Life With Sports Bets Only

Hello Captain,

Have to say that I find some of your comments and assumptions on my diary a little bit confusing.

Not sure why you are raging with annoyance??

And how it's not possible to own a property with a small mortgage and still have a gambling problem??

Your views and assumptions are way off the mark my friend.

We are all very different on here and we all have different types of gambling problems and issues.

My gambling problem has not destroyed my life as it may have done with others. I have never ever stated that I have lost everything and lost a house, fortune, marriage, etc.

You do not have to have lost it all to have a gambling problem. When I first came to this site in late 2008, my bank account had slipped into the red by a couple of grand, I had started to steal money from both my daughters accounts - due to gambling.

What had started out as a hobbie for me to fill freetime had turned into a compulsive addiction.

For whatever reason, I had been consumed by gambling. My logical thought process had gone.

Before this, I had only dabbled in gambling. I had never let it rule my head.

That was when I learnt about gamcare and joined this site. And tried to stop the habit. I thought it would be easier to stop.

In my case, I have managed to get out of debt and I have paid the stolen money back into my daughters savings accounts.

I have done my house up and manage a reasonable life.

But gambling still knaws away at me each and every day.

You don't have to borrow all the money you can and max out all your credit card to be a compulsive gambler.....

Keep strong

Ade

Ade

We are not gonna agree on this one. Read my post again - I'm not disputing that you have a gambling PROBLEM and I'm sorry to read of your issues and the stealing etc. I wish you well in dealing with it but I believe that all who are COMPULSIVE gamblers do indeed max out credit cards and borrow every pound they can to feed the addiction so I don't put you in that category.

Captain.

Fella i read your post on Ades thread and felt a little disappointment. Ade is without doubt a compulsive gambler.

He follows the same mantra we all do whilst gambling.

I cannot win because i cannot stop.

I believe he is searching deep within himself to understand why he returns repeatedly as without gambling he should find serenity.

This addiction has no levels it surely is not about competition.

It is about our mental state whilst we gamble.

Rational thinking leaves us, mine no more than Ade's

through recovery I have lost my judgmental ways, i am here to recover as you and Ade.

In which i find it difficult to understand why you feel anger against another.

Lets work together, addiction is enough for us to focus upon.

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Yo,

I agree with Duncs on this one . And at the end of the day what does it matter . All that's important that we support each other , share our experiences to give us a greater understanding of that that plagues us .

Through that we add another tool to our armoury in our quest to keep this addiction at bay .

Keep posting Captain , because as you wrote on my thread yesterday we are different but all have similarities .

Take care

Shiny

Hi Captain,

Im not sure where its defined how bad or how much you have to gamble to be a compulsive gambler but everyones truth is different.

Ade is tortured by this disease as we all are, who is to say because he hasnt re-mortgaged his house his compulsion is any less ?

We are here to support and help if we can, not to judge or to make people feel less than.

I love gamcare and all that the people who post on here stand for, lets keep it as a support system for people battling this terrible addiction the best way they can.

take care

blondie

Thanks Duncan and Shiny, respect your opinions and we can agree to disagree, nothing wrong with that. Yes we are all different Shiny. Last thought on the matter and the trigger for my post I guess - if I had 30000 available to me never mind 300000 I wouldn't be on here bothering you guys or seeking any other form of support. I'd borrow as much of it as possible and eventually gamble it all away!

Captain,

you and ade have been around these pages for a long time now.

If you recall I used to clash with your diary regarding you stating how much you gambled and won/lost quoting figures.

Ades post whilst posting figures of a different kind i can see how you were offended.

For what its worth,I can also see where you're coming from.i bought a council house for peanuts and sold it on for near on 6 figures yet im still haunted by my maxed out loans on it.

That's not to say ade isn't a compulsive gambler,I dont think any "normal" person would spend the length of time on these pages as ade has. We are compulsive whether we owe a couple grand or hundreds o thousands.

To me any type of figures shouldn't be quoted on these pages,it just causes offence and the moderators should be picking up on these things.

Best wishes and keep up the fight,one day hopefully you (and ade) will take great satisfaction in beating this awful addiction.

Winning post

Skimmed through your pages and some really interesting bits. All the best and stay strong!!!

Thanks for the post wp, good to hear from you after such a long time. Glad you can see where I was coming from. Agree the moderators could do more to manage some of the posts on this Forum.

Day 9

Still trying to follow this one day at a time, just for today thing but getting sick of it, feel it puts pressure on me. For 20 years every weekday, when I have had money excepting abstinence periods I have looked forward to going to the bookies at lunchtime and after work. Most occasions I would gamble at the time, sometimes I would just review events and not bet, or place an advance bet. For 9 days I have said to myself - 'you cant go there now, you have to walk in a diffefrent direction at lunchtime', then in the evenings force myself to drive past and not stop, get home and think 'Well thats another day done another day out of 10 years to pay off debts '. Feel so flat and lifeless, spending more and more time on this Forum at the moment. Gone from something to look forward to twice a day to nothing to look forward to. Oh yeah I'm going on holiday in October so I'll just live this boring, mundane flat life for 4 months and look forward to that, tremendous... all because I cant control my gambling for one day a month on average.

Real urge to gamble today due to stress and boredom this morning. Managed to go out at lunchtime and resist but dunno how much longer I can keep this up.

Just want to gamble on anything, win or lose, to relieve the stress and boredom.

ref your post on my diary regarding my post on the bear's dirary

everyone is entitled to their opinion, thats why i made mine. i dont really need any lectures from you about gambling addictions and its consequences, so please dont if you dont mind do it again, thanks Dark Place

Yo,

Well done mate for battling the urge and beating it lunch time !

So lets turn this on its head , you write about wanting to be a winner at everything you do .

So to end up at the end of the day not giving in to urge makes you a winner over this addiction .

If you play we both know the eventual outcome .

The boredom well that's a separate issue . Maybe the time has come to look at your job , your hobbies , your relationship and start to change those .

If I sound like a miss know it all , sorry , but you seem like a guy that likes bluntness .

The answers are out there , but if we do the same old we get the same old .

Look forward to your post later , saying that today was a battle you won, the war well takes more than one day .

Stay strong !!

Shiny xxxx

Thanks for the post Shiny, much appreciated supporting me when some others have not recently.

You are right I do prefer bluntness and people calling it as they see it.

You are dead right I need to change things, there is a chicken and egg thing here, if I change job type I wont be paid as much so I wont pay off debts as quickly, but if I stay in the same job the stress and boredom are likely to make me gamble. Much the same story on any potential changes in my home life but despite stress and boredom there I have managed for a long time to not lead me to gambling. I can feel completely comfortable in my own home these days so progress there.

Having resisted the lunchtime urge I will also resist this evening and drive straight home.

Captain.

Fella your posts fascinate me, I do enjoy blunt reality in my life today. I believe everyone is entitled to there opinion and have a mantra i have learnt through this forum.

Take what's useful and bin the rest, we have to be honest with ourselves, surely our lives became so what of a lie through gambling, for us to carry on would surely mean recovery is not working.

Funny how folk interpret things, a reason myself i don't use social networks or text to often as i feel what you convey sometimes is misread or even over read.

I know when i react to things with anger, it is because they often ring true, and to self preserve we react by fighting, fire with fire in a manner of speaking.

This trait of my personality i am working on through the twelve steps. To be able to listen, admit my faults and equally be able to have a measured response.

Through your posts i feel enlightened, it shows me I am making the correct choice myself to totally abstain from all forms of gambling.

For which today i saw it as bright as day.

Today is my 10th wedding anniversary and also my inlaws 30th wedding anniversary.

Earlier they popped up as i am prostrate on the floor with my back. We exchanged flowers and cards and wellwishes.

My eldest son. My father in law and myself shared a cuppa and a chat which led to my boy goggling 1983 to quiz me and the old man on our sporting knowledge, for a half hour or so we had a blast, i remembered a great deal about football, managers, players cup final replays, brilliant fun, the old man was impressed by my knowledge equally my son.

With irony i if questioned about the last five or ten years on football i would be at a loss, why?? Because something i grew up to adore was blinded by gambling, the great players i have denied my memory of all because the only thing i became interested in was the outcome in regards to punting

and with a sad irony i was pretty successful at sporting forecasts but any gain just fed the fobt or another form of gambling.

So today i made a pledge to myself, i will catch up on those sporting moments i missed out on through being blinded by my addiction.

I love sport, and i would trade those moments of brilliance i have missed for any opportunity to gamble.

Sorry to steal your thread i just wish to offer my support in equal measure as i do everyone upon this forum.

The purpose of my rambling, well there is a life outside gambling.

Wow the prospect of educating my knowledge.

Priceless.

Hope i made some sense.

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Great post Duncs thanks and I can really relate to what you say. My sports and football knowledge in particular are excellent for the years before gambling but a blur for those where as you said the outcome was the only thing of any interest.

I had thought my memory of events was related to more of an interest as a boy and less screening of sport before Sky but the time periods do relate to gambling.

I can remember the games where I got correct scores or late winners won me money, the games where I didnt bet on or lost on are erased from memory.

You have touched on a subject of great interest for me - sports quizzes, which I enjoyed immensely years ago but which has been eradicated as people wont now use their brains and memory they just use the computer and smartphones to get answers instead which takes away the fun.

As regards watching sport without a bet, I have tried this many times in the last few years but with a few exceptions there is no interest there for me. This is an area of my life where I have got used to doing nothing or reading at home to fill time which used to be filled with watching sport. The good thing is the elimination of watching a lot of sport which was for gambling only.

People tell me that if I go a long period of abstinence I will begin to enjoy watching sport again. It hasnt happened that way in my periods of abstinence to date but never say never.