Facing reality AT LAST

Thanks for the very supportive, and practical, post on my diary. Actually, where I live is semi-rural, and only 2 minutes from nothing, so I walk a lot. Yes, it is good. I'll get over thinking about the debt, it's just a bit raw at the moment.

*edit*

I deleted a long comment here, FF, because I couldn't make it sound like I wanted to. Anyway, good luck with it all. Every day's a victory.

Hi Feetforward, Try to focus on the bad gambling causes with your family, work anything really and stay with that. Once upon time that was money for me but after a while that sorted itself so I had to use other things and there was plenty of them too once I got thinking about it. Write down what gambling has done to you and read it back and when your ready do this again it will be amazing what you remember between the two. I am sure like me gambling has caused nothing but torment in your life yet it sits on your shoulder waiting to come back.

Good Luck

Michael

Hi Feetforward. Thanks very much for your post on my diary. It meant a lot. I hope that you are having a great day.

Take care.

Dave

Thanks guys! This is mainly a tool for me but it means a lot to know people are reading sometimes.

Milkman did you edit your post or am I dreaming??! I was going to reply saying yes, you're so right, in a sense I'm not badly enough off for it really ever to have hit me big style. In other words I have got away with it so far, in terms of consequences outside of myself. (Those are bad enough.)

My other half supports me as I try to pursue a creative career and of course I feel horribly guilty but that's not been enough to stop me before.

Whenever I've been 100% responsible for putting food on my own table I've been more responsible with money. As I cut down lines of credit this sense of being responsible is returning, but I am still in a pretty cushty situation and somehow things always seem to work out eventually.

That makes me really scared though - like, am I inevitably heading for a rock bottom where I literally lose everything, because nothing else will stop me? I am determined that that should not be true. I AM headed for that if I keep gambling, so today I will not, but yeah, sometimes I think is the reason I have slipped so much because I'm not feeling the pain enough?

I have certainly had huge emotional pain from this but I haven't exactly been on the streets.

Am I somehow forcing myself to take some sort of real punishment one day because deep down I think I deserve it? Maybe.

Anyway these are definitely thoughts I throw around.

Luckily yes, I am having a great day actually, the year has really improved and my health has improved and stuff is good. Focusing more on others (gradually learning to, anyway...) and this really helps.

Best wishes to all.

Hi FF,

Yes, I deleted it. MichaelS commented that he disagreed with it, and when I read it back it sounded a bit arrogant, this being my first post on your diary and all. I didn't want it to sound like I thought your problem wasn't significant - far from it - but it did read like that. That's the power of the internet!

Yes, you understood it correctly anyway. Something like, you're courting disaster but keep stopping with a 'safety margin' - which gives you the green light to have another go when the finances have recovered. We're all the same, just variations on a theme. We do what we can get away with. When we don't get away with it it's too late.

Thanks again for your timely comment on my diary, much appreciated.

I'm glad you pointed up that fact, Milkman, I'd never really seen it like that and that's exactly what I do (have been doing). Total recipe for "never stopping" until, of course, I stop getting away with it at which point (as you say) it's too late because everything will come crashing down.

As I'm not gambling at the moment it gives me more space to reflect (when I am gambling it's more like klaxons are going off all around me and flashing lights and someone shouting "EMERGENCY!!" all the time... not a space in which you can think straight).

Some keys to not gambling:

1) Stay busy

2) Stay happy

3) Stay away from gambling environments

Simple eh? Well number 3 is easy enough, it's just a question of keeping vigilant and not letting that monster get its claws around the edge of the door (usually for me this is by reading gambling forums, playing games online for free etc. Before I know it I'm back playing for real. BAD.)

Number 1 & 2 are not so simple but they seem so key. I'm busy at the moment partly because I've got more work and partly as I've made an effort to fill spare time. Busy-ness just crushes the gambling thoughts to nothing! It's great. It might fleetingly cross my mind but I'm already doing something different so I don't even have time to make the decision not to gamble. I just "don't bother", like we said earlier.

Staying happy is a bit of a wrong term really... happiness being fleeting and not something you can "stay" with. Unless you stay in the moment all the time which of course would be the ideal... but not something I am skilled enough to do. However, if you become aware that happiness is always *available* by remembering to step into the present moment and breathe, and let go of the past and the future entirely, you get that fleeting glimpse of happiness and calm and you realise that it IS always there underneath all the cr**. I find that a big help.

Sometimes I lie in bed worrying and if I'm lucky I'll remember just to STOP and let go, just stop thinking for a few moments and think about my breathing instead (happily I am healthy so my breathing is not something I am worried about!), and it feels amazing, like a total escape, stepping off the merry-go-round of nightmare worry, which I think is one thing I was using gambling to try to do.

Just a few thoughts this chilly Thursday... now I'm off to cook dinner and I'm behind with work and emails and exercise and everything - HURRAY that means I am busy so no gambling for me... 🙂

Not a huge amount to say today, just checking in as I'm feeling a bit complacent and as if it's very easy not to gamble, which I know is dangerous.

It seems so easy, when I am in the "Dr Jekyll" mode of the Jekyll & Hyde switch (Dr Jekyll was the good guy!). I can't imagine why I wanted to gamble ever, well not more than a vague recollection that it was a sort of easy lazy way of avoiding other stuff.

Yet I've been here before, I know, and returned to gambling, so I've got to be careful. Often I am in this headspace and as a result gambling seems harmless, then I start to think "surely it can't have been that bad, and I can prove it to myself now by having a short harm-free session..." and then of course disaster strikes.

So I'm planning to avoid disaster striking by not allowing myself to have those thoughts, and even if I do have those thoughts I am planning to see through them and not listen to their lies.

Also trying to be extra-careful as I'm a bit under the weather which usually gives me a great excuse to "feel better by gambling" (ha ha). Actually I've forced myself to do some work, it's slow and foggy but I actually do feel better for achieving something.

If only I got a big thrill from the achievement of not gambling! I get a deep satisfaction over time, and I know that's what counts, but of course my basic brain is still craving that big cheap thrill just because that's the drug it likes.

I do remind myself that the absolute best thing to happen to me over the last few gambling slips I've had is that I've lost, and lost quickly, hence no "big thrill" anyway. I actually seem to have developed the capacity to stop when I am losing (unbelievably, the last few times, I have actually got fed up and withdrawn what's left of my money from the online casino, ie "cutting my losses, ie acting like a normal person!!), but I know for sure that if I had won I would not have stopped, so in a way that's great, because I know for sure that I am now absolutely guaranteed to lose because the only time I can bring myself to stop is when I have lost!

So it's as if I've sort of short-circuited gambling for myself. It's "broken". If I do have thoughts of gambling I can see through to the end, to what would happen, which is that "win or lose" I would finally lose, if you see what I mean, which takes away the point of gambling, so... it's like a broken toy.

Another couple of weeks have gone by gambling free. Because it's such a busy time of year it seems to be passing really quickly. There have been times when every minute not gambling has felt painful and the days have passed unbelievably slowly, but at the moment, it seems easy.

So I know, I need to beware complacency!

Feeling a bit stressy with one thing and another but doing my best just to observe that and to deal with it in other ways. Luckily I'm back to exercising after a week or so with a virus when I couldn't do anything (mental health always takes a dive), so I can de-stress that way. Not gambling therefore feeling good overall.

I've really beaten myself up this year and have faced some dark times when I really thought I "couldn't" ever stop gambling. It's because I would go a week, two weeks, six weeks, and then "always" slip back.

I would look at the few gambling hours as "the truth about me" instead of the many many days of not gambling.

So in October/early November I was thinking oh God, 2013, another year when I have failed to stop gambling. But actually when I look back with a clearer head, I have succeeded in not gambling for the huge majority of this year. Jan-April nothing at all. May and half of June I had a bad gambling period. Then nothing until August, when I had a couple of weeks bad gambling again. Then just a day or two here and there where I slipped, so on and off, in Sep/Oct. Early November I had two days when I slipped and now nothing for the last month, and hopefully nothing for the rest of the year.

So out of the whole year, I had maybe 8 weeks really struggling in bad gambling, and a few odd days where I've spent a few hours gambling. The rest - certainly over 40 weeks - no gambling. Without ignoring those awful weeks, it's a huge improvement.

Yep, I still wish I could have learnt much more quickly and stopped as soon as I knew I had a problem (er... that would be 2007) but as I've said before, it just hasn't been that way for me.

The main change recently is that I told my other half that I have Gamblock on my computer, and why. He doesn't know how recently gambling has caused me problems, nor the extent of what I have lost (we don't share bank accounts), but he didn't ask any further, he just instantly accepted the fact that I have struggled with gambling online and said good for me for stopping myself.

I always thought it would be a MASSIVE deal telling him - anger, disbelief, days of thunderclouds in the house - but no. If anything, he saw it as endearing that I have this weakness. He said he was really sorry I'd had to worry about it at all. He is wonderful.

I even TRIED to make it a bigger deal, I told him I am an addict and that I am prone to being addicted to anything and everything - but he does know this anyway, and he knows my history of overcoming other addictions, so I guess that's why he isn't worried about this now.

Anyway as a result everything seems a hundred times "lighter" and I feel loads better in myself. I think we blow our sense of self-hatred way out of proportion with this problem, I think because we end up acting against our own morals and then our self-esteem gets very very low, plus we are often very sensitive people. So we feel as if it's the worst thing anyone could do, whereas from the outside other people don't see it as so bad.

Of course this may mean that they don't understand why we can't "just stop" simply and easily. But at least they don't see us as the demons we think we are.

What a moving and wise reply you gave to Chuckyegg over on the intro forum. I was going to write one, my heart went out to (I think) her, but yours popped up just before I started, and you said it much more eloquently than I would. Will still write one at a later date, but your 'he fixed it' quote really hit a nerve.

That's very kind of you to say, Milkman. (I think ChuckyEgg is a man but I am ready to be wrong!) At my friend's dad's funeral I was in floods of tears, for all sorts of reasons but partly because she touched me so deeply (in my "gambling remorse" place) with "he fixed it" - so she should take the credit!

Cheers

FF

Cheers 101Sports. Yeah, I think it is helpful to keep the diary here. Sometimes I just start typing not knowing what's in my mind, and by the end of the post I have uncovered something useful.

Feeling I need to stay close to it at the moment. I don't exactly have the urge to gamble, but it's been over a month now and the intensity of the "disgust" feeling isn't as strong. When I think about gambling, whether it's possible, how it would feel, I'm not triggering an urge - but why am I "testing" my mind like this? It's as if I'm trying to trigger an urge... to give myself an excuse. This addiction is devious!

I think there are two reasons I'm feeling a bit wobbly. Christmas is so effing expensive, and even though I've tried not to spend too much I have really overspent already, and then there's still cards to send, a couple more presents to buy, food, Christmas drinks, etc. I'm clinging to the last few pounds in my account before I go overdrawn.

I know this is normal! And everyone worries about money at Christmas. But I'm sure a lot of people here will recognise that deep anxiety feeling when you know you're going to have to be incredibly careful and it's ages before any more money will come in.

I was expecting to be paid for some work this month, but the project is dragging on (not my fault) and I won't get paid until next month now. Which is a shame because that money will pay off my debts. And I'm impatient to do that. Although also a bit nervous that then I'll go back to the old "now I don't have to worry about debts - I can gamble!" feeling.

The other reason is that things have been going really well for me recently. Sounds perverse I know. But I've had a lot more success in my career than I was expecting, and some really exciting times. Meeting my heroes, being recognised in my field. It's a bit more than I can take in at the moment. It's like it's TOO good - leaves me a bit unnerved. I don't really know why. But I want to scurry back to the dark hole of gambling.

I mean, I don't really want to - when I think about it it doesn't seem like an appealing place to go. I know it doesn't "work". But I think I mean that on some level "I wish gambling was still somewhere I could go".

Better get on with some work...

Thanks Julie, really appreciate you stopping by. I do know what you mean about that "playing chicken" feeling. Maybe we are trying to transfer that risk-taking thrill to the challenge of NOT gambling, which obviously is a bit of a strange idea, which I guess is why it feels strange!

You're right, I don't want to go back to that dark place at all. I can never remember how bad it is until I am back there again. At the moment what's stopping me going back there isn't so much aversion to the nightmare it creates (I can't remember what that was like, I just know it does because of things I've written before), but the logical, rational knowledge that there is no point because I cannot stop, so I hope this holds up nice and strong.

Not gambling today*. Getting some good work done, had a lovely long walk feels good.

You take care too, Julie, and everyone.

FF

*but definitely rambling today, reading this back!!

So good to hear that my words have helped you as well as me! 🙂

So how's everyone doing? This week's been up and down, like any normal week I suppose. Everyone seems so stressed with Christmas coming. Just on the streets and in the shops you can feel it. I'm falling into that trap too if I'm not careful. Fretting about small things that don't matter in the long run. But I'm enjoying the pleasures of life when I remember!

It's been interesting to stay with my money worries in this run-up to Christmas and not freak out about them and start gambling. I am still feeling "sane" and can see that it would be the worst thing to do. (So that's good.) Unfortunately I know now that I definitely won't be paid for the work I'm doing at the moment until mid-Jan at the earliest, and I just added up my debt this morning to see where I am and it does feel like a much larger, more real amount now that I have literally sweated to earn that amount of money to pay it back.

When I was gambling with it it felt like nothing.

Good for learning about the value of money, I guess.

That was one reason I always found it so hard to stop, though - it was as if the money didn't become real until I actually stopped. So as long as I was still gambling the money was still "play money" and could (in my mind) be "replaced" at any time by a win. I know this is exactly how all gamblers feel. It just makes making that choice to finally stop harder, because you're letting go of the hope that what you have lost "didn't matter" because it's not real because you can recoup it any minute now, any minute now...

But when you stop it suddenly "matters", so no wonder we don't want to stop.

Now that I'm not gambling the lump of debt sits there and doesn't go away except by tiny chips here and there, and I know it won't except through honest graft, which of course is how I want it to be, but it does challenge all that natural impatience that we all have, and pushes those "regrets" buttons.

I don't know what I'm saying really, just that the regrets are still here, even when the urge to gamble isn't. But then, I have a lot of things to regret in my life, and I do live with them, and as time goes by they hurt less, so I think this will probably be the same. As long as I learn from it!!

Thanks Rainman. Good timing when you say "guard up" - I'm suddenly overcome with gambling urge today.

I'm not going to gamble. It's interesting it has come now. Stress has lessened greatly as I have more or less finished a long list of stuff to do, but as a result I find myself with loads of time, and that sense of "right, phew, well done me, time to treat myself and relax", which means my mind automatically thinks "time to play!".

I caught myself doing the old calculations: hmm, well, okay, I haven't got much money, but £X wouldn't hurt, it would be fun to deposit that in an online casino and see it there all nice and secure and ready to play with, I wouldn't even mind losing all that, and you never know... And even if I lose [if!!] I've got money coming in shortly, how bad can it be, I would walk away once it was gone, and if I won it would come in handy, I'd withdraw and walk away, magically going against my twenty thousand previous experiences... blah blah blah...

All the usual absolute b0ll0x!

Wow... and ouch, oof, kapow, ouch... that's me taking the blows and fighting like a Marvel superhero against the lying gambling thoughts!

OK, well I'm here posting and acknowledging that I'm having urges; that's okay. Maybe not surprising that I am after several weeks of almost no urge at all, and lots of "keeping busy". Really glad I have blocks and barriers in place.

I've already done a load of exercise today (a usual great standby if an urge hits) so I'm going to get on with something else... maybe listen to an album... start early packing for Christmas going-away... get the washing done... Ah! the washing. Right.

Gotta keep busy...

FF - Fighting

Didn't gamble, didn't try to find ways to gamble. Feel very good about that.

The urge is still there but I'm trying to think of it as like an annoying song stuck in my head. Irritating but it'll go away eventually.