My Regrets

Thankyou for the comments.

I feel much better than i did first thing this morning. i woke up in a cold sweat last night after that moment of madness.

i fully understand what i need to do. i am wholeheartedly sorry for what happened. i know i cant afford for this to happen again and will ensure my mind is fully focused on my target of not only being gamble free, but debt free.

Joe

That was your last slip up, Joe. Cement that in you mind. Forget your losses, however hard that will be.

Next time you struggle with an urge, get yourself on here and use this diary. Urges will pass. It will get easier. You have cut ties with gambling though, Joe. Gambling means only one thing for us - trouble.

Stay strong and positive, Joe.

All the best

Alex

Joe,

relapses are not uncommon, and I imagine you are very angry with yourself, but try and use the relapse in a positive manner, think of triggers, and if you can establish those do anything you can to prevent those occurences or find another way of dealing with them when they happen.

It takes a lot of hard work but I am sure you are up for it, the fact that you keep coming back and posting shows an awful lot.

take care

Phil

Thankyou for the comments guys.

last night was the first night in years i have watched a game of football without being scared of the outcome. italy v japan was a fantastic match. japan deserved to win and i was rooting for them all the way. But i am happy i didnt have a bet.i enjoyed it for the spectacle and that is what sport is really for. this is day 1 of not gambling and i will ***** it with all my strength and make it to a week. to a month and then to a year onwards. i wont slip up.i am promising.

Joe

Good to read of your positive outlook, Joe. You can do this, buddy. Get posting on here, if you have any urges or anything. Have a nice weekend.

-Alex

Hello. I need advice.

I have recently stopped gambling altogether after a few months of compulsive crazy ludicrous large stake betting, Mainly online on football. My mum gave me a cash lump after selling her home. I never thought I would need to dip into this, how wrong I was. I started with xxx, losing, another xxx losing . On and on till I was down to xxx that my lovely mum had given me for our future. I got a loan out for xxx to put it back, it was good for a few weeks but then the disease took control again. Same story as previous, xxx at a time. Went back down to xxx savings so had to take another loan to put back. My fiancГ©e had a suspicion of this and finally found out, confronted me and I was relieved that she found out because I knew I was doing something terrible, our future plans included getting married abroad, now that has hit the buffers. Now guys I need help in the relationship, I've destroyed it, the one person I can't afford to lose, I have caused her so much pain I very much regret, she is a really nice person inside and out and she doesn't deserve this. she says she will try and support me but can't get over the thought of losing all that money. I can get my head around losing the money, but not the fact that I could lose my true love.

I have self excluded from all gambling sites, and feel no urge to gamble again.

Thankyou for reading my post

Its been 6 years since i last posted and today more than ever Gambling still hold over me.

A lot of things have happened in the past 6 years and my life is nothing like what it was in 2013.

I am no longer with the girl which i wrote about and sadly my Nan passed away in 2015. 

After falling in to debt and paying a lot of interest and payments, then gambling and dowing the same thing i couldn't take anymore and voluntarily declared bankruptcy. This ultimately was a very bad decision as i couldn't cope with the mental anguish this brought me. I was always so careful with money and gambling brought me to this. 

I had not gambled for a couple of months (this was quite the achievement for me as i gambled daily for about 10 years before) but one day i decided to deposit into a gambling website.

I turned this xxxx into xxxx

I subsequently lost this and more in the space of a week.

Due to the mental impact this held over me i left my job which i had been at since i was 18 in. As previously noted i earned a lot of money and this is what depression and addiction can do to ones mental state. I decided to leave without any job to go to. That's how irrational my thinking was as i could get over what had happened.

At this point i had once again got myself into debt. I was at rock bottom. 

I felt i needed a change and for some reason took a job working long hours for minimum wage with debt over my head when only a month before i was the top sales person in a large organization.

Christmas 2016 was torture and on the 27th December 2017 i voluntarily admitted myself to a mental health hospital with no direction, more debt than i could reasonably afford to repay and no belief in able to overcome this problems.

I decided to go to hospital as there was no blurred line any more and i openly admitted i wished to kill myself.

I was in hospital over new year and into January 2017 and i was then discharged.

I was under severe pressure. I had to pay back money and all of this money was to people i know or payday loans (a lot of money when you couldn't get this from a bank due to bankruptcy, i guess that's how trustworthy i was as a person and what gambling made me become).

The pressure of the debt and the fact that i was so down on where i was at in life destroyed me.

Within 3 weeks i had got a new job, it was an office job and i earned £18,000 a year. It was a small step up from the builders yard a few months earlier.

However i was juggling around 18 different creditors and i was still so mentally unwell. I shouldn't have been discharged from the hospital with no clear direction or a support network but i felt that i needed to work to reduce the debt. The pressure led me to continue gambling.

I managed to move back into my old home, pay any arrears off on priority bills and find a job where my earnings were a few thousand pound more a year once again, with a better package in terms of pension. Still not anywhere near where i was at my long term job before this nightmare began, but a further step in the right direction. (All this within 5 months of leaving the hospital).

The pressure was getting too much for me. Creditors demanding money when i may not have eaten for 3 or 4 days but work wouldn't have known. I was performing well. I was working hard and i tried to dig deep and keep going.

There is a lot more involved in what was going on with my life during this time and i was sleeping on a sofa as i couldn't afford a bed.

One thing i did do was fight the gambling company which i had accrued the debt from. When i won the xxxx they were pending the withdrawals and delaying them being processed and also placed me in a v.i.P program. I complained and explained the entire situation but they didn't listen.

I didn't have any money, but what i did have was a belief in my heart that i wasn't solely responsible and i went on the BBC and had numerous interviews. 

In November 2016 this company returned all the losses i incurred with them. (Not the winnings, just the negative i had).

This still amounted to just over xxxx

I instantly paid out around xxxx on debt.

However i gambled the rest and it destroyed me.

Every month since i have worked and gambled and its destroying me.

As of today i  have a sum of xxxx of debt.

On one hand i am proud that in a space of 2 years i have cleared xxxx of debt. However, on the other i am disappointed that i 1. Gambled a large sum of the monies i had returned back to me. 2. Continually gambled each month since.

I have worked so hard and really taken a lot of pressure and seeked gambling counselling which i have had 10 sessions of since March 2019. 

I got paid this past week and blown the majority of my wages once again this week.

This needs to stop.

I have installed gamblock and gamban and need all the support i can get as i know that i am tiring and cannot cope with a further relapse. 

Hi Joe

Could not pass by your post without acknowledging it.

It is shocking what gambling has taken from you in terms of your mental heath and I am sure sure if you had a drug or alcohol addiction as strong as yours you would be getting a lot more help but gambling does not yet seem to be taken as seriously despite its impact. 

Please don't stop trying - keep up the counselling, use every block and piece of support you can get.  

One thing that does come through from your posts is that you are obviously an intelligent and capable man - you held a well paid and responsible job and taking on and getting a big refund from a casino is no small feat. I guess what I am trying to say in a really convoluted way is this - the years of gambling have taken a huge toil on your mental and financial position but you are only just into your 30s, you have a whole chunk of life ahead of you and this life can only get better if you stop gambling for good. You can rebuild your life and have a good one.

Good luck and keep posting - maybe a little more often than the last gap?

Muststop123 

Thank you so much for the response. I am certainly looking at making regular updates on a near daily basis and know i need to. Just putting things down in writing is a real help.

You wrote some really positive things and i felt that it was the end of the world before and whilst going through it, it definitely feels that way. Even now.

But when i was in £45,000 of debt and without a job is a far cry from where i am now. Although the debt is large, it is nearly half of what it once was and my prospects are now greater.

I just need to keep this in mind and allow myself to do things for me instead of feeling that the debt needs to be serviced as the main priority above my health. I need to balance this and that is soething i possibly need to learn to do.