Gambling Addiction & Recovery Support Group
Compulsive gambling is an urge or addiction to gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. A preferred term among many professionals is problem gambling, as few people described by the term experience true compulsions in the clinical sense of the word. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others rather...
Hey everyone I have not been on here in a while I'm feeling very down right now I went to the casino on New Year's Eve and lost and today I decided to go again to chase the money back and we all know how it ended up I am going to start coming back on here to remember what gambling does I did self ban myself for a while and recently took my name off the list thinking I could control myself any good comments are appreciated
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I believe it is one of the most common delusions we, compulsive gamblers, go through in our journey. Wishing we can gamble normal in early stage of our recovery or believing we can control this while on this journey.... In most cases, the truth is, we cannot gamble normal or nor control our gambling. If we were, we wouldn't have been where we are in the first place.
I know you are feeling very down today in many ways... You are probably thinking of money you lost, regretting the fact that you went back today to chase, the guilt and disappointment etc.... But know this, your peace maybe broken into pieces and your heart maybe in sorrow but this moment forward is still a new day.
The one of the thing I've learned along this journey is that it does not matter how long you have been abstinent from gambling, we cannot recovered.... It's always a recovery... It's a life long journey focus on the moments.
Don't be so hard on yourself, it's your day one again and so does every one of us. Wether we gambled yesterday or not, every day is always the day one on this journey...
Love,
Victoria
Our inner gambler has a very strong denial system. It reminds me somewhat of a family member with paranoid/schizophrenia who does very well as long as he takes his meds. Usually when he has been stable a few months, he decides he is fine and doesn't believe he needs the meds, and will think people trying to get him to take them are trying to poison him. His rather quick downward spiral into complete disassociation eventually lands him in a mental hospital. Where he gets meds, gets stable and the cycle begins again.
I know that my inner gambler will always want to gamble and will tell me things like "just twenty", "no one else will know", "I deserve a little break", "One little bet won't hurt", "one hour of gambling won't hurt anything", "you can afford it", etc, etc I also know that unless I listen to the inner gambler, and answer back that it will make a difference and that a single dollar could trigger the whole nightmare again, etc. the inner gambler will take over. I have to monitor thoughts, and I have noticed in this past year of abstinence that when I do get an urge to gamble, there is some need I have that I have not taken care of. Like stuffing feelings and not talking about them. Like being over tired, hungry, lonely, bored, ready to celebrate, lack of exercise, overwhelmed, or physically sick.
Finding other things to turn to and other ways to take a break, escape, get excitement, forget about the worries, deal with our feelings and care for ourselves and our friends/family in a healthy way will be essential in order to maintain recovery.
Good job on stopping, now you must make a plan of what you will do differently the next time you have an urge.