Frightening New Territory

yes tara work to your strengths, what works will help u succeed, adam

Thanks Adam.

Congratulations Tara. You are now 33 days away from your last gamble. The dust has now settled and you can look at developing your creative talents and exploring the options that are available to you. Guardian angels are always there to offer support and guidance so listen to your heart and follow your dreams.

A big pond might separate us but we are nevertheless gamcare siblings looking to be free from the gambling that has plagued our lives for too long.

Today in 1865 slavery was abolished in the U.S. The 13th Amendment was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that "neither slavery or involuntary servitude....shall exist within the United States."

In the past we enslaved ourselves to gambling addiction but it doesn't have to be like that. We can all choose to cast off the chains that bind us and boldly declare our freedom.

If we so desire, we are free to turn our back on gambling and walk away. It is our choice to make.

God bless you Tara. May you be happy, contented and at peace with yourself and the world around you...stephen

YES! Thx. Stephan, I appreciate you remembering me here. I join you in being free through December and experiencing a healthier holiday season. I watched the 'percy Jackson and the Olympian movie... there is a scene with 'the lotus eatters' set in a casino. People eat the abundantly offered lotus cookies and get in the 'zone'... they stay for days, months , years. I loved this segment of the film because the producer/writer was playing on a cold hard truth that casino gamblers know all too well. This scene hit home and helped me to stay strong . tara2

xmas 2018. I did not think that I'd be having visions of slot machines in my head on xmas day but I did. I then spoke with someone about the impulse. They helped me to live it out in words; to live out the casino trip. What it came down to is that if I decided to go ( which was not in my best interest) but if I went with 20 or 40 $ dollars and not atm card; if I decided to limit my funds and drive an hour to get there just to be in the environment , play aand loose my troubles for short while... well, I did not want to go with limited funds and be cut off because I'm an addict and I'd feel sick . Then , if I decided to go without a limit I knew that it would be the same old playing to exhaustion of all cash aavailable and driving home even sicker , tired and full of remorse and self loathing. The night would be sleepless either way and it would take days to shake it off. By the time thaat the conversation was over I had no desire to drive an hour to play slots. I did feel sick from the urge surging through my system but not as sick as having gone with the impulse. I had feelings from the holidays which I wanted to run from and the familiar way to deal was popping up/ lighting up in my head. I am so happy to be sitting here today feeling okay. yeah! Happy Holidays everyone. tara2

I have not been to a casino in over four months and I will continue to keep up with odaat. I have had compulsive behavior buying scratchers in the last four months.. on and off I start to buy them fairly regularly then I begin to binge and buy a huge amount in one day. About 40 days ago I had a large purchase and loss from scratchers and I have played on and off since then. Now today and yesterday I also bought a large amount and lost this money. I will use this experience to remind me how casinos are the same and way worse overall for me. I am once again trying to go scratcher free this new year. I am happy about the four months casino free and I feel better over all. The loss and the time I spent going from store to store buying scratch off cards today made me very sick inside... I started the binge yesterday and continued today saying this is the laast and by saying this is the last it prompted me to spend more ( almost $200 overall in both days and 40 something days ago I also spent over $200!) That's it. I get the picture. Onward and honest. I can not hide something so damaging; it's not healthy or to the benifit of my overall recovery. So even though I'm 4 months plus casino free I'm changing my day back to day one. Yep. tara2

Hi all,

I’m new to this never been on a site before. Gambling for 4 years and need to stop!

Hello Jinjan,

Welcome to the forum. We would like to offer you some support. If you would like to contact us we could give you information about our free counselling services, offer you some information about how you could go about self- excluding and tell you where the nearest gamblers anonymous meetings are based. Please feel free to contact us on our Freephone 0808 8020 133. We are staffed every day from 8am to 12am midnight.

Take care,

Forum Admin.

Jinjan wrote:

Hi all,

I’m new to this never been on a site before. Gambling for 4 years and need to stop!

Hi! This is Tara2 If you've read through this thread, my diary posts, you can see that it is a journey. My last post highlighted that i'm 4 months casino free but scratcher cards slipped in. I hope that you will start a diary and share more about your experience because just showing up looking for helps says alot. Thsi is a great site!

So now I'm dealing with taxes and how to naviagate 'wins' which I never really got becaue I lost so much more. I have not recorded any paper trail of win loss so I have reserch to do on how to file and how to not have to pay so much. Guess it's my last punishment for all these years of addiction. A way to remember the paain, with even more pain. ouch. tara2

Abstaining from purchasing scratcher cards 2019. Just don't do it is the motto. I believe that I can cut out this immature behavior which could lead to even greater pain and loss by instigating a relapse to a casino . Been away from casinos for going on 5 months and 3 months prior to that and three months prior to that... Now, as we all want, I see 2019 as fresh territory to continue and to cut out the scratch off bs which drains my caash and makes me feel badly about myself. tara2

Over 100days free from slot machine play. It's true, it's real and that's my date ...Sept. 9th, 2018! No scratchers since late december either! I'm not feeling well these days due to stress aand sleeplessness. My future is uncertain and I don't have a direction yet. odaat. I'm trying to stay focused and just be 'okay'. If not great then okay is fine. tara2

Wow 149 days! I take my hat off to you, well if I had one I would! Keep it up you’re amazing. Gives me just a little more hope.

sosad wrote:

Wow 149 days! I take my hat off to you, well if I had one I would! Keep it up you’re amazing. Gives me just a little more hope.

Hi friend! I was looking back and it's more like sept. 9th not august so I'm at 4 months but still ... this is a good amount of time to be away from slots. My focus is to abstain from casino slots. Quitting scratchers is easy, I have to desire to buy them but I still have a date of late dec. where I decided that even scratchers can be a beast and I am abstaining now from those also for the new year. tara

4 months 6 months whichever it is it’s amazing. I’m 7 days but feels so much longer. Slots are my biggest downfall, used to be dog racing too until I started rescuing greyhounds and haven’t placed a bet in over ten years now. Maybe I should adopt a slot machine????