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...
I can't tell you how often there has been a day one. Day one has happened so often that I cannot count anymore. Today is another day one. I lost so much money that I could have bought a house by now. I am writing because I am hoping that today will be the last day one. I hope that the next time that I go to this site, it will be thirty days, 6 months, a year, etc. I found it very frustrating because I had a perfect plan. I would go back to college, get a job that I was passionate about and kept me busy (away from thinking about gambling). This worked for me and I didn't gamble because I was too busy with the job but then I got fired. That depressed me so I went right back where I started due to depression. Anyway thank you for reading my post. Any support would be greatly appreciated.
we have all been where you are and some still there, it's not a willpower type of thing, your brain is smarter than you and will get you to gamble whether you want to or not, you have to get a plan together to stop you when your brain hijacks you.....please call in and ask for advice/help/plan
or just read and read and see the misery we have and the strides we have made....sti
One of my biggest obstacles was that I had never learned how to deal with, acknowledge and get through my unpleasant feelings. I had spent most of my life avoiding unpleasant feelings and gambling was the perfect feeling deadening agent for me. Sadly, we cannot just deaden the unpleasant feelings the good feelings get deadened as well and we are left an empty shell. Keeping busy is sometimes the same kind of tactic, but we can become a human doing instead of a human being. It was in processing my feelings, feeling them, journaling about them, making art about them, talking about them, that I began to get well. So that now, when times are not good, I will not run to gamble but get out the art supplies, my journal, go to a meeting, or call a friend.
You can still go to school, you were looking for a job when you found that one, you can fight the depression by not giving in to it. It would be a good time to volunteer for your favorite charity a few hours per week, it goes a long way toward making one feel you are doing something worthwhile and it is often impressive to perspective employers, as well as a way to network with others for other paying jobs and friendships with people who care about the same things that you care about.
Try to be kind to yourself in these early days, without setting yourself up for a new addiction, bubble bath, artwork, relaxation tapes, a nutritious food, exercise, good sleep if you can and begin to treat yourself as a good friend who has just gone through a great trauma.
Hugs and prayers.