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    • #15070
      khorkina
      Participant

      I was sixteen and took a load of empty bottles back to the shops to get some money to buy some sweets . My parents were watching the racing and a local horse was running and I asked my dad to put the pound I had " earned " on it. I think all the time about how things may have been different had the horse lost . I may have thought – what a waste of good money and I may never have become such a sad and lonely individual as I am today. The horse won easily at 7/1 and I remember being so proud showing off to my friend that I had won £7 . I felt like I was bigger and better and more important than them for some reason , I dont know why . My whole thought process changed literally in the minute it took the horse to sprint home over 5 furlongs . Why work , why go on the youth training scheme for £25 a week when I could back more horses and stay in bed . How naive was I ? . I want to go back in time and give that young man a good shake and tell him how he will end up aged 41 if he gambles but I cant do that. I want to tell him that he will lose everything – the 10,000 his uncle left him aged 18 in his will , the gold watch that was a family heirloom that he wished to stay in the family that I sold when I had lost the £10.000 pounds. To tell him that no woman would ever stick by him and that two of his unborn children would be aborted because of his addiction . To tell him that he would be caught stealing and turn to drugs and alchohol to block out the agony. Tell him he would never own a house or hold down a job and most of all to tell him he would grow to despise himself more than anything in the world. I cant go back though and am trying to look forward and be positive but I have bi-polar disorder so find controlling myself extremely difficult. I now live 25 miles from nearest betting shop but the urge wont go away . It has become a never ending circle – get some money , feel immense pressure to gamble it , inability to sleep , large figures going round and round in my head , agitation until I can take no more and I blow it . It doesnt matter what I win I want more and cant sleep until I have either made a fortune or lost it all which I do and then I relax and sleep again and say to myself never again . I mean it as well in my own mind but then the next lot of money comes along and the cycle begins again. I am a thief a liar , a dreadful excuse for a human being who has one last chance and that is now. I have just gone a Saturday without a bet . One day but it feels like a lifetime . I have withdrawn money from ATM to make sure I dont bet online so I am safe today because the banks are shut and the buses that take me to the betting shop dont run on Sundays. I am safe for today but I am dreading Monday . I have never travelled and my whole life and thought has been dominated by gambling except for  when I went back to school 5 years ago to do my Alevels . I gained a place at University but it was in a city so I gambled everything , didnt pay my rent , couldnt do my work , got drunk every night . begged and borrowed of everyone and lost my place at uni. I am determined to get better but then I allways have been but I allways lapse . Perhaps talking about it on here will help ?. I have gained strength from reading other peoples stories and have to keep growing stronger to rid myself of tis terrible affliction . I want a wife a child a normal life thats all I dream of now – a normal life !look forwards not backwards.

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