thanks Kin,Don and Raisingphoenix.
Raisingphoenix, I am learning how I can protect my money from myself, it is a work in progress, with costly lessons to learn with each relapse.
I believe learning how to do it correctly is the only thing that can make a difference. this will decide whether I will keep relapsing or I will live a normal life or I will live a prosperous life.
because frankly my brain is damaged, and the control circuits in my brain are completely unreliable. Even if I stayed 10 years free of gambling I will be always afraid of slips, 100$ slip could cause me to lose 10 years of savings and it will put me in debt…
so I am at peace with the idea that I should never keep easy access to money, I am experimenting with different methods to do so, each one of us has different circumstances, and each one of us should find the way that works for him to keep his money protected from him.
it is so funny and sad at the same time to use such a sentence « protecting my money from myself » I never thought that my brain will be fucked up to a degree that I am afraid of
having access to my own money.
Kin,
it seems we relapsed at the same time, so I hope we can both celebrate a one-year free of gambling after « 361 days » from now.
wish you all the best, stay strong, and you know the saying « relapse is part of recovery », I hate that sentence but it is true…
Don,
I hope that I will have success stories to tell in the future, but I will be honest with you, I wish my life story is better, a story where I have turned my life around and live a great life after a period of addiction…, but so far my story looks like a bad tragedic movie. given my past records if I need to predict what will happen in the future, I will bet that this is not my last relapse.
all that I can do is delay it, and protect my money from it once it happened so it will not cause a lot of damage. I am brutally honest with myself. I have relapsed 100 times, and I have read all that I can read about this addiction I know my disease inside out, and tried to overcome it many times.. but it seems in my case all that I can do is live with it. like a diabetic lives with his disease, I need to live with mine. and this is not a new thing that I came up with now. I knew this for years, but I am still learning « in the hard way » how to live with this mental disease.