[hopelessbear]

It feels so blury to me now on how it took me just a year at where I am. First time I tried on casino. I have a big win and that was it. That was all it takes to make me falling into the deep hole. Everytime I had a big win again, I told myself.. This is it. I will quit.. but then I kept feeling like if i pay a little longer then I can get more money and at the end, I lose everything again and that’s when I started to bet higher and higher with a thought that I will get a bigger win and then I am done. I ended up lose all of my saving and then I felt in panic and tried to solve it more with getting loan and play. Again Everytime I won. I wasn’t be able to stop myself to play and lose all of it. Through out the year , I have anxiety , sleeping problem and i feels like someone is strangling me all the time.

I kept everything in to myself and told myself that i can solve it. I can do it but I’ve been lying to both myself and my partner. I didn’t want to lose him and I don’t know how to tell him that a women he love is a gambler and a lier. I also put myself in a big debt that I can not contribute to our home. I kept smiling and act like everything is good but in the past 2 weeks, I started to feels like I am a worthless piece of crap and maybe it is better if i just die. I don’t know what to do. I can’t eat or sleep and I know that I need to stop this. So I lied again to my partner that I will go to see my friend in other town but in fact , I was wanting to go to see counsellor and to get help with my addiction. I want to get better and I don’t want him to know. I thought I can do this alone.

But then one day before my counselling appointment , I felt like I need to tell my partner , He deserve to know why I kept postpone our wedding and make excuses to not to have a baby because i don’t want to pull him into our mess and i don’t deserve to be a mother when my life is so shit. Before I make a call, I was ready to accept that He might want to leave me and I will end up alone but you know what.. I probably deserve it. I just couldn’t lie anymore. So I told him and He told me that. He want to help me get help and we will figure this debt problem out together. He still loves me and he won’t leave me. The only thing he feels disappoint about is that I lied. His reaction made me feels like I need to do this. I need to get better. I want my life back.

After telling my partner , The heaviness , the stress , the feeling of someone is strangling me is gone. I know it will be a hard road ahead of me and i feeels overwhelmed with guilt but at least this feeling I can deal with. So I started to reaching out for help and I signed up for 12 weeks treatment program and have appointment with doctor and reached for help from the budget and debt consulting in my town to see how can I deal with my debt.

It is a begining of my journey. I will try to update it here as much as I can. Both success and failures steps I will make. Thanks everyone for being here. You makes me feels like I am not alone and this addiction is not just happened because I am a shitty person.

One advise I can give anyone who is struggling to tell the truth to love ones right now is that. You should do it. Own your mistakes. I can’t guarantee that your love ones will understand you but I think it is a really important first step to do towards recovery.

[Dunc]

Hello and thanks for starting a thread in the Gambling Therapy forums
Here at Gambling Therapy we pride ourselves on being a caring and diverse online community who can help and support you with the difficulties you’re currently facing. We understand that this might be a tough time for you, particularly if you’re new to recovery, so come here as often as you need to and participate in the forums, access online groups and connect to the live advice helpline if you need one to one support. We’re in this together!
Here on the forum you can share your experiences in a safe, supportive and accepting environment. The beauty of writing it all down is that you can take your time and you will be creating a record of your progress that you can look back on if it ever feels like you’re not moving forward. So, share as much or as little as you like but do try to stick to keeping just one thread in this forum so people know where to find you if they want to be updated on your progress or share something with you.
As well as the forums New Members are invited to join Charles in the New Members Practical Advice Group On Mondays at 21:00 (UK) and Thursday at 19:00(UK)
And on that note….
I’m going to hand you over to our community because I’m sure they will have some words of wisdom for you 🙂
Take care
The Gambling Therapy Team

[Badsportsbettor]

Hi

I hope you are doing well In your journey. This is a hard thing to do but coming clean is part of recovery. Having to be accountable can go a long way In becoming sober from gambling. I will be following your journey and wish you luck.

[hopelessbear]

It has been 28 days since I decided to quit gambling.
After I’ve told my partner, I felt better but then the guilt start to hit me. I feels horrible and a worst person in the whole world. Why was I that stupid? I ruined my own life.
After blocked myself on all the gambling sites and came clean to my partner. I have both good days and bad days. The bad feeling comes in waves.
When it comes, I feel worthless. The guilt is so bad that I have anxiety and it gave me such a bad physical pain in my chest. It comes and goes. One day might be more than the others.
The feeling of wanting to play pop up in my head from time to time. When it does , Instead of remembering how good i felt when I had a big win into the day that I lost all of it.
It gives me so much pain and I think it is a good thing because I do want really want to play at all.

I’ve been talking with therapist. It helped to talk with someone who can explain me why i feel the way i feel. I just need to be remember to be kind to myself.
I contacted a clinic for my addiction treatment and got assessment by the doctor and she put me on the list of a 12 weeks treatment program. I can’t wait to start.
The doctor was very kind and I felt good after talking with her.

I think the most painful thoughts I kept having is the debt I created and how much I regret about it. I also contacted Budget and debt counselor.
We had a conversation roughly on how I am and what happened. She took my case and we will look at it together how to solve it but she is also being very realistic that
There is no quick fix for this but she will help me however she can to help me get through it. She is now on vacation and we will speak again in a couple of weeks.

Beside all of this, My partner and I went on a vacation. We hiked and be with the nature. It really helped with my mentality. I felt a little sad when we had to come back home.
I felt like now I am going back to a shitty reality. So a few days after we got home. I had a lot of bad days.

Today I feels better and I will keep working on get better.

PS. Thanks for kind words from above comments.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by hopelessbear.

[lizbeth4]

Hi, You should be proud of yourself. You are taking the steps to get help with your gambling and debts. It’s never easy to tell are loved one about our addiction.
Stop beating yourself up. I think you are very brave. Everyone makes mistakes. It doesnt take long to get into gambling related debt but just be patient and diligent. You can repay it!
I’m sure your vacation was good for You! You can do this! Stay strong.

[hopelessbear]

Thank you Lizbeth4 for your kind word.

I started my first day of treatment yesterday. We’ve set goal for what I expect to be able to do after this treatment is done. My goal is to learn how to live with my addiction and have a control over it, To be able to have money in my own account and not thinking about gambling it away, To be able to fight my urges to play and have my life back again. Then I learned about how the brain works for the person who has addiction and why I feel what I feel when the urges to play comes to my head. Also learning about triggers and what usually happen when these urges come for me. I am currently trying to think back on what usually happen before I have strong urge to play and write them all down. So I can take control of it better.

Also talked with my therapist about how I feel. I am still feeling ashamed and sad about my addiction and consequences of it but I am dealing with it better and it hurts less. Though I started to have more urges to play. Maybe because I started to forget how bad I felt when I lost everything. So now It takes me a couple of minutes to try to remembering it and telling myself ‘No’ and not gamble again. I think what helps most is that every time I feels like I might give in. I look at my partner and I remembered why I am doing this in the first place. Reading my own journal also helps and other people stories. I know I am not alone on this and a lot more people are facing and suffering the same thing as I do.

So here is my progress as of today. Remember how far I’ve come. Don’t give in.

[hopelessbear]

Thank you @kin for your kind words.

It has been over a month since I played. I still thinking about it from time to time because I am still stress over my debt and every time I think about it. This evil side in me , told me that I should play. Just for a bit then I can win a lot and solve all of my debt. I was able to shut those thoughts down. I sat down and tried to remember what gambling did to my life. I tried to remember that painful day when I was thinking of ending my life because of it. The darkness and the pain it caused me. I’ve reading a few of new people who joined this forum and they are where I was about a month ago. I can almost feel the pain they are feeling because I had the same pain they have now.

It makes me sad that not a lot of people understand addiction and thought that people with addiction is weak and you can just ‘don’t do it’. When it takes a lot in us to say no , To fight the addiction. Addiction is almost like cancer to me. Not everyone can survive it because it is so smart and it knows how to trick us back to those dark place. Instead of chemotherapy or get operation to remove it. We need to use our own mind to against this and it is so hard. Though when people hear that you have cancer, they will feel sympathy for you but not us addicts. I just hope that one day more people could understand us more that We didn’t choose this. We didn’t want to be addicted to this. We are trying our best to fight this everyday.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by hopelessbear.

[davidbetting1]

Hi hopelessbear,

Hope you are able to recover from gambling. Try to learn more about bankroll management and also making smarter bets.

Best wishes

David

[hopelessbear]

Thanks @devidbetting1 and @kin

I had a couple of rough days. 2 days ago around 11PM , There was ambulance car , police cars and fire department parked behind my house. My partner and I were going to bed and we heard them talking(more like whispering). Our bedroom window is very close to the hedges from our backyard. With curiosity about what’s going on. We went out and take a look. My neighborhood is a quiet area. So It wasn’t many of people are out. We walked to the policeman and asked what’s going on. He couldn’t tell us specific but only that We are safe. From our backyard is a small street then houses and a mountain with a cliff. We could see the view point on the top of the mountain from our own backyard. In face , We went up there pretty often to see our house from the top and the view. So we saw some flashlights in different spots around middle of the mountain. It was very dark but we can see lights and sound of snapping trees. So we figured it out that. It is probably someone fell off from the cliff. We’ve saw teenagers who like to sit on the edge of the cliff outside of the safety railing a few times and we always say that hope none of them get hurt.

So we went to bed. Nothing to see anyway and it is better to let they do their job peacefully. Around 2AM , I woke up from a voice of a woman who screamed and cried. I assumed whoever fell off from that cliff , didn’t make it. I started to get overwhelmed and thought…. that person could have been me. A few days before I decided to quit gambling. I was thinking of that. Going up to the cliff and jump. It really could have been me. Suddenly I felt like I have a big hole inside of me. I felt sad and scared. How close was I to did that terrible thing to myself. I couldn’t let that woman’s voice screams and cries go. It stuck in my head. I felt so shaken up until today.

Later on , I found out that the person who died. He jumped. He was a friend of someone my in-law knows. He was a teacher and that’s all I know. I thought I could feels better and get a closure of knowing what had happened. But I didn’t. I am both sad and happy at the same time. I am sad about what I almost did to myself and happy that Thanks god , I didn’t do it. I have no urge to play at all and now I have a big mountain behind my house to remind me of it.

It could have been me.

[hopelessbear]

It has been over a week since I last posted. Nothing much to update really. Everyday is a fight as usual. I felt better about the scared I had about the person near my house jumped off the cliff. I appreciate the air that I am breathing in and I am happy that I am alive. Got a paycheck in the account yesterday. I don’t have any urges like I want to play. Maybe a little bit but the guilt and shame that it cause me from my big pile of debt only make me feels bad. I saw the money in the accounts and how much I have to pay the bills. I feels really sad that this will be my life for a long while. But what can you do except accepting it and try to survive everyday without digging a deeper hole to yourself.

I am lucky enough that I have a partner and a best friend who are supporting me through this. Knowing that they know about my addiction helps me to stay straight forward better. I am still in the treatment program. Now I have a small exercise to do everyday. It’s quite hard to not thinking about the big win I have had but It is getting easier to tell myself how stupid those thoughts are.

[hopelessbear]

This week is pretty calm. I am more busy with work and life in general that I do not have a lot of time to think about gambling. Though a lot of time I think about what it did to me. I’ve been in the treatment for 5 weeks now. Right now we are doing the behavior exercises in different kind of situation that I put myself into. I identified my triggers and work through it by directing my brain to choose different path than gambling when my brain get triggered. I am still doing a very easy ones for now and even though I feels it is easy. I know that the most important thing is not to relapse. One relapse can put me directly back where I was. It is a fight everyday for sure. Just some day or some week can be easier or harder than the others. I have had an easy week this time. So we will see what is next.

2 more days I will be 60 days gambling free. I work very hard everyday since the day i decided to quit and I hope I can continue to be in this direction forever.

[Author]

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