Hi Daniel,
I can relate to your story and can imagine the thoughts running through your mind right now. I too have recently been trying to recover from a similar situation. I went on a huge gambling binge for 3-4 months but surprisingly kept winning. And the bets just got bigger on roulette, I nearly lost it all but won it back and eventually after winning night after night had bagged £53,000. That is a huge amount of money.
Now my CG mind thought that I could bank that and stay away from gambling, now it had essentially paid me back for all the losses I had accrued over the last 20 years.
I felt great, I had got the money to pay off all debts and still have 20 grand in the bank. I started to buy things and feel good, not worrying about the daily cost as it didn’t matter.
This was all in secret to my wife and family, they had no idea so i couldn’t really splash out as it would be suspicious.
I paid off my debt luckily with this money and thought I was on an even keel, not wanting to gamble again.
But then when the funds started to get lower, my brain decided to think i needed to top it up again and because I hadn’t lost, I thought i was invincible.
Why can’t we just be happy for a bit? Having this money is what we wanted but I guess what I have learnt is that a CG can never save, you will always be drawn back in. You have to lose to wake yourself up and stop. You need this loss in a sense. Even if someone told me i would lose it all I wouldn’t believe them, I had to try it for myself, then you start to chase the losses.
So if you get a win, spend it as fast as you can. That is the only way you will benefit from it in my mind, as you will always go back and probably lose it all at some point.
I managed to spend some but ultimately lost the rest. This happened a month ago and I am still finding it hard to cope with it and process it rationally. All the ‘what I could have done with it’ and ‘how stupid’ comes to mind.
The thing is, I didn’t lose my own money, it was winnings. And as a CG, was it actually ever mine? That’s why i say spend as quick as you can to avoid the inevitable what ifs.
I am better off, yes I have paid off all my debt but now don’t have the buffer of winnings, which hurts. But in my position, I couldn’t spend it anyway, I had to be secretive, so what is the point of having that much money i say to myself, I essentially won too much money to cope with, and i needed the big loss in order to stop. As a CG I think you do have to go through this.
Your situation, you had it, but didn’t bank it, so your mind wanted to go back and gamble. I understand, the rational mind wasn’t there and the CG took over. Yes you will think of all those things that you could have done, but like others have said this is the loss you may have needed to stop for good and not go through this pain any more. Whatever win you have, it will lead to pain further down the line, and the cycle goes on.
For me, I have to stop now, the loss hurts, I wanted that money and can’t understand why I couldn’t just keep it. But on the other hand I have to not beat myself up as i am addicted and needed to stop sometime, so as I have seen in other posts ‘ why not now, before it gets worse in the long run’. Treat the loss as your therapy cost.
This post is for my therapy too, but hope you can find some hope in it and not go back.