Today I change my life

Brum don't want to scare you but I wish I only had your level of debt. If you don't get a grip of this you could end up in terrible debt with everthing crumbling away! I wish you strength in your battle x

Brum,

Try not to focus on your debt to much. If you don't gamble it will take care of it's self. Whether folk are 500k in dept or 500p is irrelevant & the severity of someone's addiction should never be measured by how much they have lost. My experience has taught me compulsive gamblers will wager what ever they can get their hands on & so obviously this will be very different from addict to addict. Concentrate on getting well. Seek out all the help available to you. Embrace change

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Thanks for the comments. My debt was around double what it is now. Miraculously I managed to win back enough to almost clear everything before being stupid enough to keep gambling again to end up at this point. I know that if I don't stop I will end up back where I was and probably much worse which is why I'm here now.

I know that the debt will take care of itself if I can stay away from the slots but I do think it will help me personally to post the figures and see them coming down.

Also if I post my figures on here then people will know if I've been gambling because the figures will go up. I'm determined not to let that happen. Having a target motivates me.

We cannot win because we cannot stop...Until you draw a line under your losses, the temptation to halve them again will be knocking on your door!

What is the point of having blocking software on one device but not on others that you can use? You can't leave doors open, addiction will sneak through the tiniest gap...If your phone doesn't support blocking software, downgrade it or downgrade your bank account. You have to do whatever it takes to keep you safely in recovery, a gambling parent is a very unhealthy environment for a baby (I know)!

You can do this - ODAAT

Making it more difficult for myself to gamble is only part of it. I have to have some level of self control as well. It is ok saying downgrade my phone etc but I would still be able to walk in to a casino or bookies. Yes I have tried to make it as difficult for myself as possible but without that willpower it would all be pointless anyway.

I believe that I now have the willpower and motivation to succeed. Time will tell if I'm right.

Indeed the barriers are only a very small part of recovery but there is nothing wrong with keeping them sky high until your recovery stabilises. I apologise I have not read through your other threads but the 1st line of this one says you are struggling! I spent too many years to count promising myself that I had thrown my last penny away & I meant every word of it when I told myself it...but the minute I had money & time (gambling triangle was intact) again I was straight back on it! I am one of the lucky ones, I could never get to grips with online stuff (tried & failed thankfully) but I am excluded from so many shops, I can't remember which ones anymore! Willpower is only 1 component of recovery but I'll tell you this for free, if I can do it, anyone can...Don't be afraid to reach out for help from anywhere! This addiction is a killer & you must fight with all your might to figure out how to live alongside it without it ruling your life because you will have a baby depending on you soon!

Thanks. I probably do need to hear this stuff to keep me on track. Today is day 2. I'm finding that coming on here and reading the posts and threads helps me when even the tiniest thought of gambling enters my head. Hopefully it can become my natural reaction to come on here instead of trying to log on to another new website.

I spent yesterday afternoon building the pram for the new baby after it arrived. This kept me occupied for a couple of hours. It is also nice to be able to sit and watch tv with my wife properly instead of clicking the spin button every 3 seconds and losing track of what is going on in the tv program.

The thing that I find most difficult to get my head around is the fact that I don't even enjoy these games. I guess I have been doing it for so long that it just seems like the natural thing to do. Well, not anymore. Day 2 will be gamble free. I'll update again later.

Just cut up my last remaining credit card which I had decided to keep for emergencies. It had quite a high credit limit so I decided that it wasn't worth the risk of keeping it. I had previously maxed out this card to £4600 and I have managed to get this down to around £700. At least now that is almost £4000 that I do not have access to and am unable to gamble away. Bit by bit I am feeling more confident in my own ability to beat this horrible disease.

The £1000 that I was waiting to hit my bank account was a withdrawal from the site that I was using most recently. This has now hit my account and I have used every penny of it towards paying off the 2 credit cards that I had started to run up again.

My total debt should now be £4217.59 although I'm not totally sure that one of the cards has updated all the pending transactions yet so I will have to confirm this later. Although it isn't quite the same hit that I was getting from playing the slots it does definitely feel good to see my debt figure coming down. As I have destroyed the credit cards there is currently no possibility of these debts going back up so things are currently looking good.

I have not really had the urge to gamble today and even if I had it would have been very difficult for me to do so.

I can do this!

So, this morning has been very stressful. I work from home and run my own business which is partly how I have had so much time to spend gambling in the first place. I am starting to realise that the stress that is sometimes involved with my work is a big trigger for my gambling addiction.

However, although I could relapse right now I am not going to. I decided to come on here and jot down my thoughts instead. I guess the first few days are the most difficult but today is day 3 and that is further than I have got on my last couple of attempts. The changes I have made recently such as destroying credit cards should help me abstain in my moments of weakness.

Just got to take some deep breaths and get on with it I guess.

Did you ever just have one of those days? Today has definitely been one of them for me, one thing after another going wrong. I actually think that somebody somewhere was looking out for me today though. I had already had a rough morning and then I went to buy some lunch and my debit card was declined. I checked my online banking to see that there were funds in my account but also that there were 10 transactions for £0.00 from a company that I have never heard of. I called the bank and they told me that it appeared my card details had been compromised and that it was lucky I caught it before any proper payments were taken. As a result they had to cancel my debit card and are sending me a new one.

Now for anybody else this would be a real pain but to be honest after the day I have had I think there would have been a real risk that I may have tried to gamble away the funds in my current account. I now can't do this because they have cancelled my card so it really was a blessing in disguise.

On the plus side if I have managed to get through today without gambling then I am definitely making progress because in the past I certainly would have gambled when work was stressing me out.

Hi Brum,

Sounds like you have had quite a day lol, stuff can feel magnified in the first few weeks, that is why taking deep breaths and one day at a time with everything, is the slow but sure way to move forwards.

Well done on not gambling today, under stress, but would you have done if you had not cancelled your card my friend,?? guardian angel indeed lol, with those 0 transactions, but you have not broken the triangle by choice,

There might not be someone around next time, and unless you put every barrier up (no immediate access to funds) your recovery may not be strong enough, this addiction is too strong Brum,

Suzanne xx

Unfortunately due to my business I do have to have a debit card so I can't really do anything about that. However, there are never really huge amounts of money in that account and all bills etc come out of it. Up until this point I have never gambled away money from my current account that was due for bills and hopefully it will stay that way.

Hopefully I won't ever prove you right. Day 3 is coming to an end and I'm not giving up giving up.

Hey Brum,

I hope you never do what I have suggested could happen, this addiction does not care care where it gets it fix from.

Well done again on a tough day,

Suzanne xxx