Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Day Nine

Feel very calm, the loss doesn't feel so bad any more. I do have recurring thoughts of trying to get the £3,000 back by staking £6,000 on Chelsea to qualify past PSG at the end of February... I know I won't risk that sum of money with online roulette (don't trust it, never have). I know I won't take that sum of money in cash to the actual casino (much as I would enjoy that)...

Anyway.. Managing to repel those thoughts. I do miss the roulette as I was on it for hours at a time and practically daily. Managing though, just now.. Keeping busy with other things and reminding myself to move forward and not backwards..

Aiming for Sunday night which will be the end of Day 14.

Keep battling those urges Mr.chips.
You have my old mindset -thinking of ways to recoup past losses with up coming so called certainties.
Once you're back in the game mr.chips there will be no stopping you,the 3 grand won will be lost with the other 6 in no time.

I know it's hard,but try to stop thinking like a gambler.
The trouble I've had in the past is when these fantasy bets actually win.

It plays on my mind and before you know it you're betting fortunes on virtual racing or any other rubbish the thieving bookies bet on.
Keep remembering;you can't possibly win any money back cos you can't stop.

9 days is fantastic;well done.

Day Fourteen, going strong(ish). Still get very very tempted to bet but looking at those results in the FA Cup this weekend makes me wonder!!

Two weeks in though..

Fifteen. My god I am struggling right now.

Hi Mr Chips,

Sorry to read you are struggling, can you not take yourself out of the situation, take a shower/bath walk, drive, anything to take your mind off it, it will recede, hold on tight, it's just nasty thoughts, 15 days is a great achievement, take something away from the triangle if you can, Stay strong it will pass,

Suzanne xx

Thanks for comments guys.

Up to Day 21, I am not taking this lying down. All this time though I feel like I still need to recover those losses and I feel certain that I will relapse whether it is this month, next month or next year, I feel certain that it will come. For now I am reminding myself why I am trying to stop this nonsense and taking it a day at a time, hopefully it will lose it's appeal...

Have you not wasted enough money trying to 'recover your losses'? You are doing great, with 23 days of winning under your belt 🙂 Keep trying to draw a line under your past & fighting the urges, they will pass! You get to choose the outcome of your recovery, chasing losses is out of your hands & only leads to more bad debt & sinking feelings, you are surrounded by living proof of that!

Keep fighting, you can do this - ODAAT

Day 51! Thought I would update this a bit.

I still think about gambling, very often. I've moved my money all away into accounts I can't easily access so it can't really happen unless I suffer the ultimate lapse and deposit thousands from my credit card... Temptations come and go but for now I feel that I have a hold of it.

Alright Mr Chips,

Firstly, well done on the 51 days, that's some effort, keep battling those temptations, I can assure you, it will pay off in the long run. This is actually my first ever comment on this forums despite being a member for FIVE YEARS. I've been on here off and on reading the diaries and your comments and thoughts on this thread gave me a big urge to stick my own chat in.

To explain, i'd like to tell you my story but not hijack your thread!

I started young kind-of, was always interested in the bandits and I used to go camping with my family when I was a kid. we'd get the ferry across to Germany and if my parents ever wanted to find me they'd go to the Casino and find me on my tiptoes watching the Roulette wheel. I don't know why but I like risk, my dad is the opposite and it's quite funny when we talk about it.

Anyway, I started online when I was 18 at Uni. You could actually use a Solo Card on Blue Square, haha! I've always loved football and loved the idea of making money on it too. I bet a lot but pretty sensibly, I remember all my mates were bettting 2 or 3 quid a time and i'd built up a stack of about £70, a decent amount for a skint student. I stuck a £50 treble on Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool and got £175 back, I was the man, I paid for a few of my mates to go to the Union and we got steaming on VK Blues and 50p Vodkas, Lol. I contined betting through Uni and also started playing online Poker which I also loved. I was never crazy and although I would lose, it was never too bad. When I finished Uni I actually had a few months of making an income from Online Poker and I was pretty good at it. But then it was time to grow up and get a job so I stopped. I started working in a bank and would still bet on football but it was fine. An important part of my life was about to happen, I bought a flat with my then Girlfriend. I had a little bit of money saved and got some help from my parents, they'd been putting money away and i'd not known about it (which looking back, I will also do with my kids, f**k giving them it when they turn 18 to blow on h*****s and C*****e...jokes). Anyway after getting the flat I was left with £10K in my bank account, it was tecnically my parents money but they were cool with me using a little for furniture etc. This was about 5 years ago. At that time I was also playing Amateur Football and as you can imagine, dressing room chat is all Football, Gambling and Girls. I was pretty good at all 3, haha. I revelled in being the Big Gambler and (ahem) Ladies Man. My bets were getting bigger but I had a good job and savings so no big deal.

At the end of the 2009, maybe 2010 Season I was thinking about how much I'd miss football in the Summer and how I wanted to do a big bet. I thought I've got money and if I pick out a good single/double I can make some easy cash, watch out for that greed, it's the killer. So I stuck £2K on Pompey and Dundee United to win their respective Cup Finals on the same Saturday Afternoon. My mate came to my flat and we had a few beers, he wasn't a gambler and my missus was around so I didn't mention it (see the wee lies that start...). Pompey missed a Penalty in the first half, I didn't flinch, pretending I wasn't bothered but inside I was going mental with Excitement/Fear. Chelsea won 2-1 and D Utd won 3-0, I'd made £2k in an afternoon, I was top of the world.

Obviously this spurred me on to bet bigger and bigger, I had some wins and also some horrible losses. I had a grand on Man Utd when they lost 1-6 to City, 'Why Always Me?' Lol, I had £2K on Man United when they drew 4-4 with Everton at OT, despite being 4-2 up with 5 mins to go. Super Sunday bets would make or break my week and also affect how nice I was to my missus! If I lost I would priomise never again and work hard to make back the money, but within 2 days I'd have hatched some new plan on how to get my money back and more. A bit like your thoughts on Chelsea and Psg in the CL.

Ok so i'm getting to my point. At the end of last season I think, City and Real Madrid were going for league titles, I'd had a bad streak so was chasing. I stuck £4k on the double and went to watch my own team play on a Wed night. City won 5-0 and Real were 1 up away from home with 10 to go. I was looking at Livescore and B**5 Cashout furiously on my phone...Cashout £2k profit, no I want more, £2.5k? Maybe...then the option disappeared...someone had scored. It was the other team, I shouted f**k in the street and made my way home, when I got their it was FT and they'd drawn. I didn't eat for 2 days. How could I have wasted so much money. All I wanted was extra cash for clothes or a holiday and now i'd have to work a whole year to replace. Please mate, don't fall in to this trap!! I'm not in debt but I wasted money that my family worked hard for. That's a horrible thing to do!

So....I'm now teaching English in Spain, I still love football. I still bet. I've come to terms with the losses and now I bet about £25 a week. I have all my accounts limited. Of course I can open new ones and bet thousands but I don't want all that stress again...chasing, feeling so low, feeling like a king, up, down, up, down...it's honestly not worth it. I was lucky in a way because I have access to more funds but no way am I blowing them too. I'm probably down £15k in my life and as sad as it is, for a hobby i've loved for 13 years that's not too bad, better than smoking which is i've recently quit, probably costing me the same but also giving my lungs a beating too! I'm willing to call it quits there, especially as so many poor people have wrecked their lives. One of the first things I read on here all those years ago was , We Cannot Win Because We Cannot Quit. It so often repated that it might lose it's meaning but it's so true. I read yesterday that some guy won £63k and is still in debt....that could be any of us.

Just be honest with yourself, you can get away from this, we all can, but it takes a lot of hard work. Obviously you could go and win your money bet with a huge bet and you'll be happy as, until you try to win 'just a little more for whatever' and you're back to square one, and at those stakes if you have bad luck or a bad run, you are screwed.

Don't do it mate. Live your life. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for Reading.

Scott

Scott, sorry for delay in replying. This is me just logging in now.

I loved reading your post because so much of it is like looking in a mirror. Mates around me punting £10 coupons on, me chucking on £500 trebles. Trying to spend the winnings on nice things but only wanting to bet again.. And bigger!! That horror £4k loss might live with you forever but honestly I think you might look back on it and just laugh, or shake your head! Since quitting ive come in and out of wanting to go back to try and recoup losses but I'm sure if I won Id keep going until I lost it again... That 4-4 story makes me cringe big time!!

Oh there's one more, I took my other half to Milan last weekend with money that I decided to spend instead of gamble. We went to inter v fiorentina and I was tempted to bet on inter for a bit of excitement. About killed myself laughing when they lost 1-0, since I didn't bet.....!

Haha. that's good about Inter, and more importantly, you didn't bet!

I wanted to clarify my position a little in that fact that I'm still betting. I know its probably frowned upon because I can see it's an easy way to 'pretend' to be cutting back when in reality you are still in the grips of gambling. It's also highly possible that I could un-limit my accounts and go on some crazy binge. Only I can decided this. In general, I would say that complete abstinence is definitely the best option. For me, I kind of like the challenge of setting limits and sticking to them.

The pain of losing the £4k has actually mostly disappeared. And it's this that I think is the most dangerous thing when you are in a chasing frenzy. You promise yourself never again and within 2 days you are back at it, it's easy to see how people can hit rock bottom, then hit it again, lower and lower and lower with payday loans etc. It's scary. You can always earn more money and money isn't the be all and end all. As you say, in a weird way, i'm glad it actually happened to me and I was able to feel how horrible it was to be throwing so much cash away on some random game of football. Seeing the debit on my bank account, yuck!

Anyways, it sounds like keeping completely away from it is the best for you. I might start too actually, a few £5 bets here and there is fairly pointless anyway, I might as well do the lottery instead.

Keep up the good fight my man.

Cheers

Scott

Day 59, I felt the need to check in because looking at my posts above about Chelsea to qualify, and back in January remembering how determined I was to wedge heavy on that... and now without a bet on it at all watching it unfolding in a way that would utterly have me hanging on the brink. Ten men PSG going through on away goals after extra time, could you imagine that feeling as 6k is taken from your account... Four months of wages, probably around eight months of disposable income...

This is a bit of a Charlie Sheen "winning" moment. Crazy crazy stuff.

Scott it sounds like you have a complete lid on it which is a good thing. I look back on it and remember having a great time with it for a lot of months where I was losing sometimes, winning sometimes, but never anything that really bothered me and just really enjoyed the fun of it. Especially roulette, what a buzz. Which is where I think, well, yes I lost control of it and yes, I can say that amount of money lost spent on months of a good hobby, fair enough.

I reckon that I will get back into it, if I was on holiday in London or such like I would definitely visit one of the bigger casinos as a one off and have a laugh with it. If you end up chucking thousands at it again though it becomes a problem again! 4k on one game must have really stung. I felt totally broken for ages after mine, which was 1k on roulette and 2k on one football match over the space of a few days.........

Haha, alrite mate, I had a feeling you'd post tonight!

Exactly right, imagine how sick you'd be...how excited and euphoric as they took the lead twice and then how absolutely devastated as it slowly slipped away. Also, Annie Power....It really just is a mugs game! It's very very difficult to get that initial buzz back and it's just not worth it consider how easy it is to get out of control and really ruin a lot of things!

You're best of out of it so keep going!

The horrible thing after a big loss, you don't even like football anymore, it has the ability to totally destroy even your favourite sport in the world.

Something else I often thought in the past....When you are staking ever increasing amounts on football games, £500/£1K/£2K etc. You may win and lose but I was just so gutted that I couldn't find easy spots, for example £2K on Bayern -2 for in tonights game for example. I don't know the odds but probably around evens. Now that is just a dream and free money but ONLY after the event. I'm not advocating gambling in the slightest, what i'm saying is when you are picking matches and losing you so so so wish you;d picked other matches instead. And then it's pretty much a lottery and there's no real fun in that. I used to go to bed thinking how have I picked 3 winners when I only had £50 on when my £500 bet lost, it's not fair....

It's just all stupid really and obviously even when you do win, you feel down because you wish you'd bet more!! I'd love to see a psychologist read someone's brain when they are in the midst of a gambling binge.

Sorry for the random jumble of thoughts man, keep going! I'm going to quit too and might track some of my progress on here too if you don't mind?

Cheers

Scott

Yes mate please do! Sounds like we've had very similar experiences thus far...!!