The End.

Hi all,

Well this is me back for the 3rd and lets all hope please the last time. I have been on here twice before under different profiles, but not for a couple of years. I didn't really want to give it up back then, what I called quitting really meant quitting chasing. I still believed I could win. I don't believe anymore.

So this is rock bottom I guess. I have been on so many rollercoasters with this, I have wasted my life doing it. Am have now got 80 in my wallet to last a month and 50k debt. I have lost my good job, most of my friends and alienated my family. Apart from that everythings going ok.

I decided randomly about 25 years ago that I wanted to be a professional punter and stubbornly pursued it ever since. Einsteins definition of insanity is true in my case, I realise now that my mind just doesn't work right.

In that time I had for some years the vestiges of a normal life. Holidays, a career, girlfriends at times (though to lie on a couch and analyse myself the loss of the love of my life and my inability to seemingly form a relationship before or since is probably largely at the root of all of this mad behaviour). But anyways since she left 9 years ago the career went down, women didn't matter, friends didn't matter and if I went on holiday I spent most of the time gambling, free of having work interrupting it.

The last 9 years I will never get back.

And the future is probably marred forever as well. I am deciding between spending 4 years paying back this debt and having no life, or running from the country with the shame that that brings and no job to go to. I am financially and emotionally incapable of forming a relationship and not sure how to spend my moneyless free time without gambling.

Apart from that everythings going well.

It took me a long, long time to realise that I couldn't drag myself back from the crazy behaviour. I used to always think that if I just stop chasing I could still win. In the old days of sports betting I did actually feel that I had some insight, the bookies were genuinely sometimes wrong. But I failed to realise over time that with the exchanges and millions of people all after the same holy grail, I didn't really have any insight anymore. Level stakes kept me level or slightly down and chasing sent me spiralling up and ultimately down to here.

My brain refused to accept losses, it dragged them around nagging me to fix them. I can't fix them anymore.

I don't know how I will deal with where I could have been because there were huge ups...I could have lived out the rest of my days somewhere cheap...but I always wanted more.

So there you have it. To be fair to myself, I do understand why I did it, I do understand what I wanted. I wanted to escape the routine and wanted riches and lifestyle to impress women with, as I couldn't do it myself.

It didn't work and I have to live with spending my life chasing a delusion.

But as bizarre as it seems to take advice from Derek off the telly, he said last night that its never too late. Its all about from now. Sometime I have to find it within me to believe that.

So thanks for listening. I am back and will read some other stories now, but I hope all on here are being strong.

I hope I can be strong too. I have barely slept, so apologies if this is slightly delirious. Its hard going through the withdrawals, I am literally shaking and twitching. And going through the withdrawals with no proper food or no comforts is even worse.

AZ