Hi,
My names George and i am a coomplusive gambler!
I don't really know where to start as ive never done anything like this before.
My journery started about 5 years ago, was out with the lads at an home game and for the first time in my life i decided to place a bet on an accumulator in the bookies as everyone else did it every week so i thought why not. In the end i won £500 off a £10 bet, that's it i was hooked! The worst thing to ever happen to me was that bet winning. I started doing a few accumulators every week but this time betting £100 a go looking for the big win, getting up 2 hours early for work so can sit downstairs in ipad looking for the next bet to place, i racked up £3000 in credit card debt which i then got consolidated into a lower interest loan to keep the payments down but it wasn't until my fiance came downstairs one morning at 5 oclock kicking off asking what the hell i was playing i realised how deep i was. i sorted my self out and stopped betting.
3 years later and money is a bit tight, just had our first child and still trying to save up for a house and our wedding and it was getting me down about how we never had any money and that was it i had convinced myself i could earn a small amount of money every day to act as a 2nd wage. It was affecting my work, my personal life i was just on the phone 24/7 no matter if i lose i was putting another £1000 into the account like it was monopoly money knowing full well we needed this money! I just couldn't stop, then all of a sudden i checked my bank account and not realised how much i had lost!! I had bet all our money and didn't have enough left to pay the rent and to top it off i had racked up another £5000 on credit cards too, this is when i knew i had to stop again. After my parents bailed me out for our bills money for a couple of months i then sat down with my fiance and told her exactly what i had done, it was a very emotional couple of days and to be honest was expecting her to take our son and leave. In the end she came back after leaving to cool down for a few hours one night and we went through everything. We got ourselves back on our feet again, paid the money i owed my parents back and even managed to save enough to treat our little boy (18 months) to his first holiday! The last time i gambled was July last year and since then we managed to have a savings account of £4000, we are getting married at the end of the year abroad so was also saving to pay the holiday off each week as didnt want to touch the £4000 so then after the wedding we'd be closer to our house deposit. Then for no reason whatsoever last monday i placed a bet online, obviously it had lost! frustated at myself of doing that i then placed £1000 into the account to place on a small odds bet almost guaranteed so i could take my £100 back that i had just lost and to my surprise the bet lost again! that was it, £1100 down in a matter of 2 hours, i was so determined to gain all this back i ended up £3000 down!!... The most annoying thing about this is at one point i was £4000 UP!!! i was betting to win my money back so why didnt i withdraw and stop, that would of been holiday etc all paid for with extra to top the savings account up but me being me blew it all 🙁
Now i have £0 in the savings, still have my loand and credit cards to pay off plus the extra i lost which i can afford to pay except im having to put £100 a week to one side to pay the holiday off which leaves me with £15 a week left :/ Now all i can do is worry thinking how are we going to buy the rings and my partners wedding dress with no money and no spare money to save!.. I have been a total idiot to let myself get back into this spiral again and i hate myself for it. I am just too scared to tell the missus otherwise im dreading she will call the wedding off and leave me and take my boy with her!
Im pretty sure i can stop the gambling all on my again this time, but i wanted to find out other peoples experience of counselling and if they feel it actually helps or not
Thanks for listening and i apologies for ranting on, like i said this is my first time
George.
Hi George, there are many sad tales on here, yours being one. This is a great place to read and re-alise you are not the only person in the world with a gambling problem. Great support and ideas on here on how to stop the gambling, read read .................................read. But if you want to stop it has to come from within, it really has, the willpower has to come from you.Good luck
Hi George , My name's Alan and like you I'm a compulsive gambler , and we can't win because we can't stop !
It's all aboit the buzz my friend and unfortunately not about the money , you said you got up to £4,000 and didn't stop so point proved , the money isn't money just more ammunition to gamble with , so ask yuorself the question " How much is enough "?
The biggest problem you have have is what many of us on here struggle with and thats the letting go of the losses ! . Unless you accept that the money's gone and not coming back you will continue to gamble and chase your loss in the hope that youre gonna wipe your debt out and it simply doesn't work my friend !
You need to accept the loss and put some barriers in place , such as self excluding from bookies and sites you gamble on , you can also get blocking software that will prevent you from accessing these sites , one that many use on here is called k9 but there are others available .
Maybe think about counciling which is free through gamcare or GA which may also help . I know you don't want to tell your partner but gambling addiction thrives on secrecy and I think you need to think seriously about what would happen should your partner find out via other means ?.
There's lots of advice on here through other members or the gamcare team , also no judgements here just support , so feel free to ask what you need to know .
Take care for now !
Alan
Hi George
I can totally relate to how you feel right now as I am struggling to cope with losing £3k overnight which was money intended to pay our mortgage, bills, food etc. I have gone over 80 day's gamble free and within a second of making an impulsive decision thinking I am in control of my habit, I lost everything I have worked so hard for over the last few weeks. I have been in this situation many times before and cannot explain the impetuous choices I make when I have money I the bank.
The difficulty us CG'S have is an arrogant attitude that we will win. We never win because we cant stop but try telling that to someone who has total belief that just one more bet will bring back the huge losses we have suffered.
My day one starts "again" tomorrow, after I have gone through the whole ridiculous process of sorting our finances out again. I thought I was protected but the devious nature I me remembered my husband got a new phone at Christmas and guess what, there was no web protection on it. Whilst he slept last night, I transfered my whole months wages to an off shore bank somewhere in Gibraltar...total insanity!! I did manage today to download a gambling block onto my husband's phone, too late for last night but it will prevent further damage in the future.
Best advice I can give you is to be honest with yourself and your loved ones. Self exclude and put gambling blocks on all your house devices. Keep a diary on this site and read the horror stories. Get to a GA meeting if you can or counselling via Gamcare. And most important don't place a first bet because one bet leads to another and we can't stop. Every day we don't gamble we win. Consequences are horrific, ask anyone on this site, they've all been there.
Best of luck with your recovery. Rosie x
Meant to say George, with regards to the counselling, I would highly recommend it. If you ring Gamcare they will provide details of your nearest Counselling venue. The best advice I ever received from my counsellor was to separate fact from belief. The belief that we will win is a pure myth. (Shame I didn't think of that last night)!!! Rosie x
Thank you all for your time reading my post and helping.
I appreciate everything you are all saying, this demon is a terrible thing and no matter how awful it makes you feel you still go back again and again!
This time I am determined to stop it for good for the sake of my partner and child, and most importantly for myself! I feel I've being carrying this burden getting me depressed for so many years when I should be happy spending time with a perfect partner and prefect child!
I think I will most definitely keep a diary and hope this will help!
Today is day one and hopefully the start of many more gambling free days to come!
Reading this really hits home for me as I am due to get married next year and all i can think of is how am i going to be able to afford everything as i need to start focusing on clearing some of the debt i have.
I really dont feel i can tell my partner and she keeps wanting to talk about things for the wedding and i just cant concentrate on it. Hopegfully I will be brave enough to do it one day.
But as you are I am determined to beat this.....I just want to feel happy again.
Hope all goes well for you George
I totally agree Damo, my wife to be keeps getting all excited about the wedding and wanting to look at things and i just feel terrible inside not been able to enjoy this with her as i just keep worrying about what i have done! Luckily i think ive stopped just in time to just be able to pay for everything but will put is in a very tight spot for the next 10 months which kills me as it will mean not been able to treat me little boy as and when we feel like!
I really hope you manage to get everything sorted Damo and best of luck!
Heart breaking story fella, and your in good (we arent bad people) company. Lots of great support and advice on here.
Can i just make an observation you seem to be in that awkward place of still believing you can stop and its not quite too late to do so, but if you are serious about keeping this relationship, and making the best life for your son and wife well you better get serious about whats required.
Someone in the earliest part of my recovery made a great analogy about addiction/compulsion being like being on a speeding train, and that train goes flying past our stop and we dont manage to get off. (not getting off is denial and relapsing), eventually and sometimes it takes a lot of hardship to get to this point,but we eventually choose to get off the train (this is commencing recovery and leaving denial behind), now we have to make it back to our stop. We are only allowed to walk back, no trains head that way. So recovery is a long long and slow journey undertaken on foot, and how far we let it go before getting off the train really really counts too.
GET OFF THE TRAIN .. we can walk back together I promise !
PS had my first counselling last week, and by the way I stayed on the train for 30 years... It was pretty d**n good.
thanks for taking the time to comment.
Im hoping i have got off the stop for good and i am more than motivated to make the long walk back! Day one is going good so far, all accounts self excluded myself so its a start! One day at a time some people say!
I sortve know how you feel george, I have a young son and 2nd on the way, got a 2k loan out last week to pay up little bits and pieces and help buy some bits, that was the plan...
haven't bought no bits, only paid half of the list off, and Mr Bookie has the rest, the missus knows about the loan, but thats it,
Can I maybe offer some thought on telling your partner, (as horrible as it is doing it) I would bite the bullet and just let it out, you told her once, she didnt run away...that way you only have the addiction to deal with, not the added stress of secrecy and fighting alone...no war was won with one soldier mate.
Hope that makes sense, find myself rambling on!
I thought i would come back and comment on this diary as i kind of forgot about it in my mission to overcome this addiction. I would like to say as of next thursday i will have reached the 1 year mark. To catch you all up i did tell my partner after a couple of weeks of been scared. For a couple of days she absoloutely hated my guts, and for a few months was very upset and didnt trust me, but after a lot of hard work and gambling counselling (last session next week) she started to trust me more and more. I also told my parents so they could also help (i work for my dads company). We changed all our bank accounts around and made my wife in charge of any spare money etc. Blocked all sites on all devices, wife keeps all cards at all times.
Strangely enough i didn't end up needing any of these things, since last year i have not once even attempted to gamble. I had a major test on holiday for our wedding, all the lads went out for football and they all were doing accumulators between them etc not knowing about my past except my dad and my partners dad. Luckily it didn't once entice me and they didn't try to pressure me either.
As you can now tell, the wedding went ahead. Perfect day and perfect holiday, financials are back under control and saving pot starting to rise once more albeit very slowly. We are even now planning for another baby soon. I honestly couldn't have done it without my partner and my parents but the thought of losing my wife and our little boy scared me in to finally changing and i couldn't thank them enough for sticking by me. Even though it's only being a year i can tell by the feelings inside that it is all behind me and it does not interest me in the slightest any more. The difference in my mood has been dramatic, family members who knew about the situation commented on how i have changed and can see how much more happy i am now, after a fantastic year i know i am on the right track and will be staying on it for the rest of my life!
Im hoping anybody reading this will take motivation and hope that it is possible and it can get better!
Stay Strong.
Awe well done hun your doing amazing . My anniversary of being gamble free a year isnt till april 20th an im still taking it a day at a time but im proud of how far ive come. So glad your partner was supportive as well as your parents it really does make a difference having support. Heres to a brighter 2017 xx
Fantastic and uplifting.
Sbb
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