[Steev]

As it seems quiet this weekend with very few posts – I thought now might be the time to continue with my story and talk about the beginnings of my recovery.

I left you last time grieving over my mother’s death and gambling with her legacy to me.  This was all the more heart-breaking as I knew she had saved this money in the teeth of my father’s need to gamble it all.

My sadness was that she just hoarded it – and didn’t spend any of it on herself.

So I gambled it away and then started on my own money.  Not that I had any, but I had access to loans and credit cards – a good job in local government meant that I was credit worthy!

I never had the big loss that drove me to look at what I was doing, rather it was a slow drip, drip of constant losses and the sheer amount of time I was wasting in arcardes and the like.

But whilst I was playing, there was a small part of my brain that knew I was self harming myself.  That it wouldn’t happen today or tomorrow, but if I kept playing then the result was that I would become homeless or have to be a bankrupt or even end up in a ditch somewhere.

So like most gambler’s do – I decided to try and control things better.  Not going out at certain times, only gambling what I had on me and no more, trying to keep busy so I would have no time to gamble.

That last strategy was probably the one that worked best for me.  I did keep myself busy, particularly at weekends (which were always dangerous) by taking up courses in subjects I was vaguely interested in.  Mushroom hunting and dowsing come to mind.  One of the courses I discovered was co-counselling and that was the course that made the most difference to my life.

I knew a little about counselling from my training as a careers adviser and was interested in the fact that it was a self-help approach, so that I was more in charge of what I worked on etc. What I hadn’t expected was how powerful it would be – both from being able to find new ways of letting out and dealing with my feelings and the connections I made with other people on the course.

What also helped was that it was cheap.  I had to pay for the initial 40 hours training and then any further “sessions” I fixed up with other trained people was essentially free.  There were also some cheap residential courses which I went on – which meant other days free of gambling.  But it still took me some time (maybe a year) of co-counselling before I could admit to this as a problem.

Embarrassment, feeling silly, still thinking that slots isn’t real gambling the way sport’s betting or high-stakes casino games are.  But it was someone in co-counselling who suggested that I consider gambler’s anonymous and having made a decision to say yes to any suggestions to get help – I one day phoned the help-line and went to my first meeting.

I remember it well.  For a start it was held in the probation offices in the seedy area of a big UK city.  I had to ask a “lady of the night” where the entrance was and she said, “well if you are going there you won’t be able to afford me!”  When I went down to the basement – two other people were in just before me – a mother and son – he was taken to one room (for GA) and she and I were taken to another (for GAMANON) I was in the wrong meeting for almost half an hour.

But the stories I heard there and the advice I was given, finally drove the nail home that I did indeed have a gambling problem, that I would end up in serious trouble if I didn’t do something about it and I would not be able to do this alone.  I wasn’t sure about the last piece of advice – but I decided to really try and stop gambling and got involved with GA.  I guess there is more to come another time.

[Steev]

I wrote about my life at that time.

I was single, not coping with life very well. I bought a small cottage and filled it with the stuff I had from the house with my wife + the stuff I had accumulated whilst I had been living in digs in the Midlands + stuff from my mother’s place. I couldn’t move – and it stopped me from having anyone else round. I remember once having a bad dose of flu and not speaking to anyone for about 3 weeks – I felt like I was turning into my mother!

Work was getting difficult as people were noticing that I wasn’t looking after myself and couldn’t understand why (I told no-one about my gambling) I was passed over for promotion several times – and as someone who had previous management experience – that hurt. So I gambled more and more … I guess to take the pain away. Even after joining GA and admitting I had a problem – I was still gambling because I wasn’t dealing with anything else.

After all this stop / start gambling (which was “better” in that I was slowing down, but painful because I could see how I was still hurting myself,) I came to the decision to take my recovery as seriously as I took my gambling. I decided to change my life.

The biggest decision was to change my job to another part of the country. Once I had done that I had to move … I put my “stuff” in storage and became a lodger again – but this time it was a much better experience. I chose where to move to based on there being no arcades or casinos in the town and a pub nearby without a fruit machine. I also decided to pay for one-way counselling specifically addressing my gambling addiction. I kept up with GA – perhaps too much as I got involved in the running of the organisation which led to a relapse after 3 years without gambling. I’ll write more later.

[Author]

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