Hi All,
I started gambling about 15 years ago, I lost my job, found myself redundant and discovered Roulette. Once I started, I found I couldn't stop and ended up with about £20k of Gambling debt. Somehow I managed to wean myself off, and I paid my debts off and bought a house with my sister.
This year I discovered matched betting which, if done properly, you can make some money, but the other side of that is you have casino offers in your face all the time. This time for me I'm addicted to Blackjack. I go on there and try to 'just improve my winnings by £1, then its £2 then £5, then I lose it, then I double up and lose that, then before I know it, I've deposited and trying to win that money back.
I lost £790 in December, then I won £1077 at the beginning of february and decided it was a feasible way to make money, 2 days later, I lost £6340 by trying to get my money back. I did get my money back, but then its the compulsion to 'get it up to £7000', which is crazy. Then on Tuesday I lost another £1450, and tonight £75. So thats a total of over £7500 in 3 months. I can't go on with this, I don't want to lose my house and I want to go travelling. I am working all hours overtime to try to make the money up, and I sent yesterday evening going through every single bookies I have accounts on and restricting them.
I don't have any addiction or compulsion with sports or Slots, its just the ease of Blackjack.
So here I am. I can pay this off in 6 months IF I STAY AWAY FROM BLACKJACK
This is my diary and I am starting today... Start from the beginning and I am going to update this every day. I don't want to gamble, its tearing me up, and is going to cause me serious problems if I carry on. Even writing this is helping me to think it through so thank you everyone and thanks to this site.
Days since i last played Blackjack - 0
Yo, welcome . Have you only restricted yourself playing black jack ? So easy for the addiction to move and before you know it you are sucked into another form of gambling. Playing biggest stakes , some would say playing with fire . My own advice would be to self exclude from all online sites , but it’s your recovery just be extra careful . The addictive personally is very sneaky and can I know from experience convince you can be in control of some of your gambling , in my case I can not gamble at all , even the smallest amount because if I do I will up back in hell I was in. I wish you well , no black jack today is a great start ....... ...Shiny:-)
Thanks Guys, i’ll Keep you updated!
So as part of my part time job, I work with bookies so have accounts open, and it’s quite lucrative work. My choices are to keep them open and not go on the Casino parts, or give it up completely. Obviously I don’t want to do that because i’ll Be losing money, but it might have to be the only solution. I’m going to see how the next few weeks go, and go from there.
I’ve reduced my deposit limits, and excluded myself from the casino parts where possible. I’ve also reduced my credit limit on my credit cards so I don’t have access to more credit on them, and I’m doing this when I get paid so I can’t access the money.
Hopefully this will be enough, I’m going to try to stay strong and see where I go from there.
Number of days not gambled = 1
Today I had £10 in a casino account. I wanted to withdraw it but there was a withdrawal fee of £2.50 so I was going to play on blackjack to save my £2.50. I didn’t though and just withdrew the rest of the money. Feels good!!
Great almwch. You certainly are in a precarious position of your job and way of earning is surrounded by casinos...
Any account that you have to have open for work reason...put deposit limits of 1 pound for a month so at a time. Every other account, self exclude. Exclude all - not just blackjack. Exclude all exclude all exclude all. Your mind will find a way... It will say "that junebug doesn't know what we saying"... And soon your on to the new thing 🙂
Good luck, looking forward to reading about your happy days to come.
Hi All, I've been trying to update on my phone but I haven't been able to.
Since joining, I have been reading other people's stories and trying to put into perspective what has happened. I think for me it is simply about greed. I mentioned before that I have a side job tied into the bookies. I've been putting profit expectations on myself such as 'I need to make £1000 a month profit', which transpires to about £35 a day. I was getting to about £29 a day and then trying to 'top up' my profit with gambling. It worked a few times and other times I would lose £10, £20, £60, but then I would think if I deposited £100 I could win it back, then lose it, and then deposit £500 and so on. This is how I ended up losing so much. I've had a few days to think about this and I was putting too much pressure on myself to make specific profit, and it all ended up going wrong for me. I've come to realise if I make money as a side job, its all good, I don't need to set myself targets to do it. I think we live in a high pressured world where we expect too much from ourselves.
So today is 4 days no gambling, and feeling positive about it all
im just going to quickly give you a reality check because at the moment it sounds like you are still in gambling la la land
you say you have lost £7,500 gambling in one breath and in the next you are saying match betting is lucrative ?
match betting is tolerated by the operator because they know its firmly linked to cases like yours , you are not working with the bookmaker they are grooming you into becomming a problem gambler
i can assure you that is all the casinos & bookmakers are interested in doing when they offer "matched betting"
if you wish to stop gambling then im sorry to say everything in your life related to gambling must go with it there are no exceptions
it takes a monumental change in your mindset to get out of the gambling cycle....only you have the ablity to do this
Hi, thank you for your comments. I don’t want to promote matched betting but I believe that I can do it but not gamble.
I’ve done 4 days now and not feeling the urge to do it and I want to give it a go before decided if I need to give up the matched betting.
I appreciate that I sound that I am ignoring all your advice but believe me I am not. Please keep it coming to help me to rationalise this. Everyone’s Encouragement is really helping. I have put restrictions in place so that I cannot redeposit and cannot get to that place again, but I’m trying to stay strong and hopefully I won’t be in the position where I am tempted to to this again.
I am confident that, for the next few days at least I will not be temped to play blackjack. I get paid on 8th of March. As soon as I do I am paying my credit card and reducing my credit limit. I plan to continue doing this month by month until it has been paid off
Anything with the word betting in it sounds bad!!!
I know it does!! I’d say trust me, but my track record is not anything to go by so... bare with me!! If my head is in the right place and I still to a plan all will be good. I just need to get there though. Roll on March and a new month!
Ok 5 days done... going strong!
6 days GF
Happy March!! I’m looking at this month as a clean sheet, looking forwards, sorting stuff out and getting back on track!
Beautiful month, the flowers are coming back and it’s getting warmer!!
Let’s all have a beautiful Gambling free month!!
A xx
Ok well that’s 7 days done and feeling good for it! I’m not going to do a daily update now, but I will check in on here every day and post any milestones and hopefully not any setbacks!!
Feeling good though and keeping any urges to gamble in check
Ok so today I relapsed, had some money in my accounts and tried to play blackjack on the odd pound, ended up clearing the accounts that I have open and losing £95. Luckily my game time and deposit restrictions kicked in and prevented my depositing any more. Gutted and feel a little sick that this has happened but at least it is money that I can recoup in a couple of days. Once again chasing a £2.50 loss. This really can’t happen again, I’m killing myself with overtime trying to cover my losses and i’m So tired. I feel like a failure and I’m letting people down.
Tomorrow is a new day and I’m starting again. Wish me luck
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