Been through hell it feels like.

Dear @x-m, 

Thank you for posting on the forum and reaching out for support.

I am sorry to hear to you are going through such a tough time at the moment. The current situation is making a lot people feel alone and isolated. I am sure some of our fantastic forum users will offer you some great support in this difficult time. If you were however, to find yourself in an emergency situation or things were really feeling too much I would strongly encourage you to reach out to services offering crisis support or to dial 999. 

You don't have to be alone, we can offer you support around gambling and looking at other strategies to help on top of the blocks you have already put in place. We can also refer you to free treatment support which would allow you the opportunity to address and get support around anything else that may be contributing to your gambling as well as supporting you in to recovery. 

Please get in contact with one of our advisers on 0808 8020 133 or through our live chat option. 

Wishing you all the very best,

John

Forum Admin. 

Hi @x-m

Lockdown is making it is much more tempting for people with gambling urges to do it again to fill time and kill boredom. You did well to stop for a while so you should take some positives from it and whatever you do don't give up, things can improve and there is amazing support on this site to help you through. 
       I totally agree that all forms of gambling are no good for people with a problem, it sets us off and makes us want to gamble more and more. Best advice I received was to sign up to Gamstop (I did a 5 year ban in January 2019) which basically bans you from all gambling sites. That and the fact all casinos and bookmakers are closed means you wont have the option to gamble. This will give you time to get it out of your system again and let you find help and support to overcome it. This site is a great place to start.

I wish you absolutely all the best and whatever you do, don't give up! Things will get  better.

Jonny

Hi X-M

I really feel for you buddy, I’m 36 and I’m a similar situation to you, been gambling since 22 and it’s a horrible addiction that can be so destructive to ones life.

I’ve been in and out of gambling for the past 4 years now, whilst not gambling I’ve been leverage trading bitcoin which is equally destructive if not even more so, and like yourself I’d have a house by now if it wasn’t for my addiction, my losses easily top 70k to date and lost another 1k in the last week.

Like yourself I have also contemplated suicide in the past and feel rather trapped.

Also during this period of time we find ourselves in makes it harder to cope.

Hopefully we can find a way out of this, If you want to talk feel free to contact me.

All the best and chin up, tough times don’t last forever.

Dan

Hi, (Please read- this may help you)

I don't usually post or comment on Gamcare. I did 3 years ago to try and stop and still I somehow find a way to gamble every other day. I'm getting counselling but I'm not going to ramble on about myself because I have a story that might help, it might not but here we go. It might help you both @x-m @mertl83 (Sorry if it drags on)

My Dad was a compulsive gambler and nobody knew. (Maybe where I get it from) We lived in a nice house in a nice area my mum, dad and sister. When I was around 9, we suddenly moved to a smaller house and my parents then split up and my dad moved in with a new partner a year later. All was ok again, until they suddenly split up when I was roughly 14. He then started to move around friends house's constantly finding somewhere to stay. He eventually found himself a room at a strangers place that they rented. He would still do everything he could to see us but sometimes he would have to randomly cancel or not make it.

Once me and my sister got a little older we could tell he wasn't himself, he wasn't happy and would occasonally ask me and my sister for £20 here and there. 

July 1st 2018 I got a call from my nan on the phone and she broke the news to me that my dad has passed away. 50 YEARS OLD. It broke me. I was 18, just about to turn 19. He was my best friend and meant everything to me. A while after, we found out that he had passed away from a heart attack due to stress symptoms. My uncle had to deal with his finances and he showed me all his bank statements. 'b****5 - £30, b****5 - £40' all the way down for pages and pages on end. Not even room for food shops on there or anything else. EVERY DAY. 

The whole moving house business was because he re-mortgaged the house and lost the money. His partner after my mum had bailiffs coming to the house asking for the money he owes. Whenever I lent him money you know where it went.

I can feel now what he was going through, I just wish really really wish he spoke to someone about it. Told us or anyone what he was going through. If he did it early enough he may have stopped all the stress, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I then got  a load of pension money from him at the age of 18 and threw it all away in 2 years. I'm now in debt, and still a student so its tough. Im 21 and in debt because of gambling. I lost my dad because of gambling. 

Point of the story, you've come here and spoken. Make that leap and stop before its too late. Before stress gets to you. I have also come here, although 3 years too late in my eyes and Im still finding ways to gamble so I need to stop too. Im 21 and in debt because of gambling. I lost my dad because of gambling. 

Now this may not help and apologies for the length of this. But I hope this can at least make you think that you've done the right thing coming here and to stay strong. Keep on going. I'm almost saying this for myself now too! 

Take care, you've got this. 

Joe M

Hi. Brilliant that you did a five year ban. 

I agree that lockdown can make it worse but it can happen at any time and it's almost dangerous to even sit and think about that. That's why I haven't been on here because even being on here can obviously make you think about gambling and that's why it's so hard to talk about. But it's been twelve days now for me which is the most in years

Hi, it's similar indeed. All I can suggest is that as I'm two years older... Save yourself of two years of utter sadness. Because that is all that's gonna happen. Nothing good will happen. Obviously you know and I don't want to sound patronising, but even if you win, it will eventually all go. As well as that, it is just a waste of time, energy, bad moods, sickening thoughts.

Even if you lose and somehow manage to get by, subconsciously it'll be playing on your mind and you do lose yourself and your soul and people around you. They might stop liking you and most probably, you could stop liking them. It makes you irritable irrational, unreasonable, moody and as harsh as it sounds, not a good person. You might do good things and help people etc, but you're not being yourself and are constantly living a lie which doesn't make you a good person. It makes you fake hence all good things that you do are fake. That is all what I am/was. Hopefully soon it will just be "was". 

Joe, just want to say thanks for sharing your story in order to help others. I don't know if it spoke to anyone else, but it sure as hell spoke to me. I am really sorry about what happened to your dad. He did the best he could to be a dad, but it wouldn't have been easy for him because despite wanting to be there for you all the time, the gambling will have clawed him away and tormented him in ways that only a gambler can understand.

Know that I did all those things too and I love my family very much. I have made mistakes, and none of it reflects on my family or my kids. It's not that I disregarded them or didn't care. It's a disease and it steals you away. My family were never second to gambling, they were always with me. I was just so torn and the addiction run me ragged for 20 years. I loved it but I hated it and I learned to hate myself for it too.

My dad had gambling addiction too when he was a young lad. He used to be a driver's mate and the guy he travelled with introduced him to the arcades and before he knew it, he was working all week for nothing, leaving every penny he had in those places. Thankfully, when he met my mum a few years later, things changed and soon, I came along. They both quit smoking together and dad quit the gambling too. He never looked back. 

He broke free and won't even put a few pennies on a game of cards now just for fun on family game night. He doesn't know about my addiction. Despite struggling with this himself, he can be judgemental and will not understand and I don't want the judgement to rock my sobriety. I have support from my family and I am doing well. I have not gambled for 2 years now and am feeling okay.

I had a very difficult two weeks lately. The lockdown played havoc with my mental health and I found myself looking for places to bet. I didn't gamble and I don't really want to gamble, I just need to blow off steam sometimes, to vent. I am under pressure still from debt and struggle with depression and anxiety. I lost my focus there for a while.

The main reason I stopped gambling is because of my heart. I was literally scared into stopping. I would suffer such bad anxiety ectopics that my heart would be bouncing off the walls. I would have palpitations and every other heart beat would skip and thud and this would last for hours. This came off the back of betting £1,000 spins on roulette, risking rent and all our bill money in the process. I lost over £40,000 in total, about £18,000 I still owe on credit cards. 

I have panic attacks now due to gambling and worry about debt. The lockdown hasn't helped financially as work is very slow. My health has really suffered because of this addiction, both mentally and physically and although at times, I really want to just self destruct and gamble, I am glad that I stay strong.

Your post has given me strength to carry on. It made me remember the stress of my gambling days and twice, I ended up in hospital, and once I ended up in the back of an ambulance with stress. I don't want that back in my life. I would go three or four nights without sleep and just lay there worrying about being found out.

No one can make you stop gambling but yourself. If you want to do it for yourself, then you will. Anything is possible. Your dad will not have wanted this life for you and my dad wouldn't either. Make the pain stop. A gambler's life is a miserable one. We tell ourselves that we love to bet, but we don't. We have just trained ourselves to do it. The addiction does the rest. All gambling is, is a distraction from life. It gets in the way of everything and steals anything it can from you. Don't give it your money, but more importantly, don't give gambling your time.

I lost two decades because of gambling. You know why? Because I didn't want to face up to the world and the way I felt about it. I buried my feelings and thoughts in a machine and switched off from life. When I finally looked up from the laptop, my two small children were young adults and when this dawned on me, I cried for days and finally sought help.

It is never too late to make a change. You are more than welcome to 'ramble on' as much as you want to. Lord knows I do. It is lovely that you support others on here, but please take care of yourself. I used to give great advice on gambling forums, but I couldn't take it myself. You do not have to mirror the life of your father. Your story might be similar, but it is not the same. The pen is in your hand, so write the way you want your life to go and make it happen. Gambling will stay in the past so long as you don't do it in the present. 

Take care.

Take care.

Hello. Don't ever worry about the length of posts. You're helping yourself and others and no post is too long when it comes to help.It all sounds horrible and I lost a lot of money from my dad after he passed away and it's an absolute sickening thought. It disgusts me to this day but you have to think, would our dads' want this to be happening to us? No. Not at all. One thing I can say is that you are still relatively young. You've been through some horrible stuff. But you can now choose to stop here and then live a long and healthy gambling free life. It's brought nothing but misery to your dad and now you. But you can and must stop now as he would hate to see you like this. 

Amazing for staying so strong. Well done and please keep going. 

How are things going?