Don't know where to start. I was gamble free for 19 months and never imagined I could or would relapse.  I have shared ths part of my story before but is important to my whole story.  19 months into my recovery, keep in mind I still played and still play games, cards board etc, just not gamblng games such as poker, dice , blackjack.  Well a friend asked me to play in a eucher game with 7 other people, she lives out of town once a month. it is a non gambling game.  A few days before the game  she mentioned that they put money in a bowl and get prizes in the end. $3.  I said oh I can't do that but she said then we will have to cancel the game it is too late to replace you, I will put the money in the bowl and you can ignore that part. So of course I won the whole tournament and someone stuck a few buck in my hand as a "prize" and just like that iI lost my quit date. I have not been the same since.  this was the beginning of january. I immediatly lost my sense of calm and peace over not gambling. suddenly I wanted to gamble again. I am banned from the casinos in my state so that kept me from going for a while.  but I was buying a few lottery tickect now and then but the urge was always there and I was always agitated.  Well one day someone made me angry and with out a thought in the wourld  I just got in my car and drove to
Canada and then Detroit and lost my whole months social security in a couple of hours.  It has been pretty downhill from there.  I have made the 5 hour round trip over tewnty times and have lost thousands.  Nobody knew.  Everyone in my life basicly ignores me which is another excuse I use for gambling. I can sit 7 hours at a poker table and my phone never rings.  I have won one time in all those trips and usually lose fairly quickly but a few times I have played a long time been pretty far up and stayed until it was all gone.  I am miserabe and unhappy.  My last trip was 7 weeks ago when I wrote a pretty large bad check.  The casino is preditory, in that they let you write big checks without checking to seee if you have the funds and thenall hell breaks loose when you go home broke, with a large check coming out of the  bank and no way to cover it. I actually wrote 6 checks that could be redeposited 3 times with a $30 fee from the bank and the casino. that's 6 times 60 times 3.  I am just recovering from that and have not been back, no money, not for food bills anything just trying  fix this mess. I see a counselor and go to 10 hours of addiction groups and I still want to gamble and have to talk myself out of it daily, or every time I have money I have to make the choice to pay a bill or go to the casino.  it is eating me alive.  So a friend of mine has my debit card to my social security and my checks and we are planning on appointing him as my payee.  So I finally told one person in my life who I knew wouldn't tell and would probably help me. So I am giving up my financial freedom and it won't be easy to get back and he is being kind of domineering as far as I can't just spend what I want or do what I want without his permission. He wants to start saving money for me. Every since I have started gambling i have incurred thousands of unexpected bill, things breaking , which just makes me want to gamble more to get caught up.  There are ways I can get money, a small part time job and a small amount of rent I collect. I need it all but I so much want to gamble.  So today I open my bank account on line and they have added check protect to my account which means they are fronting me a few hundred dollars than I have.  Guess what I want to do with that?  I still have the debit card for that account because I wanted to have a small account with not enough money to gamble with but sill enough to buy a few groceries, get gas etc. and than bam. I have an available balance with hundreds.  it is truly like a monkey on my back, chsing me temping me. I put in roadblock after roadblock  and then one more thing opens up.  And I am still buying a few lottery tickets here and there.  I am a freaking mess. I feel that I will never get better and that eventually I will go to the casino, maybe today.