Life is looking up.

Yes Jay! Great read. Happy to see things are turning around for you. From chatting to you in the chatrooms I see how much you wanted to change. The fact you offer advice and help everyone who joins is a testament to how much you have embraced the gamble free life, and it's paying off.

So glad the family life is working out too. I was genuinely worried your path would end the same as mine but you have the support of your wife and that's amazing. Takes a strong person to stick by someone who basically lied to them for years, but it really sounds like you got a keeper there!

Keep up the good work mate. Debt free before you know it. Hopefully the career change pans out too. Crazy how life can change in the space of a year. Who knows what we will all be doing in another year. 

Stay strong mate 👍 

Cheers Fish.

Couldn't have done it without the help and support of my wife and people on here though.

Very much looking forward to living a debt free life in a (hopefully) brand new career.

Cheers for your continued support too mate. I may say it all the time but I genuinely cannot overstate how yours being the first reply I got to my first post on here helped me through that early period.

ez mate had a look for u...... hoeseasons, devon, hawkchurh resort, which u will love, its a darwin escape lodge which has tv in bedrooms large baths in bedrooms, kitchen, in resort theres free gym, hydropherapy pool, waterfalls, lying down bubbles, sauna, steam room, pool, restaurant, close to a large tesco for food, rrp for all of u  is £666 for these four nights (monday to friday) but can get it at mo on their site for £535....

Sounds like an epic plan for ur and ur familys one year celebration jay 

Adam

hawkchurch resort

I really need to be better at updating this diary but here goes another entry.

Day 320:

So quite a bit has happened since my last update. I finished, and handed in, my final uni assignment of the year. Big positive for me because my biggest aim this year was making sure I got all my uni assignments done. Previously, when I was gambling, I found myself falling behind in modules and not handing in work etc because I was letting the gambling take over. Not this time though.

My uni, however, threw up another issue however. Now, in true gambler fashion, I'd hidden the fact that I was struggling so much with my uni work from my wife. Didn't tell her I kept failing modules etc and any time she asked about my course I'd just say everything was fine. Well she confronted me and asked why my uni course was taking so long and I had to admit what had been going on. Yet another excellent moment for me.

One thing I did do was apply for a place on the Police Detective programme. Now, whilst this should have been a positive experience, this was also soured somewhat by the fact that whilst I was spending my time looking at different options etc, I never actually consulted my wife. Until the night before I applied that is. She was understandably upset and hurt by this declaring that, despite my thoughts to the contrary, "we're not ok". One thing that is clear is that I need to do massive work on the husband front and lose this gamblers mindset of "I only need to think about myself".

I feel like life is trying to test me by throwing curve balls at me constantly at the moment, trying to test my resolve to gamble. Well my resolve is as strong as ever and life can keep throwing all the things at me it wants because I'm not going to go back to gambling.

Sorry for the downer post. I promise I'll try and make the next one a bit more positive.

Stay strong everyone.

not a downer post at all jay....inciteful...... not every day or week or post can be happy....thats not the reall world....well done on ur continued recovery....everytihng going well and ur working on everything...all the best adam

Lovely to read that you are still going strong on the non gambling front Jay 👌💪👏👏👏.

Let me just remind you. You are never too old for a change of career. You are but a baby still to me!!😆. I spent 20 years as a Probation Officer and last year, aged 61, took a completely different path, working for the Home Office in the passport office! You stand tall, be confident and just go for it.  You have nothing to lose.

Wishing you all the best Jay and so happy to read that your wife has been willing to give you the chance to demonstrate to her that you can do this and you mean it!

Take care.

Pink Lady 🩷🍎.

Day 328.

Another week has passed since my last post and I'm happy to report that it's a happier post this time around.

One thing my wife and I have not been overly great at throughout our 16 years of marriage is actually talking to each other. I mean talking properly. We're both guilty of bottling up our feelings and emotions. Well I took the step after my previous post to sit her down and have a frank discussion about things. It helped massively and (I think) we're back to being good again I think, which is great for me. One thing she's not had since I came clean is some proper support. She had 1 to 1 calls like I did but she didn't find them helpful and cut them short early and had peer support emails with someone but didn't find them all that helpful either. Epic Restart, who I am doing my continued recovery with have an affected others service and she has started a programme with them. So far she says she's found it far more helpful do hopefully this will give her all the answers and support she needs.

Since I decided to try and move forward with my career change, work seems to be giving me more and more reasons to go ahead. It's not great at the moment but I'm battling on with it because it's a decent wage and guaranteed hours. I've not heard regarding my previous application yet, but I'm working on the mantra of no news is good news. I've also been looking at other forces to apply to for the same thing. Fingers crossed one of them will come good.

Adam, thanks for your support. As always it is appreciated.

Pink Lady, it's refreshing to know that it's still possible to change career successfully 'later' in life. Glad to see you're enjoying the change. Thank you also for the support.

Stay strong all. 💪🏾

Day 354:

So my aim of updating this diary more frequently has failed miserably but here we are, another update.

A fair bit has happened since my last post all positive. First off, my sessions with Epic Restart have now finished. My coach told me she was really pleased with how my recovery is going and I should be proud of the way I'm handling it. I am.

I am approaching 2 weeks off work from next week and, originally, my wife and I decided we wouldn't be able to go on holiday this year because we wouldn't be able to afford it. We instead decided we would just take a day trip to the beach with the kids instead so we can at least have a day on the beach, with my wife wanting to go to Talacre in Wales, as we holidayed there a couple of years ago and loved it. We then decided it was a fair way to go for just the day and explored the possibility of staying over and having a couple of days there. After much searching we found a deal on a caravan, right where we wanted to go, for £330 for the 4 of us to go Monday to Friday. We decided it was too good an opportunity to turn down. Further to this, and as if the universe was in on this slice of good fortune, I ended up getting an extra £500 more in my wages this month than I was expecting, which basically paid for the holiday, so everyone is happy.

Now onto the biggest development. So in my previous post I mentioned that I had decided to take the plunge and search a career change at the ripe old age of 42 and apply to join the Police detective programme with a local force. Having done so, but not overly optimistic that I would actually hear anything back, I received an email last week telling me I have made it through to the 'sift' stage, where I had to do a scenario judgment test and a behavioural style questionnaire. I did those yesterday and today I received another email telling me that I'd passed those and have moved onto stage 3 of the recruitment process, the national online assessment. I'm absolutely delighted, but also getting more and more nervous now as I go through the levels. Still not getting my hopes up fully but just to have made it this far is a boost to me.

Thanks for reading and stay strong. 💪🏾

What a lovely read Jay! 👌.  So happy for you.

keep up the good work and 🤞🙏🙏 for the next round of your application.

Take care.

Pink Lady 🩷🍎.

Day 365.

365 days. One whole year since I last gambled. One whole year since I decided that enough was enough and that I couldn't do this any more. It feels so good to have gotten to this point, to know that gambling doesn't have a hold on me like it used to.

The journey to this point has had a few downs but it's also had so many ups. My relationship surviving the bombshell of what I'd done and had been doing for 7 years. The bombshell of the fact that I'd hidden it all from my wife. The bombshell that I'd wracked up so much debt. My relationship is stronger and continues to grow stronger all the time. Today my wife bought me a card to say congratulations and told me she was proud of me. I'm not ashamed to say I cried.

A few days ago I got the news that I'd passed my uni module for the year. Yet another boost. Yet another aim for the year complete.

I've had my eye on a Google Pixel watch for quite a while. I will be buying myself one as reward for getting this far. Something else to show me that life is much better off without gambling.

Of course, this may not have been possible without the support from others in this community. I've been blessed to have had some of the best during the last year on here so WeirdFish, Adam, Taz, Henry, Pink Lady, Ruthi, Lost Soul and many, many more people who know who they are, I thank you incessantly for the continued support. For being there for me on the tough days and for celebrating with me on the good ones.

Now it's on to the next 365 days. Where hopefully I'll have a new career and a new home. All of which would not have been a possibility had I still been gambling.

If you're still reading then I thank you. Keep strong everyone. We can all do this. 💪🏾💪🏾

Jay 

@g4pv3yauqm Congratulations Jay 👏👏👏👏💪. Make sure you treat yourself to that watch! It's an order from me!!😁.

Have a lovely week.

Pink Lady 🩷🍎.

Amazing mate congratulations massive achievement it only gets better and only way forward 👏👏👏

Day 371.

Still going strong on the non gambling front but I've had a bit of a difficult week in terms of being put in a kind of difficult situation with someone else who also suffers with a gambling addiction.

For context, I went away on a residential weekend with Epic Restart in May, and when I was away I met a couple of people who I got on well with and we exchanged numbers and agreed to keep in touch, which we have. I messaged them the other day to ask how they were and they replied telling me that they weren't great and that they'd relapsed. I wanted to be there for them so I told them they could message and call me if they were struggling so as not to relapse again, even keeping on the phone until 1:30am the other morning because they were struggling. To cut a long story short they called and messaged me quite a few times over the last few days telling me they were really struggling, had no food and no money to get food for another couple of weeks. I really wanted to help them out but I have no access to my money as I send it all to my wife on payday and, understandably, she is extremely reluctant to send money to someone she's never met and could still gamble it away. I tried to convince them to seek help from family and elsewhere but they didn't really seem keen on doing that. I really want to help them more but, at the same time, I need them to want to help themselves. Am I being unreasonable? Should I be doing more?

On a lighter note, I bought myself a new Google Pixel Watch as a reward for hitting 1 year gamble free, which I absolutely love. Having something as a symbol of my hard work and efforts is great and really helps. I also had an email from the Student Loans Company telling me that I was due a refund because I'd overpaid on my student loan payments and hadn't earned enough for what I'd paid. I got a refund of £113 with effectively paid for my watch so that was even better news.

Thanks Pink Lady and Taz your kind words. Very much appreciated.

Stay strong everyone. 💪🏾