Chris I feel your pain brother and I have felt every emotion and told myself all of those things you mentioned above. I’m a loser, I have bad credit, all my friends are buying houses getting married, failure, degenerate the list can go on for days. This disease is something that we cannot control. It is literally out of our power, we are powerless over gambling man. You mentioned you had gone 5 months clean, then relapsed, it’s because we think we have beat it, and tell ourselves we can go play smarter, or less risk, or just for entertainment. But once our first bet is placed, it’s like an alcoholic , we won’t stop until every single penny is maxed out, most of the times chasing our original amount we came with. I’ll always remember 90% of my
Casino trips, bring x money, lose it.. take daily limit out of debit to try to get original loss, lose that. Call bank beg them to increase credit limit , they do, take out as much as the limit raise is, lose that. Go onto credit card, cash advance my daily limit, lose that. The amount of times I walked out of a casino feeling like a piece of human garbage, a piece of shit, I can’t even *****. You have to tell yourself you don’t want to feel that pain any longer. The longer you choose to gamble, the deeper the hole will get, and that’s just a fact. We will never win our money back that we lost, but we can make it so we don’t make it any worse at this very moment. You should be proud of 5 months clean time. Don’t think of your relapse as back at day 1, think of it as a slip up, think of all of the progress you made in that time off, remember how less stressed you were? Remember how much more available money you had? Remember how you slept better, ate healthier , exercises even? Had healthy relationships with your family? Partner, friends? This is all a life without gambling. With gambling we are depressed, anxious, mad, sad, sleepless nights, forgetting to eat, eating garbage, no working out, no social life, people don’t want to be around us, being don’t trust our words. I don’t want that and I know you don’t either. You have the power to stop and it will be the hardest thing you ever will do, but it is fully possible. Have you tried GA? You are so young man, I’m close to your age. We have so much time to rebuild if we stop now , The majority of people I met in GA were 40-60 years old. They told. Me they wished they came when they were in their 20s for help, because there is so much time to rebuild. Imagine trying at 50? After losing millions, families, houses, businesses, and their whole entire youth to this. We are talking 40 years of gambling. Man do you want that? You have gambled 4 years and I have gambled 10. Do you want to get to 10 also? Or do you want to say your gambling addiction was 4 years? I want mine to be 10, and I won’t live one more day gambling or else we will he just like those older gamblers who wished we could have stopped 20 years earlier. You can get your life back bro, you really can. It’s up to you. How much work are you willing to put into your recovery? Do you want it bad, or do you just kind of want to stop? I know you want it bad I know you don’t want to feel this pain ever again and I’m here as living proof you don’t have to. I quit gambling 75 days ago after losing my life savings, my business, had to move back home with my parents at age 30 and am paying off 30k of gambling debt right now. One year at my new job basically will be for free to pay this off. I beg you don’t take it where I am man. You can stop now. I believe in you and know there is always the light at the end of the tunnel. Decide right now you are done for good.
Merry Christmas man and sorry for rambling. I hope my words helped you in any way and know you are not alone.