Black Friday
Black Friday is going to have meaning to me...not anything about shopping, instead it is going to be Black Friday, the day I learned how to fight the urges. I seriously have researched the hell out of compulsive gambling, I know I have a problem, feel amazing not playing, can tell myself over and over, I am NOT going to play today, and then I find myself in front of a damn machine with some damn excuse of why it is okay "just this once". My heart just wants to go back in time, and make it all better, and my brain tricks itself into thinking maybe I could win some of it back. I KNOW that is NOT possible NOT the answer and still, I end up sitting in front of a machine. Because I do own a business, I am so worried about trusting someone enough to tell them here locally that I have a problem and to have them hold me accountable...but yet stupidly I can sit in a room of people and trust them to not know me somehow? Really? I think that if I journal daily here, I might feel more accountable to my actions, so here we go again. I want my accounts to be in the "Black" not "Red". Black Friday. Today is the day.
Replies
Hi Focus, sounds like a plan. One of the best things I did was write how I felt -the dispirited, demoralized way I felt on my trips to the casino, when I was lower than low. Not just here, but write it in a journal, or on a sheet of paper. I just think, my opinion only, that it made it more real. The act of writing it down, longhand on a sheet of paper. It takes more somehow, than typing it on a screen. Again, just my opinion. But, it has helped me, along with coming on DS and phoning a GA buddy. When the urge strikes me hard, which has happened more than a few times, I go back and read what I wrote there. It really takes me back to how I felt. Then I play it all the way through. I know I am incapable of walking out of there with anything. I look forward to watching your growth. Love and hugs, Estel
What a powerful message you have left here for us FocusNow! You have said so very many thing that are so very important and I really hope you continue to write about your thoughts and feelings. As for \"Black Friday\" well I went out and spent a few bucks on a turkey at a place that sells them the day after Thanksgiving for 1/2 price. On the way there, a pebble hit my windshield on my car and it will cost me to get it fixed, probably around $100.00 or so. I was all p/o\'d about this, angry at myself for driving into town on a day that I was really wiped out from having to cook on Thanksgiving Day and being the \"hostess\" or wtf ever. But, I went anyway to say that $15.00 and have something to deal with as a result of my futile effort to save $15.00 on a damn turkey! As stupid as that may sound I had to realize that beating myself up over something that I had no control over is plain idiotic.
It shows how our minds work. When I lost $100.00 at a casino did I feel this way? No I didn\'t, I gambled more hoping to win it back. It never occurred to me to STOP. I kept going.
Minds like our are truly unique ones, I know this much.