[Antonio99]

Hello everyone,

At the beggining I would like to apologies for possible mistakes in writing, english is not my primary language. At the same time, I am so happy for this forum to exist, and the way community is so helpful.

I was lurkning here in the past, always trying to find a comfort and way to stop this addiction.

I would like to summary my story in few sentancecs, so here it goes:

Currently, I am 26 years old, normal guy, working as a software developer, not married, have a lot of friends and everything is in the place.

I havehad a  gambling problem that I have developed in my teenage years. In those times I did not spend a lot of money, but it was time consuming and it probably affected my grades in high school and university.

Despite that, I kinda managed to finish everything and find a good job.

After I have found a job, everything was perfectly fine until I started gambling for higher amounts, and it escalated so quickly that in few months I went into bank debt of 5000$ and this happened before new year.

I understand that there are many people that went into more debt, but still, this was insanely stressful and embarassing for me. I couldnt eat, I couldnt sleep, all I was thinking that I ruined my life that I worked so hard for it.

A month later, I started to chase loses, but just at the begginning, I saw this will not work, and decided to stop gambling. First 10 days were the worst, I had the urge to gamble, anxiety developed so hard that it would wake me up at the night etc.

I just had to talk to someone. Listening to advices on this forum, I decided to share my full story with my mom. In my eyes, she is so good perrson that it made me cry talking to her because I have dissapointed her.

Instead of helping her with bills, paying her for a vacation, I spent that amount on this evil thing called gambling. This crushed me so much. I even got auto-immune disiease called Ulcerative colitis, which can be connected to huge amount of stress.

She was so supportive when I told her about the issue, she started crying and she told me that we will try to recoved this step by step, which we did.

There is one more thing that she said, and it was: “Whenever you have urge to place a bet, imagine my face and re-think about how this decision will hurt me.”

That was it, I was constantly thinking about those words. I had few urges in first 20 days, and for real, I would imagine her and call her and that urge would pass. 
I havent places any kind of bet, I did not had any urge to gamble in past few months, and by the start of this summer, I will be debt free and could focus on happier aspects of my life.

Now, I had some issues after stopping gambling.
Recently, I am having this issues:
 -I am tired most of the time

-I am lacking motivation and concetration when learning/working

-I have anxiety and fear of unlogical things

-I started to develop OCD (checking). Sometimes I check if I have locked the door for 2-3 times, waking up to see if I turned off light in bathroom etc.

This is so scary to me right now, and I am not sure if this is connected to my gambling issue and this is some kind of post-trauma after it. 

I live perfectly normal life at the moment, but I am scared to make those symptoms worse. (I am reading a lot about it, and trying to overcome it step by step).

My question is, did anyone of you who stopped gambling experienced some kind of issues after fighting off this addiction.

Thank you all for possible answers. 
I am so lucky to live in a time of internet where this kind of forum exists <3

[BEEM]

Well done on becoming gambling free. I gave up gambling this new years and have been gambling free all this year so far. I am happier generally and am starting to see the financial benefits of not gambling. After reading your post i realise i do check my door when leaving and when at home several times sometimes. I dont know if it is serious enough to consider it as ocd in my case but it is over doing the checking and probably compulsive. I will keep an eye on it to make sure it doesent get out of control. The benefits in my case far out weigh any negatives in abstaining from gambling. Well done to you again and glad your mum was so supportive I am sure you will be able to help her more once you have abstained for a while and sorted your finances.

[Anonymous]

I think this is very dependent on professional help. There is a difference if a person gets any professional help or is trying to cope by himself. I received professional help for a long time. And then I could safely go to the site, read some interesting article about a successful game or watch some interesting lightning link pokies. Since then, everything was under control.

[Author]

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