I am a 27 year old professional, completely lost without hope in life.
Gambling has destroyed all the beautiful things in life - shattered all my dreams. With a mountain of debt >10k, i can't see any light at the end of any tunnel. All dreams of getting a mortgage or getting married have all been gambled away.
I am a complusive gambler. I have tried stopping earlier this year, with gambling habits coming back with a vengeance, last spin losing >20k. My weakness is online poker. I need this to stop.
I really want to start over again. I cannot see any hope.
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Hi Rach,
Well done for coming onto this forum and writing how you feel. It's really difficult when you feel like you are in a tailspin, and are panicking.
First of all, understand that you have a compulsive addiction and are unable to control your behaviour because of it.
Sometimes that is the hardest part to accept and integrate.
The good news is, you can regain some control with abstinence. I don't believe a compulsive gambler is ever fully in control - but you can get back to the point where you are functioning better.
Second, you need to get some blocks in place to stop you from hurting yourself even more. It's likely that at this point the urges are really bad, because you will have a hard time accepting that you have lost all that money. You will be telling yourself you can win it back. You probably told yourself you could win it back when you were chasing at -5k right? Did you? or did you lose even more? Maybe you won some of it back, so things didn't seem quite as disastrous - but you didn't stop at that point, did you? That's the trick that gambling plays on our minds - we never know what the point is when we have peaked. When we have won, or won back as much as we are ever going to. We tell ourselves we could win even more back, instead of cutting our losses and running.
The great news is, if online gaming is your main poison, it is much easier to block. Just download some blocking software.
The next moment you have a break from the chasing thoughts just do it.
I have been in recovery for about 6 years in total, and I still need to block gambling on every internet device I own. I wish I didn't have to, but I accept that I do.
A free software is K9. It is goo gle-able. Others are betfilter and gamblock. Gamblock is very good, I can personally vouch for that, but at the moment I am using K9. K9 needs password access, so it is suitable for me as my husband is happy to be the sole bearer of the password. If you don't have anyone who can do this for you, the other softwares are better.
I don't want to overload you with too many different pieces of advice right now, while you are still reeling - but I would make blocking gambling access on all of your internet devices the top priority.
The chatroom, and netline are great sources of support in the meantime, if you are struggling to deal with urges.
It can get much better than it is now - I promise.
Take care,
f x
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