Welcome to the " Hotel California "

I'm so pleased to hear your good mate and everything's well :)) .

Hark at her above making out she's working hard ( I'm sure you are loxxie ) :)) and I do feel loved ................tissue anyone ? .

Love to you both xx

Battered mars bars and irn bru

Get on it mate

Hugs x

Here he is :))

It's the diet of ledgend's mate , LOL :)) .

Cheers Bal

Hug's right back x :))

Dear Diary :)).

Just making a pot full of curry sauce for the shop LOL and loooking at the old cooking pot I am using took me back years for some reason .

I bought that huge pot when I came into this business of mine just after my dad passed away aged just 47 all the way back in 1981 . I remember thinking as I paid for it at cash n carry's how expensive it was and hoping that it would in time pay for itself and here it still is 38 yrs later looking just as good as it did all those years ago , I believe it's more than earnt it's keep .

The reason I thought how expensive it was at the time was that even way back then I gambled , so I guess even then It was about justifying buying something instead of using my funds to gamble ? .

I look back further and wonder if I ever had any chance of not gambling really ? , I know someone who's father or mother commit a murder or robbery or some other act doesn't determine or shape who they become and I'm not looking to lay blame at the feet of anyone other than myself but even at an early age I was surrounded by gambling , it was just the norm .

Don't get me wrong I look back on my upbringing as wonderfull , equally my relationship with my mum and dad was great but I was surrounded by gambler's of all shapes , ages and sizes .

My grandparent's who looked after me while my parent's worked both gambled and I remember as a youngster being given piles of neatly cut paper and betting slips to draw on , even the pencil's came from the local bookies which was coveniently owned by my uncle who was married to my mum's sister . We lived on a small parade of local shops where my grandparents owned the fruit and veg shop and my parent's bought what was a butchers next door and converted it back into a house ,my uncles bookies was a few doors away .

I thought when I first came here that addiction was something that had crept up on me in the last few years particularly with the introduction of the Fobt machines and felt that up until that point felt reasonably in control but since clarity has returned I realise that I was already addicted at an early age .

Living in a seaside town there were many arcades on the pier and at the funfair along the seafront I remember fondly being taken there by my gran who would shower me with pennys to play the slot games and then when those ran out she'd drag me along to play her favourite game of bingo .

I soon got the hang of this too , a line across , a line down or any four corners it was simple childs play if you like and to top it all prizes too , the more wins the bigger the prize so why wouldn't you keep playing as it was a kid in a candy shop under a different guise where the rewards were huge in the eyes of a child ? .

As I got older and the long summer holiday's were upon me I'd venture down there either on my own or with my cousins, after pestering my nan for coinage then onto mum who didn't know nan had already given me sum .......... perhaps the lies and deceit began earlier than I thought in order to fund my gambling ? .

My cousins were quite boring ( so I thought ) as they never really got the whole playing the slots thing and all they wanted to do was to use their money for rides ? ( no money in that I thought ) .

In my teen's I'd visit our local dog track which was no more than a ten minute walk from my home , with it's bright lights noisey crowd's and the smell of hotdogs or scampi and chicken in the basket wafting in the air ( what a menu ).

We'd wait till after half eight though as we'd get in for nothing ( not silly was I ? ) I'd be straight in the bar playing the fruties for £ 5 jackpot's and be picking dog's out for the rest of the evening , I look back now and think " How was that ever normal for a boy of my age " ? , it wasn't just me though as a few mates tagged along , it's funny but two of them ended up working for bookmakers and both are managers now with huge gambling problems of their own .

This of course all happened in an age where nobody batted an eyelid , they didn't care that teenage boy's were gambling nor that they were in the bar, just that they kept feeding money in the machines all night .

I Progressed further as I finally became old enough to enter my uncles betting shop , of course I'd been ther many times before at a younger age but was usually pushed aside to the corner of the shop where nobody could see me through the shopglass as I waited for nan to put her bets on for the day, I could barely see her someday's because of the thick fog of cigi smoke being blown out from all the punters ( everyone in there smoked and everyone chewed the end's off of the pens ) and at the end of every race the pens would be flying through the air either in delight at winning or disgust at being effing robbed was a sentence I soon learnt :)) .

This place was a new world to me coming of age as it allowed a much wider scope for my increasing habit but little did I know just how much it would spiral out of control .

My passion at first was the Horses , particularly handicaps and I spend hours pouring over form to pick out the best weighted and had some success with my method's , of course as there were only a couple of meetings a day back then I needed to keep getting my dopamine fix on a faster basis and turned my attention to dog's which I new quite a lot about already and as there were 2 or 3 dog meetings a day that began to fill the void inbetween the GG's .

I spent more and more and longer and longer in there but looked on that as a social thing too as my uncle owned it and I saw it as a family get together ( funny how the mind works to keep you in addiction ) , this was after my dad had passed so I'm not sure if it was to escape from the pain of losing him at such an early stage in my life or maybe that's just another cop out my gambling mind planted to justify myself ? .

I was alway's asking mum to lend me a ten or twenty quid for the next sure thing and would always pay it back when I did win , the trouble was I didn't always and most weeks it was asked for again the day after it was repaid , mum would try her best to discourage me but having been quite a gambler in her time new how i felt and the hold it had over me , I guess she did enable me to gamble but having love for her son thought that it was probably better to " Loan " me rather than me move up a gear and start stealing , I found out much later on in life that her habit had been quite bad a one point where she owed my uncle a fair bit of money and it caused her to have a breakdown , dad found out and repaid my uncle in full with the assurance that he wouldn't let her have any credit from that point on and from that day dad kept control of the cash and mum didn't gamble again ......... at least until he passed and then only on a small basis ...... tough to write with honesty sometimes and I did love them both so much and really still miss them dearly xx .................... At a point where the tears are starting to flow now so I'll finish this another time diary xx.

Thanks for posting on my diary! I’m definitely a northern lass 🙂

Your days gf and your posts are most certainly inspirational.

Sarah

A9,

First of all, thank you for posting on my diary.

Secondly, I’ve just read your last post which is very powerful. You have indeed been surrounded by gambling your whole life. In all honesty, I have never thought about the impact on a CG that a childhood surrounded by gambling could bring. My parents never gambled. I didn’t gamble until my 20s.

I will read through your diary later tonight. Take care.

Tomso

Hey ALN .

I totally agree in what your saying " Once an addict , always an addict " and I don't believe I said anything to the contrary?.

Amongst a few there's definatley a Hierarchy on here and I'm sure I said as much on my first diary some years ago but which sadly I sent to the great gamcare graveyard in the sky :((.

For me it's always been just a few that bang the big drum screaming " There's no other way than mine " which in my opinion is plain wrong , we all have choices and if those choices turn out to be wrong and come back to bite us in the @r*e then so be it we look for different approach and something new that we hope will work this time .

Sometimes it takes people a few goes to see what works , they don't feel ready for total abstinance or soul searching so who are we to constantly foister our own opinions on them when ultimately the way the choose to manage their lives is down to them ?.

The comment you left when answering Day@atime's post yesterday saying " I'm going to have to think about whether 1 in ten newbies getting it is worth me continuing " ? , Do you know how that came accross ?? , Arrogance my friend but thank god your here ehh ?.

I'm not going to comment again on this ALN as clearly you have your way of handling your recovery and I mine , as long as we remain gamble free we'll both I'm sure be just fine .

I wish you well .

Alan

Love the post Alan #49

Reminds me of my own up bringing in many ways.

Gambling for me started when I was 10 maybe 11 every weekend playing cards with my aunts and uncles. I learned pretty quick that most were cheats, so I would wait until they were all drunk and the cheat myself lol my old man would always buy me in, and most of the time I’d win, I learned everyone had a tell and I could be balls’y as it wasn’t my money. I always gave it back to them though in a form of gifts from the shop. As I got older my grandad would always give me slips for him to put on in the bookies, I wasn’t even interested to much in gambling at this point and only ever walked in and out with his bets. Then my old man would get me to put his National bet on and his lottery. I guess in a way gambling was normalised to us as youngsters? I never did bring cards into my addiction. In a way I didn’t want to ruin the memories. Anyway it’s nice to see you back writing. I did miss your posts around the forum.

Still can’t believe you aren’t selling battered chips though.

Hi Alan, I echo what Tomso & Jason have said. Post #49 in your diary was very powerful and I hope everyone that comes on to the forums regularly will read it. Thank you for continuing to come on to Gamcare and sharing your experiences with everyone. They're very much appreciated. All the best.

Jason me old mucker :)) .

Cheers for the post buddy much appreciated , I miss you around here as well and your post's and think you should look at some vacant houses being homeless and all , Loxxie would be made up too :)) .

You made me think again when you brought up card's as I completely forgoten about those tbh , I'd play card's with the family for odd change at a young age as well but they'd let me win quite often which thinking about it wasn't the best idea really as Iv'e probably gone through life with that idea in mind :(( .

I'm finding writing thing's down of late very cathartic and it's something I've not tried before really , it does stir some emotion though at times as at the end of the last post is testiment to , blubbing like a baby toward the end but the puffyness has gone down now so maybe a little more will flow as soon as time allows :)). And Keep your Battered Chips where they belong :)) Good to hear from you mate xx

Martin , many thank's for popping over and your kind comment's , I'd looked for some reference as to how thing's are going with you but could only find a thread for 2015 ? apologies if Iv'e missed something but would be interested to know how life's panning out ? .

ALN .:)) . It's nice to know that I'm not the only one with a corrupted childhood if that's what you mean ? .and am all ear's if and when you want to share :)) .

I'm actually glad your still talking to me as well after the last few post but be assured it was more a personal observation than an attack :)) .

Thanks for the post's guy's and talk to you all soon x

Dear diary ,

Feeling very tired today, little sleep last night after the evenings events on here didn't leave me feeling great .

It's not the first time I've lacked the ability to sleep after something kicked off on the forum and indeed I've been the cause or instigator of such events my self in the past which looking back gives me no pleasure at all .

I can't change that as much as I'd like to but would like to believe I'd learned from it at least but then once again I find myself jumping right in with both feet .

This time around it feels so different , why ? because I'm not the angry bloke who turned up here 3 yrs ago seeking protection and looking for someone to stick a big plaster on my huge wound of a life , nor do I think that having a couple of hundred day's under my belt gamble free gives me the right to dictate how others choose to look at recovery as I don't see how that can ever be looked apon as unconditional support.

I understand whole heartedly how angry I was when I arrived here , looking for someone or something to blame draws the attention away from it being you .

When first here I still wanted that kick that gambling so happilly supplied to me and I guess being in someone's corner to fight a cause gave me that buzz .

It's taken 3 yrs of living a non gambling life for me to reach a point where I'm truly happy with my lot , I no longer feel the need to be here on the forum but it will alway's hold a place in my heart because it saved me from my own personal hell and it has helped me to understand that we are all strange creatures with different ideas and that however we may feel personally about the progress of others who are on the same journey , what right do I have to judge anyone based on my past life or even my new one that's in it's infancy .

I've just said to another poster that " Tommorow will be better " I'm sure it will .

Yep I was angry ALN and I shouldn't have been really , don't think I had a dig though tbh , just that I didn't feel you had had the right to keep questioning those that chose to gamble in a controlled manner and then to a point where they felt they needed to leave the forum .

As I've said I'm guilty of those very same actions in my early day's but hopefully have learn't my lesson and have little more empathy for those that follow a different route , obviously with your's there are a stringent set of rules which dictate what you must do , that probably explains a lot to me as I've never been great with a set of rules :)) .

The strange thing is I'm actually with you on the Gambling / No gambling debate and have already stated that I cannot gamble at all but that being said if I could control it I would and continue doing the thing's that caused me no problem in the past .

I think now it's time for me to take my leave again and join those that left the forum yesterday , my recovery's going well and that's all I need to focus on .

I'm sure I'll be back at some point but until then I wish you well .

A9 (Alan) - Alan from when I first started using the forum? Best wishes, Phil.

Aln :)).

I don't feel I made reference to you as a newbie ? so apologies if that was the way it came accross as I know you have a fair bit of gamble free time under your belt .

You said that people speaking of " Controlled gambling " impacted on your thought process and that's why you challenged them ? , well it's the same for me as it impacted on my thought process ( well got on my nerves if I'm honest ) the way you were so infatuated about it .

Also please don't think that your the reason I'm leaving as it's far more about my well being than anything else these day's and as numerous now defunked diary's will testify I tend to come and go on a whim , indeed if I feel the need to post tommorow or next month then I will as it's always a place can dump my feeling's on .

I'm fortunate that these day's gambling doesn't phase me at all and I can comfortably watch a sporting event and I'm talking anything without the need to gamble upon it , that being said I could never gamble again , as a result I don't need to be here to control those feelings which is a testiment to how far I've come as in the early day's I was like as Tasmanien devil on here as I responded to every post I could :)) .

Once again Please don't think this is because of the past few day's as I could have just stayed and carried on ranting , I've been gifted the ability to make choices these day's in every aspect of my life , something that gambling always took from me in the past .

Today I choose to walk for a while withy my dog spend time with those I love and get back to earning an honest living :)) .

Talk to you soon my friend and sending you well wishes

Alan

Yes Phil , good to hear from you buddy and hope all's well , actually I know it's all good so Keep up the good work mate .

regard's Alan x