First post here ?
Today marks 70 days gamble free. Urges are rare and I feel able to overcome them when they arise but i have days where the crushing reality of what I’ve done hits hard.
My addiction happened very suddenly, within one week of gambling for the first time I was doing it every day. I had been incredibly poor for a while, depressed and had way too much free time on my hands. When I had my first big win I started believing I could make money this way. I was already in some debt but took out more loans and credit to keep gambling, inevitably chasing the losses.
I completely lost who I was to gambling. I felt like I was being possessed and another part of me was watching myself gamble from the outside and being unable to do anything to stop it. Feeling so out of control was one of the most terrifying things to endure and very hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. I felt so much shame and fear of being judged by the people in my life.
Told my partner after the first really huge loss and thought that would be it but within days I was gambling again. It wasn’t until I was completely honest with him and my friends about the extent of my problem and the debt I was in that I finally sought help. I am very grateful and fortunate that he stuck with me and supported my journey.
I tried GA but after a bad experience there I was too afraid to go back and started gambling again but eventually I found gamcare which helped me turn a corner and understand why I was gambling and how I could overcome it.
In the early days I used video games to get that dopamine fix my brain was craving, mainly survival games as they had no connection to money and gave me a sense of reward. I took myself for regular walks to get out the house and tried to alter my daily routine as much as I could to break out the old gambling routines. I go to regular therapy and I finally got a diagnosis for ADHD which I have been waiting on a long time and helped me understand why my brain works the way it does and how that went hand in hand with compulsive tendencies.
I still have days where I don’t want to get out of bed and everything feels completely hopeless. I run a small business and my income fluctuates but most months I have nothing left after paying for my bills and debts. I often work solidly for weeks at a time with no weekends off and it still feels like I’m making no progress but I try to take it one day at a time and remind myself this is temporary.
This week after a weekend in a deep depression I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and start being more proactive. Selling things to pay off more debt, looking at moving to cheaper accommodation and planning to set up an online shop to sell some artwork. It’s still a long road for me but I finally have some belief that I can do it.
Anyway thank you if you read all this. Reading others success stories has been inspiring. I’ve struggled with other addictions before as well as PTSD and a generally painful upbringing but gambling has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever overcome. I wish the best of luck to everyone on their recovery journey and to those still struggling under the weight of this addiction. I hope to be more active on the forum going forward and stay permanently free of this awful addiction.
❤️
Good Evening Lorna,
Thank you for joining the GamCare Forum and for sharing your journey with us. Congratulations on your 70 days! It is pleasing to hear that Gamcare has been helpful on your recovery journey but more importantly that you feel that you are in a better place.
It sounds like you have a good support system around you and have taken some positive steps to overcome and work on the issues that you have faced.
You mentioned that your urges are rare, is there anything that you can share that has been particularly helpful managing this?
Please do continue to post and share.
All the best,
Ricki
Forum Admin
@forum-admin thank you very much ? A few things have been key in managing urges for me:
1. Blocking access to money I think is essential as even though it’s hard to self exclude from certain online casinos if you don’t have the money you can’t gamble. Of course people find a way when you really want to but not having instant access allows you a moment to reconsider when urges arise and make a better choice.
2. Fun easy distractions I could throw myself into when urges arise - as well as video games on consoles I kept a couple simple games on my phone that I could quickly open up instead of gambling. I think with that one it’s just important to have a game that doesn’t relate to money. I think video games can activate the same rewards centre as gambling so gives you some of the dopamine you’re craving to help ride out the urge.
3. I tried every day to drill the motto into my head that ‘winning is a path to losing’ to remind myself that even when I had wins in gambling pretty much 99% of the time I would gamble all those winnings away. So you lose either way. Once that sunk in it was easier to resist the urges.
It probably varies based on how long you’ve been gambling for but for me I was finding it easier even after one week (after gambling every single day for a long time) to ride out urges and within a few weeks I started to feel so free realising I had some control back again. That feeling motivated me to keep going.
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