My gambling addiction started in 2016. It started as a simple bet on roulette and then each time the bets would increase until I was practically using my whole income to gamble. I would mainly play blackjack and roulette and then logic kicked in and realized they were losing games because of the house advantage. Because of this I turned to online poker, after doing a lot of research I figured that it was a game of skill and I was playing against other real people so there was no house advantage. The truth is, I was wrong. An addiction doesn't care how good you are at poker, it doesn't care how much money you have. There is always a way to lose everything and with an addiction, you're never satisfied, you always feel the urge to up the stakes to win bigger and that's when it gets you.
After a year of convincing myself that I will eventually be a winning player I realised I had spent £10,000 that I will never get back from winning so it was pointless trying. I was £3,000 in debt on top of the £10,000 I lost and that was mainly due to using credit cards to play. The breakthrough was when gamstop launched in the spring. I finally made the plunge to quit cold turkey and it's rally effective!
I have been gamble free for about 3 months now and this morning I paid off the last of my debts which will give me an extra £200 a month that I can spend on other activities such as going to the gym, cinemas, drinks with friends etc.
I cannot wait to see myself in a years time when I'm more financially stable but I just wanted to let you know that you can beat this addiction, it takes a lot of strength and will power but you can do it!
Hello sirjammy,
Thanks for sharing your inspiring success story with the forum.
You've described how you've learned from your difficult experiences of getting caught in chasing when you were in the midst of your gambling problem. You tried changing the type of gambling you did, but you found that your tendency to chase was still within you, and emerged again in how you gambled. You've outlined how your way of thinking about gambling became more realistic and based on the evidence of your experience, rather than creations from your imagination. You were able to let go of the false hopes of problem gambling, and now you can enjoy more realistic hopes with recovery, as you achieve improvements to your finances by remaining gambling-free.
You've also pointed out that using GamStop to self-exclude from your online accounts was a turning point for you. Perhaps other forum members will look at Gamstop too having read about your experience with it.
https://www.gamstop.co.uk/contact-us
Well done on the work you put into becoming gambling-free and debt-free.
Take care,
Forum admin.
Hello sirjammy,
Thank for this post! Can i copy them 😀
Brilliant news.
This is the reason i have joined today, as i want to have success stories jusy like yours, i have been stuck in a rut for 3 years now and i want to change, start new hobby’s etc, as i find myself at home a lot due to my unsociable working hours, any tips on how to stop being bored and gambling my life away?
Hi Sydney davis,
Well done for recognising you could do with some more support and advice and joining the forums. You might find if you post over in the "overcoming problem gambling" section you'll get more responses to your request for advice as it's a section of the forum that gets more traffic and feedback from forum users. Perhaps start a thread of your own?
Kind regards
Forum Admin
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