not whether there are 1, 4 or 40 machines in a shop as I just don't go in so they are just gathering dust as far as I am concerned.

Nobody got hurt and money has never been and is certainly not now a problem. The wasted time and unnecessary anguish is probably the worse thing but it's all now a distant memory.

Dave

Dave

Fella I have enjoyed your thread greatly,it is without doubt proof that this addiction can be arrested.

Thanks for sharing

I hope your words go on to help many others in the future.

Abstain and maintain

Duncs stepping forward never back

Having previously decided to bring my diary to an end I have had a change of heart and am going to add to it again. Having relfected further I now believe the effort to keep out of trouble from gambling needs to be a constant and not something you can say is done and dusted forever. I am doing this more as a precaution than anything.

The self-exclusion from the local bookies in April 2011 has been incredibly helpful and without it I would have still been in the same old cycle of play, win. lose, sulk, excuse the loss, get over the loss and play again! This said there have been the very odd occassions when circumstances with work and general day to day travel have meant I have come across shops where I was not self-excluded and ended up dabbling but fortunately as soon as I have started losing I have self-excluded there and then to cut off the possibilities when tempted again. In the 4 years since first self-excluding I have played the machines a few times and would guess the losses amount to no more than a few hundred which isn't too bad over 50 months - but is still a waste and should be zero. I am done with them now so thats all fine and no longer a worry.

I have also flirted with online roulette (with the live dealers) but again being a bad loser I soon get annoyed so once I start losing self-excluded from the site so again have avoided any real damage. I would imagine I have again lost a few hundred but again have run out of places to go so am finished with that to.

I am a bad loser and as I have mentioned in my diary a few times am otherwise very thrifty so any loss hurts however small, thus me throwing my toys out of the pram and self-excluding when it doesn't go my way. Of course online has the same outcome as playing the FOBT's - they always, always get you in the end. Trouble is when I won I just could not leave it alone and wanted more and more and more and with the odds against winning in the long term there was only ever one outcome.

Also as mentioned in my diary before when I did my first self-exclusion in Apri 2011 I started saving £20 a week and have now reached £4,500 which is quite nice. My aim is £6,500 as I would hit this target when my mortgage finishes in 2 years so will be a double celebration. The target will cover all my losses since about 2002 time which of course are still losses but in a way it will feel like I have got it back (strange logic I know). £6,500 is on the high side but if I use this as a worst case scenario of losses over the last 13 or so years it works out at about £10 a week.

Having read through my diary I have been reminded how hard it is to see sense when you are in the throngs of gambling and on reflection have forgotten this when responding to some posts. I do still stand by the notion that one has to take personal reponsibility for their actions and put a real effort into stopping by having as many barriers in place as possible but also need to remember its not a tap that can be switched off at will.I will remember this when posting in future.

For now I will be adding to my diary again and am glad my return to doing this is not off the back of any big loss but more as an ongoing reminder that temptation is always there.

Hi dave that's a lovely, honest and self-reflective post. Welcome back!

You are very kind cardhue - thank you.

Dave

Fella another great share, a very true statement of intent.

I commit to recovery because I know that trying to forget that I am and always will be a compulsive gambler is a truly foolish act.

Gambling is a totally unacceptable act for me because it breeds nothing but utter negativity.

I have long since accepted that this isn't the case for everyone and to maintain my own recovery I have to live in harmony with myown aaddiction.

By writing here I get my 'dose' of resolve to continue making progress.

Fella it's great to know you will again contribute to that.

By doing so I know you will gift yourself the same.

As a wiser person than me wrote

'To recover effectively you have to give your recovery away'

Sharing is an alien concept to the compulsive gambler, then again so is long term winning!

Recovery offers both.

Abstain and maintain

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Welcome back Dave

Of course i am the first to say its easier to judge someone else other than myself and understanding this addiction is very hard work at times.

Yes responsibility is a crucial place to start but going back to your tap metaphore, its like the tap loosens and i need to stop the trickle of water before it starts making swimming pools again

Tri

After I had read through a few peoples diaries and forum posts the other night it hit me I have never truly known what it is to have a real gambing addiction. A previous member on this site who I used to chat to (blackjack it's you if you are still on the site) used to tell me I had things totaly out of proportion in my mind and I can now see where he was coming from. I have never ever lost what I could not afford - just hated losing (am a bad loser full stop). Yes I would have rather spent the £5K I lost over 10 -12 years or so on something else, yes the unnecessary misery when I did lose was avoidable and yes the time should have been better spent but on reflection it was no disaster. The thing which hurts the most is the deception.

Without doubt I thought I could win money on the machines and increase my savings and it wasn't until I realised despite my best efforts and different strategies it just was not possible. What's more, I already have more than enough so was being greedy. Even now I am too obsessive with accumulating money so when I lost some, however small it led to a complete overreaction.

The reason I am recording this in my diary is I need to remember when encouraging others it is not an easy battle to win and cannot simply compare other people situations to mine so make sure I use the right words at the right time.

All this said I won't go near the roulette machines again as they are just a waste of time and money. I never ever played any other features on the machine - they are an equal waste of time. I have never had any interest betting on horses, dogs, sport or card games so this was never an issue.

I have changed my perspective of just how difficult it is for those in recovery to stop gambling and hope I can continue to encourage a few people in the right way.

Hi DaveUK, I totally respect your last post but equally don't do your own recovery a disservice! Regardless of how much money you have & how little you lost, if you gamble with anything you are not prepared to lose & deceive to do so then this freedom hasn't come easily! I have never worked the 12 steps but by looking @ them of late, I too have changed my perspective & now understand that recovery is not just about stopping the gambling! I cannot undo the advice I have already given so like you, I hope I can move forwards, encourage people in the right way too!

Keep winning - ODAAT

You are very thoughtful and kind ODAAT - thank you. I now realise telling a compulsive gambler to just stop is like telling someone with depression to cheer up and pull themselves together which I would never dream of doing. If it was that easy they would just stop.

Thanks again and you keep winning to my friend.

Dave

Hi Dave

Yes, I'm still hanging around and nice of you to remember me. Somehow my team have returned to the land of milk and honey at the first time of asking so will once again be locking horns with your lot again this coming season. At least that b*oody Suarez won't be there to torment us ( lol )

I haven't been on the site much recently as I don't like the new layout and my computer doesn't seem to like the layout either as I have to keep dragging the text across. Does anyone else have the same problem ?

Regarding getting things out of proportion I won't say I told you so but it's nice to hear you think there might have been something in it. It is all proportionate. I love going to West End theatre but top price tickets cost the thick end of £100 these days so it's not a cheap day out. Still love it though. What I'm getting at is once I've seen the show it's gone. Same with holidays apart from perhaps a short-lived tan, some wonky photos and a few tacky souvenirs. There's nothing tangible left so it's a bit like gambling really. It's just entertainment. Gambling, in moderation, like plonking your b*m on an expensive theatre seat can be fun and we all could do with that in life. I'm happy to accept gambling losses quite readily but for someone like yourself who can't then it's best avoided. I really didn't think you were ever going to have a problem for as far as money goes you sounded so controlled and perhaps one clue was how you beat yourself up over what, in the great scheme of things, was your very modest loss over the years. Another clue was how precisely you could put a figure on it. I suppose if I was to add it all up I've spent a similar amount on theatre, concert and holiday entertainment over the years and I've nothing to ' show ' for it either. But I don't look at it like a balance sheet for to me it's just comes under the glorious heading of ' living ' and as far as we know we only do that once.

I do have a certain envy for people who are good with money as I most certainly am not but I would say don't let it become an all consuming passion. There's not much point being the richest man in the cemetery....

Best wishes to you personally and for the coming season ( except when you're up against the mighty Yellows of course )

Blackjack

Blackjack - what a lovely surprise to hear from you! Hope you are doing well - I bet you are really looking forward to the new season, who knows what it will bring for both our clubs but hopefully there will be more ups than downs.

I am not keen on the new site layout either and hope they didn't spend too much on the upgrade - for starters I would have put the most recent diary posts at the top rather than the end of the thread and would have made the whole thing a little more modern and appealing on the eye. I guess we don't know what the budget was.

I am so grateful you did not give up telling me I did not have a huge problem and as I mentioned it eventually sunk in and I realised I am probably too careful with money and need to start enjoying life more. I am not suggesting it needs to be on gambling entertainment but generally.

Your post has given me a huge amount of food for thought and particulalry your referral to 'living' - I will try harder. Unbelievably I got half way through your post and thought 'there's no point being the richest person in the cemetery' and blow me down you went and said it.

Appreciate your frustrations with the site and that you probably don't want to be on here too much but will be great to hear from you now and again.

Thanks again for contacting me and keep well. Reckon we need to check in with a few observations once the season is underway.

Very best wishes as always.

DaveUK

PS: Suarez has indeed gone - Balotelli is just not the same 🙂

Was a feature on local TV last night which again highlighted the perils of FOBTS - athough no longer an issue for me I was disappointed to hear the government have decided not to reduce them to £2 a spin. Equally disappointing was the representative from the gambling commission defending them and seeming fine that its only a problem for 'a small minority'.

On a different note I have concluded my strapline is - 'I cannot gamble as I cannot bare to lose'.

Dave