Living with my biggest mistake

Day 141 GF and won't be gambling today.

Gambling does not really enter my thoughts during the day apart from when I come on here. Still cropping up in my dreams but I can deal with that.

A fair bit of non gambling related problems at the moment going on within the wider family relating to serious illnesses and relationships which are hitting my wife particularly hard. Trying my best to support her as much as I can and think I am doing better than I would a year ago even if it is only asking her how she is feeling (and listening!) and doing more around the house. I think one good thing that has come out of my gambling experience and the aftermath (particularly the counselling and relationship with my wife) is I feel more in touch with my feelings and emotions and therefore am able to better understanding what is going on in my head and relate to others better. Think i was perhaps a little too logical and black/white in some of my thinking and therefore how I dealt with relationships. Taken me 48 years but finally realised none of us are 100% infallible and we all make bad decisions or say the wrong thing sometimes - we need to give ourselves and everyone around us a break occasionally.

Happy Friday All

Muststop123 - thank you. What an inspirational diary this is to read. I cannot thank you enough for writing it and sharing your thoughts, emotions and story. I wish you well, keep going. 141 days is a phenominal effort and I salute you.

Hi Must stop, thanks for your support on my diary and a great big well done on 141 days and for dealing with other issues so admirably, just keep supporting your wife, I know she will be appreciating it. You are a good soul.

All the best mate,

Wilsy

Checking in day 151 GF.

Have no urges to gamble nor do I think about it much.

Not entirely sure where this certainty comes from but I have it competely clear in my head that if I was stupid enough to try and gamble in a "responsible" way and allow myself say £100 I would not be able to stop. On one hand it is helpful to know this as it means I won't be trying any little experiments to see what happens because I already know it is going to end badly. On the other hand it is a bit scary to know I have such little self control over myself in this area of my life. But, and this fairly significant for me and a big change to my thinking from even a few months ago, I can now more easily accept that this is just a part of me. I am human, have many flaws and will make many mistakes in my life. I just need to make sure I learn from them rather than turning each one into a huge negative experience - I feel in the past I have often been more upset that I have made a mistake than about the actual consequences of that mistake. The opportunities for us all to mess up sometimes seem abundant so maybe it is not so surprising when we do.

Chatting to my son yesterday and he said he was annoyed with himself because a couple of weeks ago we were going through a toll booth and there was another motorist at one of the other booths who was obviously struggling to find enough change. Cars were filling up behind him, unmanned booth, desperately looking down the side of his seat for some change, kind of thing most of us have experienced at one time or the other. Not life shattering but really annoying and stressful at the time. He said he was annoyed with himself because he could have quite easily have got out of the car and given the guy the £1 or whatever it was he needed. Instead, like most people, we just drove off. Started talking about random acts of kindness and how it really does not take a lot. Sometimes feel like he is the one teaching me to be a better person. Both said we would give it a go. The guy at the toll booth did not deliberately turn up at the toll booth without enough change, he made a simple mistake or forgot or simply had more important things on his mind. It would have taken little on my part to improve his day a little.

Muststop123

Thanks for posting in my diary Muststop123.

Late last night I dropped in your diary to leave a message, but ended up deleting before posting - I was aware you were on a break of some sort so I suddenly got a bit self-conscious, for some reason it felt like I was tugging at your sleeve when you were busy elsewhere.

It's always a joy to read stories about you and your son ... they really are wonderful and just plain heartwarming. A great reminder to me just how unsatisfying gambling is compared to family.

I also feel as if I should acknowledge a debt of thanks to you for something else - I remember in your early posts you'd mention going for therapeutic fast walks. Since New Year, I try to walk six miles a day (four days a week) in the morning and I'm loving every minute of it. Because I work from home now, my day can feel quite static. But now it feels like I'm doing this wonderfully pointless commute from my front door back to my front door after breakfast. It's a great time to think, listen to some audiobook, music or just walk in silence and really fires me up to get cracking with some work when I return.

All my very best - and well done for smashing through to day 151 like some sort of invincible Thor figure.

Thanks, Equinox, hope the walks help as much as they did for me. I really need to get back to them but have been making a lot of excuses about it being too cold/dark/wet or being too busy - I found the time before Christmas in the cold and wet so I can find it now.

Just clearing out my email spam account last night, mostly offers of bit coins, s**y single ladies and facebook/tweeter updates (none of which I am interested in, except perhaps the....only kidding!). One stood out though was an ad from an online casino which I have never been on with a big image of the game that I really lost my soul to. Once I started feeling physically sick of playing roulette I got hooked on a slots game that had a "high roller" option for stupidily high stakes - won't go into details for the obvious reasons. I played this on two different websites but they were owned by the same company so had some of the same games and I self excluded from both of these sites for 5 years when I stopped gambling last year. Turns out there is a third company in the same group so despite me self excluding from two of the sites and unsubscribing from emails and text from them, they quite happily let the third company in the group bait me with images of the game I lost £1000s on. Not just an invite to the casino but a specific focus on the one game - this was not some random advert, it had my name and just the one game in the advert welcoming me with an offer of free spins.

In order to try and remain 100% honest with this diary I need to admit there was a very short lived spike of some sort of positive reaction to this image - the chemicals in my head obviously are still able to recreate the endorphins based just on the picture of the game. The logical part of my brain very quickly took over and there was never a chance I was going to try and get on the site and gamble but it was just a reminder of how devious the gambling industry is.

Not sure yet what I will do with this one. I could try and get on the website which it should not let me do because I have self excluded from the other related sites (according to the policy on their websites anyway) and if it does let me on I can then just immediately self exclude. Or I can just ignore it. Don't really like having this potential gap in my armour so I will probably just check that I can't get on. Previously I would have asked my wife to either do it for me or sit with me while I did it because the thought of being on the sites is so uncomfortable but she is going through a bad time with the health of her father so I dont really want to burden her with thoughts that I am having gambling problems again when in reality I feel it is under control. Time to man up and sort it myself - its just a stupid email.

I am pretty quick to criticise the gambling industry normally - I personally think they are pretty much morally corrupt, particularly the online stuff, but guess others will say they are just providing fun and legal entertainment. I will have to agree to disagree with those people.

Anyway, to get to the point. Tried to get onto the website that sent me the offer of free spins last night so I could self exclude if necessary. Felt extremely uncomfortable trying to open an account with all these ridiculous offers with impossible wagering requirements (in the small print T&Cs of course) on the screen. I was not in any way attracted to the thought of playing the games, just too much of a reminder of a very bad place. Good news was I could not get on, it said my account was frozen so guess just this once I need to give them a very small pat on the back for actually complying with their own policies. I guess my opinion of them is so low that I am actually surprised when they do as they are supposed to do. Still not sure why they sent me the email in the first place but I can now unsubscribe to emails from them and they should be out of my life for good. I admit I get a certain satisfaction out of cutting another opportunity to gamble out. I just imagine the annoyance the casinos must feel everytime they see someone self exclude for another 5 years and see all that opportunity to destroy them financially disappear.

Day 154 GF

thank you for posting.your thoughts and fears are so relatable.
your spam folder sounds just like mine.i delete them immediately.i feel the initial anger and outrage as they stir up thoughts .I can almost imagine an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other (lol)trying to tempt and then I have to go squash it and move on.im worth more than that.cant wait to be further away from my last day like you.
take care x

Day 161 GF and no thoughts or urges to gamble.

Minor points about gambling come up in my life such as people asking if I want to enter low value (usually a £1) sweepstakes for daft stuff at work which I try and say no to as politely as possible. Think sometimes people think I am being mean or miserable as usually these things are just done to create a bit of fun or banter in the office but I just don't want to have any grey areas when it comes to gambling. In my mind I am quite relaxed that something like this is hardly going suddenly start me off gambling online again but I have to draw the line somewhere and seems easier to have a strict no gamble of any sort line.

Made some comment to my wife last night about "my mistake" of last year and she said something along the lines of "oh that?, I had forgotten all about that". Not entirely sure how I feel about that. One side makes me feel good that she is not continually worrying about me doing anything as stupid again as she has got enough on her plate. On the other side I wonder if she ever really understood how potentially dangerous and out of control my behaviour really was - I don't want to keep raising it as something else for her to worry about if I think it is under control so I guess for as long as I have no urges to gamble it is ok.

Muststop123

Well done mate, your doing well and its good to hear. I know what you mean about looking like a spoilsport with little things like sweepstakes but, like you i have also drawn the line at 0 gambling.

It might not be possible to make your wife fully aware of the dangers of the addiction but you can't control the way she views your issue with it. As long as you stay fully aware then you are in control of your future actions and thats the main thing going forwards.

Take care =)

Checking in for day 174 GF.

Been coming on here much less frequently because I don't generally think much about gambling.

Felt the need to come on here today because I found myself with a smallish amount of money in a paypal account (just over £100) last night and for some reason I suddenly had the thought that this is "secret" or "spare" money that I could gamble if I wanted to and no-one would ever know. I didn't because I did not want to but it is a sign that somewhere in the back of my mind the gambling poison still exists and would just love to escape.

I moved the cash into an account that my wife could see just out of habit but this does just reinforce two consistent bits of advice that I have been given on this forum and tried to follow:

1. Gambling loves secrets - as soon as I had "secret" money my mind immediately associated that with potential gambling money. Simple answer is don't allow yourself to have access to any unmonitored funds.

2. The time-location-money (or similar) triangle really works - all the time I was unable to gamble due to the lack of unmonitored funds I had largely stopped even thinking about gambling. Let that part of the triangle fail and the opportunity to gamble presents itself.

I am not having to fight urges to gamble but my thoughts of last night have reminded me that this is now a lifelong issue that I need to manage. Just a small bump in the road that helps prevent complacency.

Checking in day 181 GF.

Nearly at the 6 month point and keeping it together. On the surface I think I am pretty much on top of this - no urges to gamble or actual gambling so guess that is success and what most of us on here are aspiring to.

I do still have some unwelcome thoughts. Several times recently when I realised I did actually have access to unmonitored money my mind immediately bought it to my attention that I could gamble and no one would know. These were small amounts, £100 or so but not really the point as many of us know it always starts small. A year ago the thought of gambling this money would never even have occurred to me. Need to keep this money out in the open especially as I potentially have a reasonable bonus on its way - if £100 can bring these thoughts to the front of my head then I don't want to imagine what a larger amount might do.

The other thought that has returned is the annoyance that the gambling sites won. I spend several months after I stopped gambling being afraid of gambling. I now just really hate the gambling industry. I got over the loss of the money a while ago but it is just the thought of the gambling sites sat there laughing at my stupidity that is getting to me. The reality of it is I have no chance to get even if there was the smallest chance of ever winning because I am excluded from all the sites I used for several years but the thought comes up that if I could win some money from any online site then that would be a win. It sounds ridiculous just writing that down but that is the thought my mind is tossing around. I don't want to actually play the games - the thought of a spinning wheel or spinning reels still makes me feel ill - it is the desire to somehow get even. Never going to happen, I know.

These thoughts just reinforce the need to keep all the blocks in place and remain on my guard.

Otherwise life pretty good. Just bought a old car so my son can learn to drive - how can that possibly go wrong? Also booked up most of out big summer USA road trip but still plenty of planning to do for that so keeping me busy. Too many good things in my life to risk s******g it up by gambling.

Muststop123

Hello Muststop123,

Good to see you remaining GF. As for getting back at the bookies i say look at it another way. They were winning because we end up losing. We don't play, they don't win. We are beating them by not playing them at their own games. We both know if we had gambled we would have lost a load more. You have cost them money by stopping you don't need to worry about getting anything off them, thats what got us in trouble to begin with!

Don't worry about them, we don't gamble any more. They can do what they like we choose not to fund them now (i know our brains work weird around this whole thing and i think you know even from how i read it that you know its just a bad thought process that you don't need to give any attention to).

All the best

Thanks for the post sjwsjw.

Sometimes I think I just need to write down some of my thoughts and it becomes so apparent that they are ridiculous. The physical act of playing any online games does not attract me so no draw there. Winning £200 on some random site does nothing to get my money back from the sites I lost on - they are different sites and it is far too little in comparison to what I lost. Finally I don't need to turn £100 into £200 to buy anything.

Can't really think of a reason I would gamble.

Hi Must stop,

I just read your whole dairy and just want to say well done so far! I have been gambling for about 17 years now on and off. I stopped for about 4 years after my ex partner left me with our two children in 2013. Sadly nothing could save the relationship as the trust had gone in the end!
I struggled with what you was struggling with; Handing over control. I went from 'Man of the house' to feeling like I had nothing In the world and not being that 'man' anymore. Sadly for me after 4 years I thought I was "cured" not wanting to gamble for so long, falsely lured me into thinking I was in invincible. I wasn't and never will be! Lucky for me I met a amazing person, just like your wife who will never fully understand but understood, if that makes sence?
I know that i can't access money in bank accounts! Handle cash, yes! Access money, no! This is the way it has to be. If 4 years showed me anything, it was don't ever take it for granted! It will eat you back up inside.

Keep up everything you are doing and remember we are the masters of our own destiny.
Regards Macca.