My life with addiction

Great post Dan,

By learning something new (which we do by listening to and reading other CGS experiences) we keep on track and focused with our own recovery.

The folks that think they are cured and don't need help anymore and turn away from there recovery because they think they don't need it anymore are the ones that need/or will need the most help as much as the folks who are in denial.

Thanks for sharing that.

Suzanne xxx

Thanks for the post. Means a lot someone like yourself taking time out to read and comment on my diary. I am but a mere pup in my recovery compared to you but one day i will be where you are just now. Thanks again

Hi Dan
and thanks for your ongoing support
Cheryl x

I HAVE THE ANSWER I CAN CURE YOU!

Nah not really.
The answers to your problems can only be fixed by you. You taking responsibility for your own actions. Accepting that you cannot mould the world & the people in it to your own way of thinking. Letting go of the angers, fears & frustrations that you waste so much emotional energy on. Stop your blaming & feeling blamed attitude to life. Change those things you can that upset you & are holding you back. Accept there are things you have no power to change or even the right to want to & find a way to know the difference between the two( yes i have just rehashed the serenity prayer but didnt want to alienate my fellow atheists & agnostics).

All the good intentions in the world are not going to fix our problems. If willpower alone is going to be able to fix this then surely none of us would be here. If the methods you have tried in managing your addiction havnt worked by now isnt it time to try another. Simply telling yourself this time it will be different is madness.
You cannot do this alone, accept all the help that is out there.

Commit to 12 GA meetings in 3 months with an open mind & willingness to change.

See a good Counsellor with an open mind & willingness to change.

Attend Smart Recovery meetings with an open mind & willingness to change.

Post & read on here. Be honest ask questions.

Have an open mind an willingness to change that what you do in tackling your addiction has not & will not work for you. Try something you havnt before in stopping your behaviour it might just work!

Right im off to polish my armour & groom my white horse 😉

An enjoyable GA meeting last night. 14 people coming together, extending the hand of friendship & offering the hope of a life without gambling.

Two new members, the usual story of lies deceit & wasted lives. While in our addiction we beat ourselves up thinking no one else behaves like me. I must be the worst person in the world. Then you come here or a GA room & hear its commonplace your not unique, everyone in the room or the forum has done exactly the same things to a greater or lesser degree. Our bowls may be different but we are all eating the same soup. Recovery & abstinence are about how you go about eating that soup. You can go about it by using a fork which will be very frustrating & take a very long time i.e doing it your way & changing nothing or you can use a spoon & try the ways that other people have found successful, watertight barriers, GA & counselling. These choices are yours to take. They are your responsibility. Help is out there & a new life awaits anybody who is prepared to help themselves

Thanks Dan,

Changes happen all throughout our life, some are not by our choice, but it's how we deal with changes that occur that we did not choose that cement the choices we can make to make our lives healthy and meaningful.

Have a good gambling free day.

Suzanne xxx

THE PROCESS OF RELAPSE

Becoming stuck in our recoveries happens because we lose the motivation to change.

Life without gambling is full of challenges & if they are not faced progression will be difficult.

Denying your problems may offer you temporary relief but this will only work short term. Recovery becomes less satisfying because you are not moving forward or doing anything to resolve the life issues that bought you to addiction in the first place.

Turning to negative habits is the next stage in the relapse process. This may involve any type of compulsive behaviour that provide an escape from dealing with life problems.

Amongst the most common are:

Comfort Eating
Overworking
Excessive Exercising
Inappropriate sexual behaviour

Next a trigger event occurs & causes all the pent up frustrations of not dealing with issues to be released.
The trigger can often be something minor that we completely overreact to.

Your emotions now take over & its hard to think straight. It becomes harder to make good choices around your addiction because logical thought is being overridden by emotional thought. These feelings make life seem unbearable again.

Your inner turmoil starts to create problems externally. People around you may start to notice there is something wrong.

There is now a feeling of loss of control as you are unable to escape the problems you have been frying hard to ignore.

You will begin to romanticise about the gambling. Only remembering wins & good times.

A return to gambling feels like a natural step.

You may promise yourself that you will be more sensible this time & stay in control.

Your loss of control around gambling will occur almost immediately after returning to addiction

Day@atime.

​fella never more truer words written,the cycle you wrote about was one I committed to relentlessly for more than twenty years.it took a truly devastating chain of events for me to seek an alternative life.recovery offers boundless opportunity for change but I am fully aware that any rewards take effort,dedication and an inner desire. I believe in recovery simply because it has yet to fail me,unlike any day from my gambling life.I applaud your commitment to change.abstain and maintain. Duncs stepping forward never back.

​

Hi Dan, thanks for dropping by & being pleased for me - soz about all the detail 😉

I'm busy drinking my soup straight out of the cup @ the moment, taking good care not to spill any & with my spoon on hand for the tough bits! I didn't consult anyone so I probably have the wrong end of the stick again but I liked your analogy & I'm sure you won't mind me using it to suit!

I hope you are enjoying your recovery & taking time for yourself too! Keep winning - ODAAT

all the destructive habits in the world, gambling would seem to be one of the more benign. It doesn't blow out your liver. It won't make your nose cave in. Even after the most appalling run of bad luck, you can be reasonably sure that you won't be carted away, having expired with a mouth full of vomit. No harm done. It's only money.

You can keep telling yourself this until the moment you kick the chair out from under you.

For the majority of addictions, how much you spend is regulated by how much the body can endure. There is only so much heroin, C*****e or vodka you can consume before you end up in a hospital or a morgue. Gambling is subject to no such constraints. “The amount of financial devastation you can wreak plays a big role in this,” says Keith Whyte, the NCPG Executive Director. “You can bet $50,000 in a single hand, every minute.”Suicide rates among gambling addicts are staggeringly high. The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has estimated that one in five problem gamblers attempt to kill themselves, about twice the rate of other addictions. The reasons for this fact are both blindingly simple and impossibly complicated. And the central befuddling fact is this: Gambling kills you because it doesn't kill you.

Scholars of addiction point out that problem gamblers are subject to a slew of messy contributing factors and associative disorders. “We've known for along time that problem gambling is not a standalone issue,” says Dr. Rachel Volberg, President of Gemini Research, which conducts gambling-related studies. “Problem gamblers are likely to have other substance abuse issues, usually alcohol and tobacco. Depression and anxiety are also prevalent among problem gamblers.”

In terms of the gambler's tendency toward suicide, however, these factors serve only to cloud the issue. The most reliable killer of people with gambling problems can be summed up in a single word: debt. Because once negative equity enters the picture, gambling addiction moves into a category of its own.

A study undertaken in Hong Kong in 2010 found that of the 233 gambling suicides in the city over the course of a year, 110 of the victims had significant debts related to their problem. The majority of these were male, middle-aged, married and employed. Few showed evidence of prior psychiatric problems. They appeared normal in every way except that they had gambled their way into a bottomless pit.

It's tough to put a number on how much debt Americans incur due to gambling: people lie about the problem; the landscape shifts too quickly to keep track. We do know that callers to a Wisconsin helpline a couple of years back claimed an average of $43,800 in gambling-related debts—up from $36,000 the previous year. One study estimated that US problem gamblers owe, on average, between $55,000 and $90,000. Another reported that 90 percent of problem gamblers use their credit cards to play.

None of these figures, though, get to the heart of the issue like the following passage, which was posted on the NCPG website: “I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to tell my husband that once again we have a major credit card bill on the way. I swore to him that it would never happen again. I believed my vow, especially when I saw how hard he had to work to pay off the last debt I ran up. How can I tell him I've done it again?”

This is where, in terms of suicidal tendencies, gambling addiction leaves the pack. “If you stop drinking, you can still go get a job,” says Whyte. “But once you've got a gambling debt twice your annual income, it's hard to come back from that. In our society, living without money is a lot harder than living without alcohol.”

Gamblers who have landed themselves in debt, then, are no longer simply chasing a high, they are trying to evade catastrophe—as Whyte puts it, “You're always one bet away from winning everything back.” And, again, there is no limit to the amount of money that can be devoted to this pursuit. Unless the gambler just stops, which is unlikely without outside intervention, the problem becomes compounded with every attempt at a solution. It is the cruelest catch-22.

There was a story in the paper a few weeks ago about a Vietnamese gambling addict who, having been hounded by creditors, dug a hole beneath his kitchen and hid there for two months. There's a certain symbolic resonance to this story. For people with this addiction, there is an overwhelming urge to vanish, to remove yourself from the world.

“There's a sense of stigma and shame,” Whyte says. “A lot of people still don't understand that you can be addicted to a behavior. People tend to view gambling as a moral failure.” So adept are gambling addicts at hiding this failure, the people around them are often blind to it until the bailiffs come knocking on the door.

As the problem progresses, pathological gamblers become insufferable, riddled with anxiety, anger and paranoia. They tend to be deceitful, manipulative and preoccupied, and always seem to have forgotten to bring their ATM card when they go out. People get fed up with it; it wears them down. And so the gambler eventually finds himself alone—which becomes especially true after the explosive revelation of his debts.

The gambler's sense of isolation, says Whyte, is compounded by the “vast disparity of resources” devoted to treating the various forms of addiction. “A problem gambler can find it much harder to get help,” he says. “Some people don't even know it's treatable.” According to Volberg, fewer than 5% of problem gamblers enter into treatment. Left unchecked, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness proliferate. Very often, gamblers will come to the conclusion that there is only one way out. About 80% at least think about killing themselves.

We have no real way of knowing how many people follow through. Gamblers are, by nature, impulsive and secretive—the ones who leap from a multi-story parking deck after a bad night generally don't leave suicide notes, while those who do tend to gloss over the reasons for their self-annihilation. Certainly, it's unlikely that there has ever been an autopsy report that cited “gambling” as a cause of death. Which is not to say, of course, that it wasn't.

On Friday it wil be 8 years since my last bet on any form of gambling. Slots were my preferred poison but i gambled pretty much on anything. Since the 17/04/2007 not one penny has been wagered on ponys running round a field or sports betting of any kind, no lottery or raffle tickets, stocks or shares, scratchcards, card games or a pint of beer staked on the outcome of a game of pool have been made.

Why?

Because with those things in my life living was an endless cycle of self abuse. Day after day of gambling or finding the funds with which to do so. A never ending race to escape the things i didnt want to confront. Sitting in front of a machine for hours upon end with flashing lights & jolly sounds were for me preferable to stepping out into the real world & risking peoples judgement of me. No questions or expectations were asked for by that machine except that in return for its continued emotional comfort i feed it.

Seemed a fair deal at the time! It kept me safe emotionally while in its company. I always felt calm, relaxed & less anxious upon making a decision that today i will gamble. I knew that while doing so i wouldnt feel how i did when not in action, which was, unworthy of praise, love, kindness or friendship. That i was worthless, uninteresting, boring, someone who had nothing to offer.

Gambling offered my warped sense of perception all the things in life i was to afraid to seek in reality.
It gave me comfort without judgement.
It allowed me to express my emotions without the risk of rejection.
I could be myself & not worry what it thought of me.
It gave me a slim glimmer of hope that i could be a winner in life.
It proved what i thought of myself was correct, that i was a loser, worthless, morally bankrupt ( & who doesnt like to be proved right that what they believe is true)

These were just a few of the things that kept me in that dreamworld of addiction.
Thats the problem with compulsive gambling, it doesnt just block out what we dont want to face. Unlike most other addictions it offers the very faint possibility of hope to our skewed view of life.

The only reason i stopped was because i was caught. I had no moral epiphany, i wasnt aware that i had choices, that life didnt have to be like this. I had always kind of thought that this was just how it was & that somebody else would find the answers for me. It never entered my brain that is was my responsibility to change & seek a new way of coping with what life throws our way

I had relied on others to sort my c rap out or expected an event to change my view of myself & my place in the world.
I remember thinking the birth of my 1st child would be the answer. That surely with this miracle that everybody tells you is going to come into your life i will be so filled with love & wanting to be everything that child deserves that i will not need gambling in my life. Again i was hoping that no effort on my part would be needed to gain freedom from addiction that something or someone would do it for me. The result was a frenzied bout of gambling bought on by my fear of the extra responsibility & expectations i now would face. I convinced my wife & the doctors to keep her & the baby in for a few extra days just so i could gamble without question for a while.

It was another 7 years before my house of cards completely collapsed. All the lies, deceit, the cash running out finally caught up with me.

My wife gave me a choice. Get help or get out.
I walked into my 1st GA room on the 21/04/07. I havnt left since. I attend @ least one meeting a week usually two.
Initially i hated it. No one wants to go there to begin with. Its the final choice for most. Its admitting we are broken & no one likes to do that.

Most of what i was taught & had suggested to me where generally dismissed with the thought that i dont need to do that im better than needing those precautions, my own arrogance & lack of humility a huge barrier to me initially accepting that my way didnt work. But by continuing to attend, discussing your issues, on changing your mindset from i wont do that to i will at least try that, something begins to change.
You see that there are choices, life doesnt have to always be this way. I control what happens next to a certain degree & that what is out of my control is a waste of energy fretting about.

GA has shown me i have a purpose & a place in the world. I no longer feel scared of what tomorrow may bring. It has guided me through my anger fears & resentments @ people, situations & most importantly myself. It has been a journey that has bought immense pleasure & pride along with tears & frustration. But i have always found the more i try to progress the more satisfying i have found it.

One Breath
One Step
One Day At A Time

Great post Dan! Very interesting to read a more personal post from you!

A massive congratulations in anticipation of Friday...I hope to always be 7 years & a few months behind you 🙂

Keep breathing, keep walking - ODAAT

Dan

Fella your post today brought tears, tears of joy, I am a 6 foot something hulk of a man but recovery has gifted me the ability to express my emotions.

Everyone should read that post embrace it, you through it compel me to do what ever it takes to give all I have and more to recovery.

Why? ?

Because recovery works.

The biggest thing that stands out from your post is something that the ga room has gifted my life too

There is no end of humility in everything you write, you don't seek glory, to be placed on some pedestal, you have been gifted something and simply want to share it, GA does that, the compulsion to gamble is a great leveler, it is not prejudice, it will take anyone's money rich or poor and destroy it from within.

Recovery offers a different way and I am all in.

I doff my cap to you fella.

We walk side by side.

I thank you for sharing.

At no time more than today has the saying rung true

To truly recover you have to give your own recovery away.

Abstain and maintain

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Lovely inspiring post to read Dan,

The more I try progress the more the more satisfying I have found it.

8 years tomorrow Massive high 5 to you indeed,

Thanks for sharing,

Suzanne xxx

Thanks Dan, your support means a lot,

Suzanne xxx