Dear Diary
Today is Day 1 yet again of my recovery from this horrible addiction and saving my life. In the past three days I have lost a lot of money gambling. I should never have entered into that casino 2.5 years back and since then gambling has dominated my life and had I have lost an enormous amount of money, time and energy to this cruel addiction. I am still coming to terms with the loss of my father last year and my mother 4.5 years back. My missus has been a great support for me. Yet time and again I have let her and myself down by continuing to gamble. This addiction is life destroying for me. It is life threatening and I must accept that I do have a serious gambling problem and illness. My missus has gone to her best friend's hen do over the weekend and I will let her enjoy her time. I will confide with her when she comes back and once again hand over my debit card to her. (that I so foolishly took back from her). I am inspired by the ppl here such as Duncs and others. I will follow them as my role model from now on and be humble in the acceptance of my shortcomings and flaws. I realise that honesty, humility and acceptance is critical to my recovery so is handing over the control of my finances to missus. She deserves a better version of me.
O God, Give me the serenty to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Dear Diary
I feel terrible this morning. The money that I lost was really big and it has set me back a lot financially, There are a mix of emotions at the moment. Anger, despair, sadness, bitterness, frustration, dismay, disgust, dejection, hopelessness, fear, shock, I can't come to terms with what has happened at the moment. My bank account is hugely overdrawn. Just three days back it was positive. I feel really down. I should never have gambled. I do not blame the casinos anymore. No point. I have an illness. That is my problem. My flaw. Life so far has been a battle with my flaws and temptations. Maybe I have an addictive personality. Maybe there is something behind these behaviours. Falling from one addiction to another, trying to get to grips with life. I am begining to understand my father a bit more. His addiction to alcohol and smoking. That claimed his life. I stayed away from these. But my nemesis has been gambling and before that a series of other addictions. Gambling has so far been the deadliest. I can see its potential to destroy me rapidly. It already has caused serious damage. And I sm not the only one. I saw many regulars like me at the casino in the grip of this addiction. Some slowly some rapidly destroying their lives. Each one has their own story I guess. Range of thoughts, range of emotions. A mild headache. Feeling a bit gutted. It has been a heavy blow.
The amount of damage that gambling and going to the casinos has done to my life stops here. No matter how much c**P I will have to deal with now, I will never again gamble.
What a strong last part WillDo - we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere and it seems you have done that now. Its hard to come to terms when we have had a binge and lost a lot of money and we get through it in our own way and own time - just remember you cannot win the money back, trying will only make it worse. We cannot win because we cannot stop, and it is true. Keep close to your diary and put any blocks in place to stop you when you get an urge.
Dear diary
Day 2 today. Feel sick and numb thinking about the loss of money. Why did I do it? Was it necessary? How come I lost control? Questions keep popping up. Looking back, I had lost a lot of money frustrated that my gambles are not working out as I wanted them. Increased my stakes taking big risks and lost big money. In the end it turned out that I did not care that I won or lost. I just gambled to deal with despair. Perhaps to show the croupier how unjust the game he was participating in. To express my anger through self destruction. It was a horrible state of mind. My mind was messed up with anger, frustration, despair. Lucky that I did not empty my overdraft completely. Some good sense prevailed to prevent me to do that.
Now I need all the strength to get through the coming week. My missus has been really supportive. Am grateful for that. The loss hurts a lot but with time it will get easier I guess. Gambling is life destroying for me and I will not gamble again no matter what c**P I have to deal with.
Morning at work. Really de-moralising looking at email that I have a tax to be paid due end of June of about 2k. This is just a fraction of the money I lost in 3 days. Feeling a lot frustrated but need to ensure this does not affect work.
Make sure you have barriers in place WillDo so you dont go chasing the losses - we all have the same awful thoughts after we suffer losing money but it cant be won back and we have to let it go. One day at a time, today you win by not gambling!
What a week so far. First I got told that I would be losing my job on 1st April. A contractor's life. Then I have to transitition my stuff to the guy in just 1.5 weeks. Poor and pathetic management. And finally I go to the f*****g casino cunningly tagging my wife along as she has my cards and lose another grand by deviously getting my card from her. I feel so bloody low and down. The only positive is that I realised how the gambling dens are designed to cause me nothing but heavy losses. And how falling into this trap I lost tons of my hard earned money. Almost have run my overdraft dry. Day 0 again. Tightening holes. Clearly identified my krypton here. Recovery starts again.
Hi Will and welcome , my names Alan and I'm a compulsive gambler , I know exactly how you feel right now as 7 months ago I was where you are , my friend it does get better but only if you want it to ?. If youv'e gone back into a casino so quickly then thats saying to me that you haven't let go of what youv'e lost , your still hopeing that you can have one more big win and put everything right , unfortunately it doesn't work like that for us . If by some miracle you were to win you'd think great , thats it all sorted but you know as well as I do that it wouldn't be long until you were gambling again and any winnings would soon be gone just as quickly as they came , as you were warned on an earlier post , CG's cannot win because we cannot stop , you have to stop !.
The minimum you should be doing is handing back control of your finances to your wife , tell her why and self exclude from all of your betting sites , casinos and bookies , nothing changes if you don't change it and thats all down to you !.
Hi Alan
Thank you for your post. Yes you are right. I cannot win because I cannot stop. The change has to come from me. I have to let go. This is incredibly hard but I will have to swallow this bitter pill. I am going through some soul searching at the moment. One thing I am really grateful for is the support of my wife. She knows everything and is still so supportive. I have given her control of my finances and am hoping that my job situation improves soon. I send you my wishes for your recovery too and hope that we are in touch in our challenge to overcome this deadly addiction.
Hi there bud I've copied a post admin put on one of my post where you can exclude from all uk casinos in one go. I thought you might find this useful.
Thanks to you both for highlighting your experience of these recently developed schemes for self-exclusion; I thought I would bump up your thread so it continues to get attention.
Here is a link to information leaflet about SENSE, the scheme for self-exclusion from participating casinos :
http://www.nationalcasinoforum.co.uk/playingsafe/wp-content/uploads/2015...
Here is a link to the scheme for self-exclusion from bookmakers 0800 294 2060:
I will keep reading the below for inspiration to never ever gamble again.
Hi Russ , All the above posts give great advice my friend , It's only been a couple of day's so your still gonna feel a bit raw and the losses will seem all to fresh . I've gambled for about 35 years up until 4 months ago ,so you can imagine in that time just how much money I must have chucked away ! . It is a scary thought but in time the thought of past losses will fade but you have to let it go otherwise it will drive you back to gambling hoping that you will get it all back but you and I both know that doesn't happen and you'll end up deeper in debt than you are now .
Give it a bit of time and space Russ and the fog will start to clear, you'll begin to think a bit more rationally and see gambling for what it really is , problems won't dissappear overnight anmd there's work to be done but you won't be adding to your problems by still gambling .
Acceptance of who we are and what weve done are key to our recovery , one mistake doesn't make us bad people Russ its just part of the bigger picture of life for us , be kind to yourself and forgive yourself and enjoy the fact that youv'e now stopped gambling !
I wish you could feel how I feel right now after 4 short months in recovery , its changed my life so much , no constant up and down's that we all get ,not waking in the morning and having gambling the first though that enters my head or thinking about the damage I'd done the day before !
Life's great mate and it will be for you again , just take one day at a time and enjoy the journey of recovery !
Take care buddy !
Alan
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