Ground zero

Good stuff Pelle

I wish there was a 'like button' so i could like the above post, too uused to facebook! lol

Try not to feel too lonely, get it all out on here and get the support from people who know how you are feeling!

🙂

Day 2 has begun and I've not had any gambling urges so far. Mind you, even if I did, there would be no way of fulfilling them: I have next to no money and the relevant self-exclusions are in place. I'm going to keep myself busy with chores at home today and try to finish the book I have been reading off-and-on for ages. Here's to a non-gambling day!

Day 2: no gambling today.

Just watching Final Score and drinking some tea. I went out earlier and had my hair cut, which cost 42 GBP at a good London salon. It sounds a lot of money, but when I think that it will last me another 6-8 weeks, it is good value. In my betting days I would see anything less than a 100 GBP as being too little to bother betting with. I am gradually realising the value of money again and I am kicking myself for throwing away thousands of pounds this year. Still, I keep saying to myself 'if I continued gambling, my debts would just get bigger and bigger and bigger'. I know that every gamble-free day is a day of money saved. My first target is one week gamble-free; then two weeks gamble-free; then the rest of November gamble-free; then the whole of December gamble-free.

Yo Pelle

Good start then, no gambling, good sign!

I sometimes think about how little i value money. Its amazing though because im not willing to spend more than £35 on a pair of jeans cause i think its a rip off but ill stick 2 £20 notes into a slot machine no bother

But then i used to always think 'yeah but if i buy the jeans the moneys definately gone, if i put the money into a slot machine i could make loads'

Of course 1 in 50 times that happens

Keep on the straight and narrow, its going to come good, get to Xmas and enjoy xmas and the money you have to spend and then take it from there in the New Year!!

🙂

Been where you are.

Know what you are going through. Try stop thinking about the actuall money and think about what the addiction is. Its like taking drugs. We just do it our way and they do it theirs. We have a chemical imbalance in our reward center wich we stimulate that inbalance by gambling. Its that simple. And that complicated at the same time.

You have a family coming and the stakes are very high. You may want to consider talking to your girllfriend before you actually have to talk to her. I asure you. When you have to talk to her its normaly to late. You may need to go into self administration for a while. ie give your economy away and let your girlfriend take care of it. Reality allways has a funny way of doing a 360 and it comes back like hurricane Katrina. I.e total destruction.

Normaly when your a younger addict. you can find help in being two people. Your girlfriend is also a part of your addiction eaven if shes only on the sideline all your decisions effect her to.

I have gambled away one family when i was about 30 years old. All advice above is built on that experience. And eaven if I still struggle with my addiction today. I can still feel the chaos from all those years ago.

I wish you well and if you have questions or want to talk pls drop me a line.

/Criss

Thanks for your comments; they are appreciated. Half of me wants to tell my wife but the other half of me keeps saying 'why give her something else to worry about?' It's made harder by the fact that she is pregnant at the moment with our first child and she is having mood-swings, isn't sleeping well, and is worried about the child birth itself. Me telling her that I have lost thousands of pounds this year on horse racing is not going to make things any better. I am not saying I won't tell her at some point but, for now, I want to get a few gamble-free weeks/months under my belt to at least have broken the back of the addiction myself so that if/when I tell her, she can see I'm already making great progress in beating my addiction. In the long term I will probably tell her but, for now, I will keep posting on this diary and rely on the support of the people on here to help me through. I may also attend a GA meeting to share my experience with others.

I understand.

A GA meeting will not solve all your problems at once. Its only the first step down a long road to recovery. A councilor once told me that it takes about the same amount of time to get well from gambling as it took for you to get into it. That can perhaps give you a gps reading on where you are on the road to recovery.

Sometimes you may have to go even further down before you can start climbing back up.

But one thing is important. We all have o

Yo Pelle

A lot of people will tell you that telling your wife is the best thing to do, but right at this point in time i really don't agree.

I told my gf about 4 months ago and it was really hard for her. The timing was right and from time to time its still a struggle cause its a lot to come to terms with.

Now you have a wife and as you said she has her own worries, this is NOT the time.

It wont give you any support or piece of mind because at this point in time you are going to have to be the strong supportive husband during her diffcult time.

When the time is right the roles can be reversed and she can be your support network.

In the meantime remember that only YOU can stop, all the support in the world means abbbbbbbbbbbbsolutely s**t all if WE ourselves cant stop, so keep doing great like you are, you can do this mate and so can i!

🙂

The whole of that post didnt come out as it should. No this is all intended as advice. We can all klapp and shout from the sidelines but you are the player on the field. You can choose wich goal to run to, no one else.

There are no good times to tell an unexpecting family member that you have an addiction. Full stop. They wont like it. Thats the simple truth.

gl

/Criss

Day 3: no gambling today. Thank you for your comments. It is always useful to read other people's views and opinions. For now, I am not going to tell my wife about my gambling problems as it would only cause unnecessary stress and worry on her part, which I would prefer to avoid at the moment. Instead, I am concentrating on increasing the number of gamble-free days to my name and reducing my debts. Slow and steady wins the race. This is going to be a long slog and it's not going to be easy but staying gamble-free will eventually solve my financial problems.

Just checking-in before leaving for work. The rain has eased-off so will attempt to cycle without getting too wet. I'm going ten-pin bowling after work with colleagues; I'm looking forward to it and it will be great to do something sociable for a change. The days of spending my evenings gambling on all-weather races at Kempton, Lingfield, Southwell and Wolverhampton are over.

Incidentally, I walked past an amusement arcade near me earlier and it said 'New opening hours: now open 24 hours'. Fortunately, I've never been interested in this form of gambling but I just pitied the poor people who can now sit in this place 24 hours a day feeding in and losing all the money they have to line the pockets of the establishment's manager. Why can't something useful be open 24 hours a day: a library, a swimming pool, the post office etc. Instead all we have is a filthy, mercenary arcade lined with one-arm bandits. It's disgusting.

Hi Pellekanin,

I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about not wanting to tell your wife. It made me want to make a few points that I think could be useful to you.

Firstly, it is a common reaction to find it difficult to own up to our partners. The legendary, wiser than Yoda, George made a great point in chat last night. He was also supporting people struggling with admitting their addiction to their loved ones. He said that it may be easier once you have taken some positive steps to address your gambling. These steps will be different for everyone depending on their gambling habits. It could mean signing up and starting a diary on here, going to a GA meeting, arranging some counselling, self excluding from face-to-face sources or downloading blocking software to bar yourself from online sources of gambling, or just getting some abstinence time under your belt. In this way, once you feel ready to talk about this with your wife - you can show her that you are serious about addressing the problem, and you acknowledge and take serious that there is a problem. I am just regurgitating Georges advice here, but I thought it was fantastic. It also means that you can balance your admission with something positive - you have a gambling problem but have self excluded and have been abstaining for x number of weeks now.

The other point I wanted to talk about, was that you mention that it would worry her too much. This is often a behaviour pattern in people who bottle up stress until it feels unmanageable - I am speaking as one who knows from experience! My own reason for doing this is because I learned from a young age not to 'upset' people with my own stuff. My parents were fantastic, loving parents, but were dealing with cancer, crippling mortgage interest rates (thank you Thatcher, you really shouldn't have), a parent with senile dementia, and a truanting rebellious eldest son. I am a very perceptive, sensitive person, who took this all on board and decided that I needed to keep my feelings and problems to myself. My parents were doing their very best, which was excellent considering the circumstances, but it created in me an emotional pattern that would prove to be very unhealthy. Nobody's fault, just life.

Anyway, the reason I rambled on about this is because I wondered if you had also developed this emotional habit of sparing other people 'the worry'. I thought that if you had, it might be useful to think about where it came from, so you can realise that you don't have to continue to do this. Again, on a personal note - I now realise that bottling feelings up from people, resulted in years of chronic anxiety and depression, which I am fairly sure has been of far more worry to my parents than my six year old self would have been, if I had just cried when I felt sad and asked Mum and Dad for cuddles and reassurance.

So although you may not feel ready to tell her just yet, do not underestimate the negative effect on both of you it could possibly have to hide this from her long term.

Take care,

f x

Thanks for your comments. In the short-term I won't tell my wife, but once I have got several weeks of non-gambling under my belt and feel that I've started to break the back of the problem, I will feel in a better position to tell her. If she can see that I am actively addressing my problem and if I can show her this diary, I think that would help. I appreciate your advice and it's good to share ideas. You're right, I prefer not to burden other people with my problems and I tend to bottle them up instead. I need to try and work out the reasons for this, but I may need to speak to a councillor first.

I am going to pop home before going bowling as I need to shred any post relating to last Thursday's failed credit card applications. I'm also due my pin code from Credit Expert so that I can analyse my credit report. I had wanted to successfully apply for a 0% credit card last week but got rejected four times: Amazon, BT, Post Office and Virgin. I now need to take a break from applying for credit. I will try to restructure my debts in December or January instead. The final option is a three-year £12k loan with NatWest but the 12.9% they offered me did not seem that good. I will bide my time for now. Here's to a gamble-free afternoon!

Hi Pelle

Have you much debt that needs paid right now? If not just bin applying for more credit cards.

I dont have a credit rating good enough to get them anymore but i always applied for them to 'pay off urgent debts' but in reality if i had of been accepted i would have just gambled with it before i paid off urgent debts.

So unless its urgent just try and borrow any money you need from friends or relatives and pay them back rather than having a 0% credit card that you transfer balance too and still have maybe 500 or 1000 of credit still available!

Keep the non gambling going, your going great

🙂