If you ever do become a mum, and there is nothing wrong in what you call the ‘older’ mum as both my ex-wife and I were in our forties when little Val was born and i would not change it for the world. Even if I do not see him in person everyday we FaceTime every morning and most evenings. As soon as he sees me he says “Papa” and it breaks my heart. But the time I spend with him means so much more to me than it did when I was gambling and when I was going through withdrawal.
Right now you might be going through withdrawel. Your addiction wants to be fed. That leads to lapses and then relapses. Accept you want to gamble, you have done it for so long it is a deep groove in your psyche. But also know that you cannot rush recovery. At day 71 I feel great but I am not complacent. Hence I travel a 50 mile round trip to Derby on Monday to go to GA and then 30 miles roundtrip to Stoke centre to go to GA on a Tuesday. And Next Thursday I will add my London meeting, so discounting I am in London to see my son that would mean over 400 miles to do GA. And my god it’s worth it. Just being around the other members, sharing the thoughts in my head with people who understand, and seeing the pain of new members reminds me of what could be if I ever get cocky and think gambling was not that bad. It was. It broke me mentally, spiritually, physically, professionally and emotionally.
You’re doing really well, coming on here, sharing, getting those nasty thoughts out of your head.
One day At A Time.
Rome was not built in a day.
Abstinence is not recovery, but without abstinence there can be no recovery.
Find things to do, things to think about. The addiction will make you feel pain, want to be fed, try to convince you that a gamble will make you feel better. That’s why i lasped 18 days ago – I thought it would be me feel better, just a little bit of the sweet sweet sauce. But it made me worse but more determined to stay away from and forever and since then there were no more lapses.
Charles writes that for some people lapses are a part of the recovery process, they were for me, but they are not obligatory. You DO NOT have to give in. YOU CAN GO WITHOUT GAMBLING.
I trust you and I send you all my positive thoughts. Think of the child you will one day have. You dont want him having a gambling mum – I don’t want to be a gambling dad. I have met people whose parents were CGs.
They couldn’t be trusted, they couldn’t love, they ahd no time or money for their kids, they lied, they were unreliable.
Neither you nor I want that. But you do want to be able to say you found recovery and when he or she finds temptation as they get older (which they will) you will have more tools to understand when they go down dangerous paths and, without preaching, will have a better sense of how to deal with it.
have a great weekend. I leave at 4am tomorrow morning and in less than 12 hours I will be playing with by boy. It has been 9 days since I saw him in person and i am so excited.
take care
Mav