My Recovery Diary

Simon it really is good to hear from you mate. The two things that really stick out in your latest postings are that you can laugh at things again and also that your mindset towards gambling appears to have changed. You, amongst others, can certainly appreciate how hard life can appear at certain times but at the end of the day any changes to any part of our own lives must come from within. You are addressing your sexuality preferences and also your gambling habits. as you move forward in the way you are doing you are becoming a happier person--that is clear from your posts.

The fact you were able to resist the urge to gamble over a period of five days when your friend came to visit is little short of miraculous when you consider where you were at the start of your diary. Do not let anyone belittle what you managed to do over that weekend.

Simon---Stopping Is Moving Obviously Nearer

Very best wishes

Stumper

Hi Simon, hope you are keeping well.

Just dropped by as I have seen you have left a contact number on someones diary... not sure if that is safe? Not being paranoid but we never really know who reads this site, do we?

I know that if you email Gamcare(Michelle) they will pass on contacts if both parties are agreeable.

Just want you to stay safe 😉

Hi Jac, thanks for our thoughts. I considered that before leaving it but was happy to do so anyway so don't worry. Noted about Michelle, thanks.

Funny last couple of days for me. Been thinking about playing an online casino a lot. I am sure its because of my last counselling session where the counsellor put it in my head that I could probably gamble safely and without repeating patterns of the past, providing I put some boundaries in place, like budgeting myself and walking away win or lose once that budget is gone. Yeah right! I have been on a couple of websites and played video poker for free to get my kicks. That's as far as its gone. I am really chuffed that I stayed well clear of the 'Play for Real' button.

Something has kept me going anyway and I have resisted, but I don't like the fact that gambling is trying to creep back in again. I was really strong at the beginning. When I think of everything I have been going through lately I suppose its no suprise that I am looking for an escape from it all. Up pops gambling ready and willing to offer me an escape as usual!

What a pain in the b*m. I am going to have a dohnut. Good night.

Doughnuts I love em.

Do you know how Bob Marley liked his doughnuts?

---Wi Jammin

You have enough going on in your life without bl**dy gambling mate. Resist the temptation like you have done and I am sure the urges will ease.

Stay strong--For 'both' your sakes!!!

All the best

Stumper

Hi Simon

Your situation must bring a lot of stress. Sure it must be lifting a lot of weight off your shoulders, but I am sure that it must also bring its fair share of strains. However, you have managed to keep it all under control which is no mean feat. I have had many bad hair days of lesser import which have resulted in gambling.

Well done

G

Hi all, happy easter and best wishes.

I had a gamble earlier this evening, finished about an hour ago. Played an online casino on my Mum's PC with my best friend Nick and we lost £250 each. I now can't sleep and have tried several times but its no use. Too many thoughts in my mind about the gambling dis-abling me from going to bed. Don't know what to write really. I have been tempting myself a lot lately by playing casinos with free money and thoughts of going to Las Vegas this time next year with Nick have been adding to the excitement. I knew I was going to have a bet at some point, it was just a question of when.

I am not angry but I am disappointed. £250 is not particularly a lot considering my last bet was £1,800 back in January, but what its what it represents for me that hurts and makes it hard for me to control my thoughts and feelings over. That £250 added to all the gambling losses before right back to age 9 when it all started, must total well over half a million. How have I managed to lose so much? Where has it all come from? How can that in itself not be enough to make me want to stop? Why have I not reached a rock bottom? What is it that attracts me so much to coming back for more punishent time after time after time after time after time again. These are my current thoughts. Is it that when I am down in life, I gamble to feel better, and that when things go well in life, I gamble because I thenfeel I don't deserve those good things? Do I gamble because I enjoy it or do I gamble because I a bored? Do I want to win or is it actually about losing? So many questions with no clear cut answers. I think I gamble for all of these reasons and more that I haven't even considered.

Just read 28s last few posts and feel like we are related because that guy and me and identical, especially when he writes about feeling like a failure a few posts ago. Plus all the other stuff he wrote. 28, in my last post to you I told you stop beating yourself up ... now I follow that by doing it to myself! The madness of gambling. That's the only way I can really look at the whole concept of it al, its just utter madness and I am right in the middle of it - have been for 39 years.

What would I do if I didn't gamble? What else is there? I know that sounds very negative but nothing would give me the highs and lows that gambling does and I know that for an absolute fact so there's no point kidding myself that there is an activity out there that would. What do I replace gambling with?

I can go weeks, months and sometimes years without a bet (2 yrs is most I have ever done in my last 20s) but I couldn't stay away from it forever. At my last visit to a counsellor on Monday she suggested that life is all about choices and I can make choices about gambling; I don't have to chase, I can set limits and gamble normally. Tonight I did that. I said to Nick I am doing £250 and if it loses I am stopping there and not chasing as I usually do. If we win £100 profit I am stopping with that. I never got the opporunity to test the latter as it went on a major take (no suprise there) from the the very first spin on the slot. How am I supposed to feel then? Good, because I stuck to what I said? Bad, because I still think it was a complete waste of £250 for no reason? Good, because there WAS a good reason, and that was that I had a small gamble and didn't lose control? Bad, because I had a little gamble but knew that I shouldn't really have done? What a mind bender!!

Honestly, I really don't know what to think. I know I can't not think and I know that I can't sleep, so something isn't quite right about that is it? Why can't I be like Nick? He loses £250, £500 or £1,000 ad it doesn't bother him for more than about an hour or so afterwards. He just accepts it. I guess that's maybe the angle my counsellor was trying to come at it from. I am different though, I never can accept it. Even if I lost a fiver I would be angry because I simply hate losing anything in the first place. It makes ME feel like a loser.

I was thinking about 28 talking about the 4 women he has available at the moment. Well I have one woman who is interested in me, a Polish woman. She likes me a lot and we have seen each other several times. She is pretty, great figure, lovely personality and has more than everything a guy could want, so how is it I have absolutly no interest either way? I couldn't care less about chasing her really, even though she is so readily available. I just can't be bothered. And this seems to the the theme with everything in my life for the last 20 years. Can't be bothered about jobs, about girls, about s*x, about travelling, about going out in the evenings, anything. I am just like a total recluse letting life pass me by every day. But its not deliberate, I am sure. I just DON'T have the desire or energy to be bothered. I have become used to gambling with my time and not doing anything else. Its a routine I am both used to and comfortable with having done it for 31 years since aged 9. I probably don't want to change. So what, really, am I doing here? Or writing about? Or seeing counsellors for? I mean, is there a point to it all?

As I say I am not particularly angry at this moment and I am not going to beat myself up as I usually would. I will just lie in the bed and not be able to sleep, psychoanalysing it all!

Will write a little more tomorrow perhaps. Do have a happy easter everyone and for those strong in their recoveries well very well done for your strength. I honestly don't know where you're motivation comes from but I admire it and think its obviously good for you, so keep it up.

Cheers,

Simon.

Simon you keep saying that you cannot be bothered with virtually anything. It is time that you perhaps started bothering a little less about the only thing in life that does actually bother you-----YOU.

Try to look at life from outside of you. You say you respect people who are strong in their recoveries--do you think that it is easy for anybody--well let me tell you it is not but many of us now do not want to go back to our old ways not just because we are letting ourselves down but also because by doing so we feel that we would be letting others down--friends, family and fellow cg's who have been supportive to us.

Your councellor is right it is your choice what you do but from where I am I would say that there are two things that you are not very good at, one is choice making and the other is gambling. I do not think you will ever be a good gambler but you do have the opportunity to start taking the right choices in life.

Take that opportunity--NOW

Stumper

Hi Stumper, thanks for your message. I read it this morning, liked what you wrote but didn't pay much attention to it to be honest because I had in my mind that I still wanted to play more today and chase back what I lost. So having done that 10 minutes ago on a live roulette site I now find myself a further £500 down, so a total of £750, the latter of which took 10 minutes to lose - 5 bets all at £100 or therabouts a spin on roulette that lost.

I have absolutly no control whatsoever when it comes to gambling - NONE. I bet so stupidly that I don't even know what chips I am placing and how much I can win, I just 'hit and hope.' I wish I could swear on this site because I simply want to say "I am f****d." Why do I do this to myself? Seriously, why? I know I am going to lose. I know every time but I still do it.

One of the hardest things for me Stumper is that I like to see myself as an individual. I want to believe that I am different from everyone else on here and that even though most of you can all find a common goal somewhere, I believe I am different from you. In other words, nobody has my head on their shoulders, they don't really know what its like for me. People can just relate to a little here and there but that's about it.

I know my problem. I have it easy. I have a well off mother who has bailed me out every single time I get in trouble. Its been going on since my early 20s when I first went to university. When she does, I go and do it again, over and over again. Much as it pains me and I feel so disrespectful towards her I still go out and do it again. I have never had to work hard for anything, my life has always been easy. I am spoilt. I have been the favourite of the kids and Mum sees no wrong in me. To have reached aged 40 and still for it to be that way is harder on me than you might think. I hate it more than anyone and would love to be financially independent, but every job via 1 or 2 I have ever had I have been sacked from. I just seem to have been moulded and fell into this person who always gets by with the help of others, primarily his Mum. Now I have gone and stuck two fingers up at her kind offer of help again, for the 1000th time in my life. Am I alone in this situation or are there others reading this post like me? I should very much like to know.

How do you start again at 40? Do I work as an apprentice at this age? Do I do meter reading like my last job (before I was sacked) that I hated with a passion? Do I sell my home and go abroad and do voluntary work in an attempt to find myself and realise what the rest of my life is about? I just feel like giving up. Got no more strength left. Whenever I start again in life I always end up destroying it again at some point soon after. I doubt any of you on here can relate to me really. Perhaps I am wrong but that's how it feels at the minute. You have gambling problems yes, but is your head as mentally f****d as mine? I haven't got a clue about anything anymore. If I wasn't so scared of ending it all I'd do it like a shot, but I am even a coward when it comes to that.

Read my diary mate and you will see I have been f****d in the past as you put it. Lost my home and spent quite some time in a mental hospital. Did I want to go through that--Of course I did not. At the end of the day I took a deep breath and thought--this is not want I want to do with my life. The same applied to my gambling.

You say how can you start again at 40--well I have just done it at 53--look at ex-Gambler Jeff's diary--30 years of gambling but not any more.

You are different to me mate because although I can be a right t**t at times it looks like you intend to be one all of the time!!

You have been lucky or perhaps unlucky to have a mum who bails you out all the time.

You say that you know what your problem is---I doubt that. You appear to be blaming your mother for trying to hard. In fact I think you blame everybody other than yourself. Poor me is what comes through in your latest post---nobody is like me---nobody understands me.

It is time for you to wake up and start smelling those roses mate---looks like your mate Nick must be one of those fawning types--get rid mate--move on--get a life.

You are 40 not 4 start to grow up quickly.

Personally I think you should go and work with people who genuinely have it tough like the disabled or homeless and then you might finally appreciate life in general a bit more.

Sorry to go on but I think it is time somebody had the balls to tell you that you have it in you to sort this out in a positive way--you are not the spineless person you are betraying--I am sure of that.

As I said in my earlier post you are a rubbish gambler and you have proved that to me again today--hopefully this latest episode may have helped you to see that for yourself.

As always I wish you well

Come on Simon---grow up mate

Stumper

Thanks for your 'hard hitting' message Stumper. I have read it many times over before forumlating a response. My initial reaction was one of anger and I wanted to write something critical back. It sounded as if you were a father telling off his son, calling him a 't*t', criticising him and demanding that he grew up. I couldn't understand why you put yourself in that position and what makes you think you have any right to do so. I never had a good relationship with my father as he constantly spoke down to me like that my whole life before dying of cancer about 5 years ago, so you triggered off a lot of stuff for me their which is why I felt so angry. However...

I am sure I probably triggered off much for you too. My last few posts have of course been completely based around self pity and lots of self loathing, which I know is something you wrote about yourself in your own very first few posts. Perhaps the way you were talking to me was about giving yourself a good talking to as well? Perhaps not, but it was a thought that crossed my mind either way.

We all do what we need to at the time that makes us feel strong ourselves and you are just as vulnerable as me or anyone else is at any time so I certainly can't and don't blame you or hold a grudge for anything you may say. This is a positive step for me because criticism is one of the hardest things I have to try and get used to and accept in life.

You suggested that I read your diary in full so I have made a start. I haven't been able to sleep so now is as good a time as any. I aim to read up to about 50 pages and if I am still able to concentrate further I may go all the way to the end. Either way I will have it covered by the end of tomorrow. I am glad you suggested it as it is helping.

I realise just what a low place I have fallen back to again. When I was posting yesterday I couldn't see it because my head was in a state and I was caught up in it all. There is a little clarity this morning in as much as I have 'left the building' as it were for a few hours and in that time woken up and smelt the roses as you put it.

When I am down I am really down. I am in a place where I hate the world deeply and every person in it. I want to hurt everyone I come across, even if they have done nothing to me and especially those that offer kindness, compassion or love. Those are the one's I want to destroy and hurt the most. I don't know why - just being honest about what goes on in that crazy head of mine.

Yesterday I was in such a low place that I really did give up and I was adamant that was it for me; no recoveries left, that was it. I was a failure, confirmed 100%.

This morning I do not believe that and I will try again. I am going to try to the best of my ability once more to tackle the beast inside me. It comes in many forms, the most dangerous of which is gambling. What choice do I have? Like you wrote in your first few posts, its either that or suicide, and suicide is the easy option. As appealing as it is, and I always think about it when I can't cope in life, I know there is a stronger Simon somewhere deeper who wants to show himself and others that he can face all problems that come his way in life. How much more gratifying that is, not least for my own self respect, which I will have earnt by my own hard efforts. I want to do it.

The next few days will undoubtedly be the hardest as they always are after gambling. I hate them. I need to look at where I have failed in the past and put measures in place to stop failings in the future. I became complacent; I had easy access to money; I had no job; I was being looked after; I was comfortable with easy options.

I do need to 'grow up' you are right Stumper. I didn't particularly like the way you put it but its true that I am very childish in my behaviour. I appreciate this is your way of trying to help and I know you have good intentions behind it. I know my faults and my failings and I know what I need to do to overcome them. I have never wanted to face responsibility. That is my personal challenge in life and one I am ready to face starting from this morning. I pray for the daily strength I need to see this through.

Please keep posting and put yourself first always. Your journey is the most important Stumper and you are doing ever so well. It is due to your hard work and the choices you have made. I want to join you, I just need to clear my head and be in the right place mentally. I am doing the best I can at this moment. I have very little (mentally and emotionally) to start with so its difficult but I aim to be as positive as I can.

All the best.

Simon--well done -that was probably the best post on your diary--why?--you thought outside the box. By this I mean I think you looked at yourself from somebody elses point of view.

Sorry to hear that your father died of cancer mate--it must have been horrible even though you appear to have not liked him.

The only thing you triggered for me was anger at myself not at you. Many of us have tried to offer words of encouragement to you through your diary when looking back a firmer approach would probably have been of infinitely more benefit to you.

After 36 years of stupidity through gambling I think I need to give myself a good talking to--don't you.

Nobody enjoys or looks for criticism--it hurts us all-some more than others. My biggest critic is myself no matter how hard people are on me. That does not stop other peoples comments hurting at times.

Glad you are reading my diary--try Ex-Gambler Jeff, Seanostars and Winningpost as well as a few others and you will see that life is not easy for most people but out of abject adversity certain people can remain upbeat and positive, whatever life throws at them. Life is like a rollercoaster for many of us and I for one would never volunteer to go on a rollercoaster as it would scare the living daylights out of me.

Smelling the roses is always a good idea Simon. However low that you feel at any given time there are millions in this world who would readily exchange places with you.

I think the feeling of wanting to hurt others is a quite natural reaction to how you are feeling. None of us ever wants to point the finger at ourselves when things go wrong. I would love to blame everybody and everything in my life for the fact I was a cg for 36 years and also for all the other c**P that has happened to me but at the end of the day the only person who can take ultimate responsibility for my actions is myself.

A failure 100%--yes yesterday you thought you were but today is a new day and instead of black or white things look a little bit more like a grey colour. We all feel failures at many times of our life. Sometimes these feelings are justified but mostly they are not. We are human - we just made another mistake and we try to learn by our mistakes. In my case took me thousands of mistakes and 36 years but finally I realised that my gambling was a mistake.

Glad to see that you have dismissed the easy and cowardly way of getting out of the situation you find yourself in. I too pray that you will find things easier as time goes on.

I know that you feel that emotionally and mentally you are starting from a low place but ironically this is probably the best place to start. Everything from this day forward can be better than what went before if you truly want it to be.

Simon-I did not enjoy writing on your diary yesterday in the manner that I did but I just felt it was time that somebody was totally blunt and honest with you. If by doing so I have in any small way helped you to move forward then I consider it well worth it.

Let me finish by saying for all your faults mate you are without doubt the most articulate diary writer on this site. You are obviously far better educated than myself.

As always I truly hope you can move forward. Remember it really is a one day at a time journey and certainly not a sprint.

All the very best wishes

Stumper

Morning Simon,

I don't really know what to write on your diary...and so I will just send you a big hug and cuddle...because I think you need it right now.

Ahh, thought of something to say 🙂

You have a lot going on Simon and to consider suicide as a release is serious. Please get some professional help....I am no expert but perhaps you need to go see your Doctor and tell him/her how you are feeling. I am genuinely worried about you and I really do care about how you move on from all this stuff going on in your world that is making you feel unhappy. Bit by bit it can all be sorted...I am sure of that.

Thinking of you...Jas xx

P.S I hope you closed that account you were gambling on?

Simon

Yeah seems to me that you are one mixed up dude.But listen you have lots going for you.Its just going to take a lot of working out.I can see you are obviously an intellegent person. you read Stumpers post over a few times and took some positive points from it.Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.Only you can sort out your problems in life.You can certainly get help ,advice and counselling,but ultimatley its down to what you want and how much you want it.Reading through your diary it seems to me that gambling is an outlet in your life.Maybe deep down you also know you cant really lose because your mum will make things better.Its easy Simon to take the soft option.I will leave you with this saying Do the right thing not the black and white thing.All the best Jeff.

Thanks for the kind words from you all. Cheers for the hugs Jasmine, they always help.

Well what a messy few days its been. I have been having nothing but problems trying to install the Betfilter software. It wouldn't install to begin with, then it wouldn't let me log in, then in froze, then when it finally did install properly it didn't even block the very site I lost all my money at, which was a live dealer website. I have been exchanging emails back and forth expressing my anger that they have released a product which doesn't do what it says it should do. I criticised their company. I CCd my email to my friend Nick who has literally just emailed me back saying,

Well, what do I write in response to everything below?

Cheers Nick

I won't show you the email that I wrote to Betfilter in the first place but I didn't think it was too bad really! Sometimes I laugh at myself because I can (and often do) behave much differently to others. Nick is the shy, reserved type who accepts bad services or products and would never say anything. I am the complete opposite and will criticise a company a lot. OK, so I listed all their failings in a bullet pointed list! Was that so bad? I don't know. That's me through and through I guess. Never really been good at boundaries and known where or even how to draw the line. Perhaps that's why my gambling can get so messy. But gambling aside for the moment, is it actually a failing to have those character traits or is it simply my personality which defines who I am and should be celebrated? Sometimes its a thin line and difficult to distinguish between the two.

Anyway, that's my thought for the day. Still at my Mum's but driving back to Bath tomorrow morning at 6am. Got to sign on at 9.30am in Frome.

I am doing OK ... I think! Just nervous after Nick sent me his response to the email I sent so wondering if I have now peed everyone off at Betfilter, just by being honest! The truth hurts, doesn't it? I had to take it from Stumper ... can't they take it from me? How can you criticise contructively without touching a nerve? Oh well. I raise my glass to being human, for all my shortcomings!