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...
It's been 2 years since my last post...and my gambling addiction is just as fierce and out of control. I'm back to 2 months behind on my mortgage, electric and gas..credit cards, pretty much everything. I am out of control no matter what I win it just goes all back. I have tried ga, therapy and can go for a few months and start up again. I feel so defeated like there is no way out. After a binge I hate myself and gambling but a few days or weeks away and my mind starts telling me how exciting it is and I'm back to it again. It's a horrible cycle. I feel so desperate...like I have no control over myself.
It was not my first attempt at quitting - my gambling lasted from my 20s to my 60s with the last 20 years of that being more and more out of control. I had in the past, wanted counselors to "cure" me, preferably with the "magic wand" method that requires very little work from me.
This time the counselor got across to me that they never do more work than the person seeking help. No one can do it for you and I think we must ultimately decide to do it out of self-love. That took about a six months of abstinence to forgive myself, and a lot of therapy to actually befriend myself. My last bet was in Nov of 2014 and I do not miss it because:
1. I have rediscovered hobbies and friends
2. My REAL friends are not judgmental about my compulsive gambling, if they are gamblers they do not talk to me about their wins or losses as I have asked them and they do not invite me to go gamble with them. Additionally my REAL friends DO invite me to bike, hike, go to concerts, play Scrabble, go out to lunch, come to my house for lunch or coffee, discuss philosophy, politics, people, the evironment, trade houseplant starts, play pool, play cribbage, go rock hounding with me or share poetry or art with me. There is SO much in the world that gambling robbed me of......life can be sooooo much better.
3. In therapy and GA I found ways to deal with my feelings and triggers to gamble. YOU can too!
You might start by calling the National Problem Gambling HelpLine (1-800-522-4700) they can tell you what resources are available in your area. It is 24/7 as is the national suicide prevention line (1-800-273-8255) Both are numbers I needed and used, in my first few months of withdrawal from gambling.
There are lots of tools available that will work as well as you plan to use them. You can get some pointers by reading past posts going to GA meetings. Find what works for you.
Hugs and prayers.
Do you have a written plan?
Have you written out all your triggers and have a plan to do something else when confronted by them again?
Have you written a heart-felt goodbye to gambling? With reasons why you want to quit including description of the hell it is causing you? (This can then be used as a tool to read when you think gambling is a good idea.)
You need to be willing to be mindful of your every thought so that you can redirect yourself every time you have a thought to gamble BEFORE it becomes an urge.
You will need to:
Deal with Unresolved grief /loss, anger
Resentments
and blockages to loving yourself (toxic relationships with parents, siblings, friends and self)
Take meticulous care of your physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.
In short you will need to do some work to free yourself - Your primary job for the next 90-120 days is to NOT gamble - nothing else matters - you only gain clear thinking after this amount of time to fully get your dopamine/serotonin system normalized.
One day at a time.
How did I get here? Of course, one day at a time. Not all days have been good ones, but they’ve all been better than any day I gambled. Of course.
My path has included the following:
#1 Self Love - I was my worst enemy because I hated myself for so many unreasonable reasons, a scorned perfectionist caught in a vicious cycle of self hatred. Man, that sounds pitiful now.
#2 Self forgiveness - actually more like letting go of past mistakes and deliberate hurts on my part
#Patience - it’s funny that I’ve always had patience for others, especially children and animals, but with myself I didn’t. Today I am so much more patient with myself, time is on my side.
3 things, self love, self forgiveness and patience
My 3 cents for today
The key for me to quit was I was accountable to my wife. You need to find your recovery community and accept that gaming overpowers you. Most of us on here cannot have a healthy relationship to gambling, so we must abstain. Your life will improve so much when you stop gaming. THE FIRST DAY YOU STOP IS THE HARDEST. Find something else to do and just do it without thinking about gaming. Try this: Think about what would be good for me not to bet? Recovery from gaming is fun, you get to think about other activities to try and learn. I also found it important to tell EVERYONE IN MY LIFE THAT I AM NO LONGER GAMBLING. This makes your problem less secretive, which is so important. Free yourself from the trap of addiction.