Hello all, I mainly wanted to make this post to remind myself to stay away from gambling.

I permanently self-excluded my self in 2017 and honestly it has been a rough journey trying to live a normal life as an addict.

When I was 22, I went to the casino for the first time with my friends and immediately fell in love with gambling.
At that time, because I had been working a decent paying job at a hospital full time for 4 years and a full college scholarship with no rent, I was able to save up around 100,000 dollar(you know where this money goes).

Long story short, I got fired from my job due to attendance, lost all 100,000 and money I got from my mother by lying to her, plus a few thousand dollars in debt.

After I lost 100k, I thought to myself, if I can’t get out now, I will never be able to.

I went into my favorite casino and filed a self-exclusion form. Self-exclusion process was simple

However, I couldn’t let go of gambling after the self-exclusion. I tried to sneak into casinos and got kicked out. I even traveled to other states to gamble, but most other casinos also honored the ban from another state.

Then, I discovered online gambling.. and this one really destroyed my self-esteem and my life. I stole money from my mom to gamble online and I just couldn’t live with myself anymore. This was the time I had some really bad thoughts in my head. So, I told my mom everything that has happened and promised her that I would pay her back every cent. She raised my sister and I as a single mom, working 12+ hours a day with no help from my father. I knew she would do anything for us and I took advantage of it. She was extremely angry at first, but eventually became supportive.

In total, I would say I wasted 3+ years trying to get back into gambling and didn’t even finish college with only few credits left.

It was weird tho.. I’m not sure if it was guilt or shame, but after I told my mom, I couldn’t gamble anymore. I still really wanted to, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.

About 2 years ago, I started working a manual labour job because all I wanted to do was to make money again. I wanted to quit every single day at first, but I still work there because the pay and benefits are great. Also, because of this job I have been able to save up again. After work, I drive Uber 20-30 hours a week to pay back my mom. Life is hard right now, but it is certainly better than gambling my life away.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by nevertoolate.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by nevertoolate.