Hi everyone this is my first time in a recovery community thread and I am really struggling this time round. From the age of 18 gambling has been the devil in the back of my mind. Big wins but big losses. My most recent relapse started two months ago. I was aware my gamstop subscription was up for renewal so I chose to cancel it. The gambling started slowly for me its always been roulette. Over the two months I had gained money. I was cashing in small amounts and re depositing and repeating. 2 days ago the chasing begun. Before I knew it the money was gone and I had lost approx £7900.00. I am still feeling very numb and sick. I can hardly eat and all I can do is reply the figures over in my head and imagine my bank balance if I had just walked away and re applied gam stop. This is the big issue for me constantly replaying the numbers and what ifs and what I could of spent the money on in my head. visualising what my position could have been.
I have re applied my gam stop for 5 years and am now in my safe space again. the problem for me is how can I stop the mental torture of re thinking ever minute and second of the day what I had and the lost money. I try and remind myself that I have a mortgage that gets paid every month, I have a car that gets paid every month, I have money in a locked savings account and in my bank account. I know there is people a lot worse of than me and I really hope I'm not coming across as selfish but it really hurts inside and Im hoping some of you guys and girls have good advice and ways of thinking to forget what has been lost and to help me move on from this relapse. I would say over the 10 years my losses are around 80,000
anyway ill wrap it up at that and I'm hoping some of you can provide some help on clearing my mind and the constant replying what could of been.
Charlie
Hi Charlie, great first post. Lots of similarities to myself. The sad story is I don’t think there is any easy way to stop replaying the figures in your head. I’d say I’ve moved on from the figures nowadays and I just replay the process over and over in my head so rather than the actual figures it’s why did I do it, why did I start again, what was I thinking, how did he miss that easy shot, why couldn’t that bet just land, why does it never work for me etc etc. All equally useless thoughts.
The horrible reality for a compulsive gambler, and probably someone with an equally obsessive or impulsive nature to myself, is that this just takes time… a loooonggggg time. Each bet makes that period longer and longer.
I think of it like this. Each time we relapse we are effectively borrowing time from our future self. With each relapse that time is getting longer and longer.
You’ve probably got that 80k figure in your head and you’re still thinking of ways to get that back however ridiculous that sounds. Then you relapse lose another 2k and the 80k goes out your mind and you’re back thinking of how to get the 2k back now. It’s like an episode of Tom and Jerry in your own head. You can never quite catch him. Forgive me if I’m wrong but that’s my internal monologue.
Anyways keep posting. Keep fighting. Let me know if you wanna chat.
Nice to read and see it's not just me I started with a 5er bet on the horses here and there and ended of with 500 stakes on single horses and American at that! Change of job and salary made me in a position to not notice what I was gambling till I saw I'd a net loss of this year. Finally signed up to gam stop, After saying I was going to forever
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