Trying again

Well done Burko26 takes great strength to keep trying and you will surpass a month again, believe in yourself and keep posting

Wilsy

Thanks Wilsy. I appreciate that. Good luck to you too

Difficult today with so much sport on, but so far so good.

I made it to day two. Today is day three

Nice one buddy

I got through day three.

Onto today, Monday, for day four.

I have been listening to Russell Brand's audio book on addiction this weekend. Just got to the end of chapter one and am about to start on the exercises. There are 15 questions he asks, I am working on the first four at the moment:

1. What do I want to change? (He asks this as his book is a general addiction therapy book)
2. What pain or fear do I associate with gambling?
3. What pleasure am i getting out of gambling?
4. What will it cost me if this does not change?

Hi Burko,

well done on getting through the weekend and onto day 4 buddy nice and easy does it. You sound in a decent head space and determined, well done on starting Russell Brand's Audio Book, I wish I could apply myself in the same way.

Have a good day, keep posting, I look forward to posting each morning, it sets me up for the day.

Wilsy

I was at counselling last night. I am lucky, my work pays for BUPA care and as a result I am able to attend one to one counselling sessions. They are obviously tailored to me, but I can try to share what I am learning and what I am doing.

The first thing she advised me to do is to give yourself every possible chance of removing temptation. Will power alone for me is not enough. I cannot stop on my own and even when I am gambling, I do not know when to stop. When I am ahead, I keep going, when I am behind, I keep trying to get back level. I can look back at blackjack hands and picture the hands I was dealt and feel the exasperation as I doubled stakes to try to get back to a point where I was near to level, only to get another 16 against a king.

I am powerless to stop myself when I start. So I try not to start.

My bank cards stay home. I have my pocket money.

I have excluded myself from online accounts and I set my computer wallpaper to a photo of my family. This is a reminder of everything I will lose if I carry on as I am doing.

I get the urge to gamble. It is like a woodpecker tapping its beak against my skull. “Gamble, gamble, just one hand, just £50, you might win”. I get the urge a lot. I have to do everything I can to shift my thoughts away from the urge to gamble and onto something else. Something healthy.

My counsellor asked me to picture my funeral. Not a pleasant thought. She asked me what I WOULD LIKE my parents to say, my wife to say, my best friend and my children. I broke down in tears. It was then that it hit me. I left that counselling session and bounced off traffic lights and railings on my way home. I was in a daze.

The idea of the funeral exercise was to identify WHAT I wanted people to think of me and compare that to what I think of myself. If what I think and what I want are different then I need to do everything I can to move myself along that path.

Gambling to me is an escape. It is an escape from a cyclical pattern of pain, leading to temporary happiness, leading to consequences which ultimately lead to more pain. And then we start again.

Identifying the pain is important. I have not got there yet. I have a history of depression but we are working through what caused that.

Without getting too spiritual and going off topic, one belief I have is that my angst and hence my pain comes from never really having a plan about life. I fell into a career, I did A levels because they naturally followed GCSEs. I went to uni because that followed A Levels. My degree was in a subject that I could get a job in, not in a subject I had a passion for. All my life I have bumbled from one thing to the next without ever stopping to ask “where am I going and what am I doing”.

I like writing and drawing. My counsellor suggests I use this forum as an outlet for these interests. I’ve written this on the train from Teddington to Clapham Junction. I have only thought about gambling 8 or 9 times in this 20 minutes.

Stopping gambling is a long, long road. But at least I have started on that journey.

As I left the house this morning and walked to the station, I thought of two things.

1. Today is my parent's wedding anniversary. My dad died 13 years ago, but my mum is still going strong. She did not see the point in keeping her money until she died, then passing it on to my brother and me, so she gave us a chunk of our ineritance early. I gambled my portion of it away. My parents did not work tirelessly to earn that money for me to squander. I am not going to gamble today.
2. I actually looked up as i walked to the station, not down at the ground, or at my phone. I saw blossom on trees. It reminded me of the Nina Simone song, "Feeling Good".

Birds flying high,
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Reeds driftin' on by You know how I feel
It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good

I am not going to gamble today.

Thanks for your support Burko and you've written a great post this morning, a great song and do keep those thoughts close, it'll help remind you of what gambling has taken away, now you have decided to take your life back by not gambling.

Well done mate!

Wilsy

When my eldest son was 3, my youngest was 6 months old and was suffering a lot from sleep issues. On my eldest son’s 3rd birthday, during his birthday party, the littlest fella was tired, but would not sleep. I put him in his pushchair and took him for a walk. He nodded off after a few minutes and I thought that I’d just check he was getting into deeper sleep before I took him back home and joined in the chaos of a child’s third birthday. I sat on a bench and rocked the pushchair back and forth. i checked my phone and that is when I saw the App icon.

Despite everything I have written above, I have just gambled well over £1000 in the first 90 minutes of my working day. I have lost it all. I am pig sick. Right now, I have bypassed the "consequences" part of the cycle and gone straight to the pain. I hate myself. I dare not look at my bank balance. I do not have a £1,000 to lose. What the f**k am I doing?

I am back to square one, well, i'm further back than square one as I have lost a grand. 2 days clean, two days. That is pathetic. Is that all i can manage? I am hurting right now. I cannot concentrate on work, all I am thinking about is the money I have lost and the deceit of my gambling. My head is f****d. I cannot think about anything but gambling.