Hope

Can't put it any better than RR.

Thinking of you, gutted for you, I get how much has gone into this past month. It hasn't all been for nothing. The tide always turns eventually.

f x

Hi all.... It felt extremely difficult to come back and write that i'd gambled yet again. I skim read the replies half expecting some quite angry replies in the sense that I often say all the right things to others and then do the complete opposite. I don't do it deliberately and I do berate myself afterwards. I don't really understand myself and why I do it. I have a big blind spot in my personality and self-awareness  I suppose. For the purpose of openness the series of events went like this...

I was approaching a month gamble free. It had been a fairly brutal month living on a very small amount of money. I was worried about how to get to work, bus fares. I was worried about potentially not having enuff money for food (this did not happen). I was worried about mentally holding it together at work, but bizarrely I was most worried about having money to get my sisters birthday presents. I did not want (at all costs) to have to make that phone call to say that sorry ive' been at it again and I can't even afford a card... the sense of shame runs deep with me

So anyway, pay day approaches. I plan. I budget. The previous month i'd actually been paid the day before pay day. I thought it might happen this month but it didn't. Pay day arrives, its 4 a.m the money still hasn't gone in. Direct debits gone out but pay not gone in. Am minus in my account on an account where am not allowed to go into minus. I have precisely 7 P to my name. Am at work in 3 hours. I guess am walking. Am just stressed, feeling so very stressed. Anyway the money goes in at 6. I got to work. Difficult day, am so tired. Eventually get home... pay some rent and council tax... but this is where it all starts to unravel... its like a pressure cooker and somebody has just let the pressure out all at once.... rouletteregret has hit the nail on the head... I think to myself.... "a win can improve things in the short term"... My stinky thinking says a few wins just to make things easier on myself and then walk away and end my gambling career on a win. 

Anyway the rest is history. Its only once am actually in action that i realise what is about to happen and by this point am utterly powerless to help myself. I know whats coming but I just can't stop. By this point am just head butting the self-destruct button.

So anyway message to self.... "am most dangerous to myself when ive just dug myself out of the s**t"

So thats it folks.. onwards. Life goes on

"I keep playing until I hurt myself".... this really hits home.

That's what i do.

The only way to stop this is not to start.

Iv'e done it before.

Iv'e stopped for a 1000 days and more

Come on. I can heal myself. 

Hi SA,

Glad you came back. Facing this is difficult but a must!

The early days are difficult and requires biggest attention. Pay day as you say. What do we do with  that spare extra quid (which usually are not spare as we owe it to someone). 

Please keep in touch, as i said already, help me help you. Stay connected, stay close by. Rant, shout and get it all out. It is normal and extremely necessary.

Look after you

S&B xx

Hello SA,

More thoughts -

I've been around a while and in one guise or another I'm still an addict -

You can take the man out of addiction but you can't take the addiction out of the man. They say, or rather I say! 

In my time on this forum or experience gleaned else where, they does seem to be a few options, disclaimer here but only my humble - 

Option 1 - GA or some other peer support.

Option 2 - Some psych help, ie councillor, therapy.

Option  3 - Support from both cyber and more importantly in 3d in the guise of close family/ Friends.

Now, I dont really go for coincidences but I've never witnessed success in going it alone, well not lasting success, possibly why I've been here so long ?

Your last post but one, grabbed me as it describes the fall in the addiction abyss very well and the subsequent mental health turmoil which quickly follows - with which leads me to this, I've tried over the years to try and understand addiction, depression, anxiety etc but its only recently as I flipped the coin and started looking at the other side of the fog and that lead me to Abraham Maslow and self actualisation, it made start understanding things a bit more in why some days / weeks / months / years I can be flying with the eagles and then some curve ball comes my way and hai ho, I'm back to s....itting with the pigeons. We need the basic human needs, we need that security, we need to know where our next feed is coming from, we need family/ friends, we need to be social and not give into the isolation addiction craves. theres lots of basic needs. 

So, a long moral but I believe in you, which is pretty irrelevant as you really need to believe in yourself and possibly looking at not trying to heal yourself.

I wish you well SA

Correction

Last sentence of last paragraph - 

Not looking to heal yourself by yourself

Hi SA,

Nice to hear from you tonight. Your post makes for sad reading however, I think we all understand how difficult and troubling life can be with gambling addiction and how this addiction can distort our minds. Certainly I can relate to your post because Ive made many mistakes and have many regrets all as a consequence of making a tiny, small decision to gamble which grew into a huge, massive error of judgment with horrendous outcomes.

I think one of the toughest challenges we all face is having the patience for recovery. Abstinence is difficult. It’s programming your mind to not do the thing that its always done in times of stress, anger, boredom, desperation etc. I suppose when I’ve struggled with lives problems I’ve gambled. Then I lose. Then I only focus on the fret and worry of the loss and all the original worries are ignored to the point they become insignificant. Then we repeat. 

I think gambling abstinence is like breaking any bad habit. Its toughest point is at the start and it gets easier as time goes by. For any overweight person with terrible eating habits the initial change must be the toughest - once you change eating habits you lose weight. Once you lose weight you see progress. This progress encourages us to keep going and before you know it we’ve changed and things have gotten a whole lot better. 

I read on your diary that you’re a runner so you’ll notice the difference in progression when following a regular, consistent running programme as opposed to a stop/start schedule where you run for a few weeks then dont go out for a month and start over. The former is tough at the start which gets progressively easier as you get fitter whereas that latter is a forever struggle with no noticeable improvement. You wont need me to tell you that that is where you are in your recovery which is constantly stuck at the hardest part. Ive been there more times than I wish to remember and its awful.

We all want to help. So what can be done next time to prevent recurrence of the same issue? Maybe you could commit to posting every hour of your next pay day. Sounds bizarre but I’ll reply to every message you send. Ill bore you to death with long winded messages like this to the point where you’ll be so mentally exhausted you’ll have no energy or desire to gamble. I can type all day you know.

On a serious note, you’ve quit for long periods before so you know you have this in you. You know you are capable of quitting. Some poor gambling souls cannot navigate through a single day. You’ve gotten through at least 29 days of every month without gambling since Ive joined which is post February. You might not realise it today but you are on the brink of quitting gambling forever. It starts today and you just need to get past the first real hard part. After that I suspect everything will get easier.

Take care buddy.

RR

RR is so right - it's getting that momentum going in the first couple of months. It's inevitable, in my humble opinion, that you will achieve sobriety again, if you keep trying. This is why: the way I look at it is, we gamble because we don't have healthy behaviours, coping mechanisms, boundaries etc. The more we change the stuff about us that is a bit wonky - such as learning to say 'no' when you need to put self first - the better our chances of long-term sobriety is. Sometimes we can't see the upward curve because, for example, when we do the new, scary, thing a couple of times - such as saying 'no' - it gets easier to do it again, in the future but man, was it scary and stressful! So, at first, we might get overwhelmed and run away back into our addiction. So, how long it is since we last gambled, can sometimes be a poor indicator of the progress we are making in recovery.

Let's look at 2 scenarios. 

1) Bill gambled yesterday, after a particularly bad day, where he unfortunately wasn't able to get in touch with his sponsor or get to a meeting. He had 3 years of sobriety under his belt before that. He has a lot of blocks in place, a support system and a GA sponsor he can call if he needs to. He knows his triggers and manages them well. He engages passionately in his hobbies and generally feels fulfilled in life. He is under unprecedented duress at present, emotionally, nursing his terminally ill father, whilst also dealing with his own health issues and workplace stress. 

2) Bob hasn't gambled for 2 months. He is in a toxic relationship and is drinking heavily every night. He admits if he had any access to money, whatsoever, he'd immediately gamble. He's arguing more and more with his partner and feels like he's a pressure cooker about to explode.

It's not length of sobriety that shows how far into recovery work these two are. You get me? Hang in there.

Hello SA

Two penethworth - which is pretty appropriate for us gamblers.

You have very good values and ethics SA, two very important ingredients for fill rediscovery. Hence with that equation in place the reason why I know and I would say many others know that your well and truly on the rightful path, albeit a curvy one at that, a bit similar to mine !

I appreciate the comments folks. I will make sure I get more support when my next pay day comes around again. This cycle iv'e been stuck in for the last 3 and halve years is killing me. At the very least its robbing me of any quality of life. Iv'e become mentally ill with the things that I do to myself. Even today ive scolded myself for spending 10.64 on food when i'd only planned to spend 6 or 7 pounds... but just the other day i was quite prepared to put 3 figures into the machines. As iv'e been reading else where on the forum, its perfectly possible to be sensible with money in general and then gambling comes along and sensibleness just goes straight out the door.

A day off today, but ive just been offered a shift at another project which I am off course accepting. cos I need the money!... its not that I want the money.. I will need it to pay for priority stuff.

Right time to get myself organised. and RR I look forward to your messages in the run up to next pay day... middle of december... 🙂 

ta ra for now x

SA,

Nice to hear from you. I can relate to so much of that post. I am sensible with money, I manage the finances of the house, mortgage etc. I will spend weeks researching the best mortgage rates, loan rates, negotiate car purchases etc. Every effort is made on a daily basis to get the best value for money however, I can do serious, long lasting harm to myself playing roulette in a bookies, casino or worse still online. I lost thousands in one stupid hour online where I completely lost control and lost track of how much I deposited only to find out when it was all over. I know to the penny every direct debit and standing order and the dates when each is taken yet I lost count of my deposits - unthinkable and unforgivable.

It only goes to prove that when in action something bad happens. We lose control. I stopped caring. I was hurting myself and I was aware of it and for that hour didnt care. But I care now. I care everyday. Now I’ll hurt myself in a different way. I’ll not spend, I wont accept invites to social occasions, I won’t buy clothes, I wont spend the little money on things that positively enhance our lives. I’ll kid myself that only I’ll suffer but everyone around me will suffer as my moods sky dive and plummet to the ground on a more than regular basis. I’ll do everything possible to pay off my debt as quickly as possible even although every piece of advice I’ve received suggests that this is not the correct way.

I’m like most people with addiction - great at giving advice and rubbish at receiving it. 

Anyway, you got me thinking tonight so thanks for that.

What do you think? You think December will be your month. Wouldnt it be great sliding in to 2020 with the hardest part out of the way and some abstinence in the bank.

RR

Hai SA,

A question - ' offered another shift on another project, which I'm ofcourse accepting ' 

Can you not just switch off on this ?, it's not your project, so what I'm getting too, is that you go in, meet new people, stay in the periphery, give your best and take the money ! Not sure whether I articulated myself well and whether you get my point, but I see similarities there with myself ! 

I'm sure you've got wide shoulders but dont take the world upon them

Good Morning SA,

I hope your doing ok and have a lovely weekend.

RR

Yes wise words. I did my over time shift and did as you suggested "anonymous" and the shift went fine. I now have the battle to actually get paid for it. Being on the bread line means that every penny counts and it seems that the company I work for isn't very good at paying whats due. It also requires the senior at the project i worked at to have actually entered my shift into the system, which probably won't have happened because I am nobodies priority.... At the end of the day if I had some savings it wouldn't really matter. Gambling addiction just f***s every aspect of life.

Same with my mate. He didn't get paid his first wage for his new employer, which means that he is literally going hungry. It turns out that whomever entered his bank details into the system put the wrong sort code. He now has to wait another 3 days to get paid. At the end of the day its his addiction that has led to his crisis.

Anyway am muddling along. No gambling. Just tired and moody and frustrated much of the time and idle

Thanks for listening

Anonymous is sometimes cool, so good on you.

Now I'm wondering whether your thoughts of ' I now have the battle to get actually paid for it ' are your thoughts or not or do they stem your from mate ?

Where I'm coming from is you do matter and quite often others are muddled in the chaos of what ever and forget about us minions ( said with tongue in cheek ) You'll get paid, but potentially a beach if there also muddled up.

Muddling along is also cool coupled with no gambling is doubley cool ?