Day 4
No Gambling
Had a good day today, played golf and hung out in the club with the boys. My mind tried to say 'no harm in a fiver in the fruit machine' but i quickly shut it out and continued to have a good time with friends.
Too many times have i got up and played it for hours while friends had a good time in my absence. Not today, not again!
Now for a night in front of the telly and some more golf tomorrow....and no gambling 🙂
🙂
You're doing well. Keep it up.
I have the bit between my teeth now (pardon the pun) about getting the gamble-free days rolling. I never want to have to write 'Day 1' again. We are both at the start of our journeys towards being gamble-free and debt-free but let's stick at it and the days will soon start adding up. I don't want to waste anymore of my life gambling and every day I can post on here as being gamble-free will be a day of my new life gained and, in financial terms, a day of money saved not wasted.
Yes Pelle lets keep it going mate!!
Day 5
No Gambling.
Played golf today and loved every minute of it. Was in the club afterwards and the boys all left to go home, i stayed to watch the football....what a temptation to hit the machines...
But i didnt, im not willing to ruin this run, its just not worth it!!!
I could just bail and play them and just not come on here and not post...but that gets me nowhere and to be honest im enjoying the challenege of being clean and not playing and recording my progress
Im not leaving the house again today so there will be no gambling for the rest of day 5 either.
Roll on day 6, nearly a week down!!
🙂
Day 6
No gambling today
Today was a strange day, i had a really busy morning at work and i didnt have my mind on anything gambling related.
But this afternoon i havent been as busy and as i drove along i thought back to gambling.
Mostly i thought about my poker past. I havent played poker in a long long time but when i was a student i played online non stop. I won a lot of money and i was good at it and loved the challenge...but i never cashed in when i was well up.
When my bankroll went south i chased like never before and i was sitting with thousands at a table betting like it was monopoly money. I had gone against all my initial poker principles which were patience...patience and patience.
That thinking helped me build a bankroll of around 8k in 6 months with good play and keeping my stakes realistic. But i moved up tables after time and as i lost i moved up and up and up. It all went very wrong.
I thought of the bad times today but i also thougth of the good times. I loved playing, i loved the challenge and i still think of the buzz it gave me because my decisions had some say in the outcome...rather than the slots ive played so heavilly in pokers absence with are 100% pure luck.
I played a little bit of online poker about 6 months or so ago but i wasnt the same, i was a nervous player with no patience and no belief i would win because i was so scarred from the huge debts i built up before so it didnt last long.
I wont go back
The thing i miss the most though is live poker play at the local club. I used to play maybe 1 friday a month, it was a £40 buy in and it was a knockout tournament. No rebuys...no more money.
I used to concentrate so hard and i placed almost evrytime i played. When i lost i left because there were no other gambling games.
We used to go down in a group of 5 or 6 and we loved the craic, it was sociable and challenging and i do miss it because it wasnt like online poker. I had my money, fi i got knocked out it was over.
I wish i could play agian but realistically i cant. Im a gambling addict and playing live might lead to urges to play online or something. I cant risk that.
Probably one of my biggest regrets of my addiction is that i cant enjoy the social aspect of gambling that others can because i have uncontrollable gambling urges.
Anyway back to today, i drove past the place where i play the slots and i had a brief 'sure lets go in for a few pounds' but my mind came straight to here...and i didnt want to break my run because i like posting on here with my updates.
It feels good to share all this today.
Hope everyone has had a good non gambling day
🙂
Day 7
No Gambling today
Well theres a week past! I was driving along and thinking....hmmmm 7 days, big deal! But in reality there havent been many 7 day stretches in recent times (other than my 2 month clean run) that i can say i have completed so its a step in the right direction
But the thing i thought of most was that this clean run (even though its just 7 days) has been done ENTIRELY by myself (with the help of this site and the support)
What i mean is that every other clean run i have had has been due to coming clean to a loved one about my problem, or having a friend bail me out cause i had no money and promising them i would stop.
But on this occasion ive made the decision that i have had enough. I just dont want my life to be the way it has been anymore, 12 years is long enough and i want to change.
I had that urge run through my head today about playing slots but im trying to think past the 'sure just a wee fiver'
A wee fiver means more than a fiver as it always does but i know that a wee fiver means the following
1.) Ill have broken my 7 day gamble free cycle
2.) Ill have to start all over again
3.) Ill have proven nothing to myself
4.) ill be in a bad mood because i played and lost money, and if i win ill probably lose it anyway and even if i dont i wont be relieved or proud
5.) itll affect how i act around other people
So for these reasons and many more i shoved the urge out of my head and just did my days work, dropped off some money to a friend that i owed so glad to get that out of the way and tonight im just chilling out with my gf
Roll on day 8....hopefully on Xmas Day i can post on here that i am still gamble free
Good luck everyone
🙂
Congratulations on reaching a whole week gamble-free. I'm two days behind. Don't let me overtake you!
Ill try not to, i have seen you sneaking up so im trying to keep a nose ahead (no gambling pun intended, lol)
Hows your week been, many urges or have you been all good?
Its strange properly stopping on my own, i dont think id be able to do it without this site, it gives me something to aim for, which is weird.
I cant make sense of it but maybe seeing how everyone else has screwed up their life like i have through gambling inspires me as theres many here who have gone 10s, 100s and 100s of days gamble free!
Day 8
No gambling today
Some strong and sharp urges today though.
I had to do some business down at the golf club and 2 elderly men were playing the fruit machines. I stood and watched and gave them advice on what to do here and there to help them win some money (i didnt press or touch anything)
Anyway they didnt and off they went
I stood in front of the machine and i literally could hear it going "yep im full, you know you want to play me" (as nuts as that sounds)
Part of me really wanted to play, 'just a fiver', but i just looked and thought how i didnt want to go back to day 1, so i walked away and left.
Later in the day i was at a local seaside town doing some work and i walked past lots of amusement arcades. I saw some machines that i would usually play and i thought.....jeeees id love a wee rattle at that
But i didnt bother and i walked past.
I notice a lot of people have 'self excluded' themselves from a lot of places on this forum.
I believe that this stratedgy is the right one if
A. you really cant stop and you need to put a barrier in place
B. You feel it will help you sort out your finances in the short term
I have self excluded myself from amusements and online before and it was for those reasons.
I led myself to bleieve it was because i wanted to stop completely and this would help. But in reality it isnt a good long term plan.
Today i decided to watch people playing fruit machines and some people say tthats not a good thing to do, but i totally disagree.
In my life im going to be surrounded by various aspects of gambling from time to time and i need to face it and restrain myself from playing. I cant just 'exclude myself' from all forms of gambling and hope that by ignoring it it will go away
So today was the day i faced my demons and i walked away. That will happen many more times im sure...i hope i always walk away, but today was a really good start
Roll on Day 9
🙂
Well done for completing another gamble-free day. I agree about self-exclusion: I have self-excluded online but it is NOT a cure in itself and is never going to work in the long-term. I have no confidence or trust in high-street bookmakers so I haven't bothered self-excluding from them. As a London resident, it is a joke to consider self-excluding from all the bookmakers near me - there are hundreds around where I live/work and the staff don't pay enough attention to the people walking into their shops to make it worthwhile - they are too busy painting their nails or playing with their phones. Will power and gradually changing yourself are the only long-term ways we can beat this. Building walls to contain problems never works in the long-term; they are just short-term fixes which eventually crumble. You can only stop gambling because the person inside you wants to stop gambling. Good luck!
100% Pelle
At the end of the day id like to think you and i have say at least 50 more years to live....we are going to come in contact with so many gambling enviroments in that time
Sometimes we may be with people who know about our addiction so that will stop us.......but more times than not we wont be....and then we have to face all the gambling by ourseleves....guess we have to learn to do it alone sometime!
🙂
100% Pelle
At the end of the day id like to think you and i have say at least 50 more years to live....we are going to come in contact with so many gambling enviroments in that time
Sometimes we may be with people who know about our addiction so that will stop us.......but more times than not we wont be....and then we have to face all the gambling by ourseleves....guess we have to learn to do it alone sometime!
🙂
Day 9 begins.....
I felt i needed to post on here this morning, for a number of reasons relating to the fact that ive just checked and my monthly pay is in.
Today is the day i pay off teh final payment to my best friend. Ive given him nearly 800 a month for the last 2 months and anlther 750 today and my debt to him is clear.
I feel good about that. Unfortunately after i pay the rest of my bills i have 140 to do me the rest of the month.
I have two nights out coming up in the next week (both that cannot be missed as they are dinners which i have already paid for)
Payday is ALWAYS the day were i look at my pay......look at how much i have to GIVE AWAY to various places (other than regular bills) and come to the stark realisation that i have B*****r all to myself.
That usually makes me gamble
Im wishing WISHING that i had an extra £70 or £80 cause if i was gamble free that would cover my month just nicely.
But i wont gamble to try and accrue it because thats what i ALWAYS have done.
I just have to accept thats what ive got, i just need to be strong for ONE MONTH because next month ill owe no money other than my regular bills (which include a debt management plan for long term loans and cards) and even after presents for xmas ill have £400 to enjoy
I havent had that sort of money to enjoy in a long long time
When i have had £400 to enjoy in the past i used to use the mentality "well ive got £400....i only need £200 for the month, so ive got £200 to gamble"
Come on just stay strong for a month here and you get to enjoy your pay......
I hope its a quick month
Hi NIboy...thanks for your post on my diary much appreciated!
One month is nothing in the grand scheme of things! Just think how amazing next month will be when you have that £400 to spend on yourself...there are some of us (me) that have got the next 4 years of dishing out £700 minimum a month to our debts so count yourself lucky! I WISH I only had another 30 days of budgeting left!
Enjoy your night out tomorrow, am sure you'll have a fab time.
Keep up the good work. You have proven to your friend that you are seroius about quitting this time by paying him back what you owe him, don't ruin that friendship again by letting him down.
Lots of Love
Shorty xxx
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the comments on my diary.
Just read your diary and realised we stoppped on the same day mate, I will keep checking in and make sure your doing well. It will help me keep focused knowing someone else is crossing off the same days as me.
Lee
Hi Shorty and Hi Tryharder 🙂
Thanks both for your comments on my page!
Yes im so glad i have paid my best friend back, was the last chance i had as he said if i didnt stop properly and pay him back this time our friendship was over so ive gained his trust by paying the money back.
Ill enjoy my night out tomorrow night and count down until 10th of december until th enext payday 🙂
Thats cool that we started on the same day Tryharder, we have to keep an eye on each other here. I have literally stopped gambling (for the time being and hopefully forever) due to this website.
I like tracking mine and other peoples progress and i dont want to have to come on here and start day 1 again!
Thanks for your support both of you, you have mine 🙂
🙂
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