Hi Jeff, good job on realising that your gambling has gotten out of control. I was in a similar place to you in terms of savings, and ran it down to less than half that from gambling. That’s when I came here a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to lose all my savings, but I knew I would keep going back to chase the loses unless I made a change and faced up to my compulsive gambling.
What’s working for me so far is to put barriers in place to stop me gambling. I have Gamban installed on my laptop and phone so that I can’t gamble online, and if I go anywhere near a pub with slot machines then I will only take a small amount of cash and no bank card. Hopefully you can self-exclude from the casino, that would be a good first step.
Thinking about the money you’ve lost is hard, and try to avoid doing that. For me, thinking about it made me want to go and try and win in back. Instead I try to think about the money I still have and how I would just lose that if I tried to win back anything. I figure my latest gambling losses were an expensive lesson to learn that I can’t control myself when gambling. And that knowledge will mean I won’t lose more money in the future, which I figure is an overall win.
Best of luck, reading other people’s stories helps.