I’ve been reading all of your entries and have decided to start my own

Hi Cal

Hope your first day went well..good idea about the new email address, i might consider that myself as i do get a lot of promotion spam.

Great that you got the banking block too for gambling may i ask what bank you are with ? I heard a lot more are doing it now

Lou x

Best of luck to ya, Cal. It takes real strength to admit to ourselves we have/had a problem, and true grit to persevere and do something about it. Well done.

From personal experience it DOES get easier, with each passing day the urges get less, the ruminating on past losses, the thoughts of "what if"; until one morning you wake up and realise you haven't even given gambling a passing thought the whole of the last day! Totally off the radar, firmly consigned to the waste-basket of the past where it should be!

It's a cliché to say "just take one day at a time" - but it really is true. Say to yourself just for today I will not gamble. 

Best regards.

Afternoon all, 

There is bank called Monzo, a bank that lives on your phone. The bank also block all gambling transactions. You can also create pot and can manipulate it to do what you like within the banking system. 

All the best

Xoi

Hi. 

Thanks for letting me know about this I’ve just signed up to Monzo and it looks great. I’ve set up a pot called my Recovery £1 Pot with a pound going in each day to mark another day not gambling. 

@lou-x I’m with Lloyds bank that does have the option to block online gambling. However it doesn’t seem to recognise the offshore ones which is what’s been getting me in trouble lately though. Hopefully with Monzo Bank I’ll start seeing some better financial decisions.

Day 3 and I’m feeling positive 🙂  

Hi Cal.J,

Keep up with the good work so far. And may this continues well into the future. 

Monzo is also one of the best budgeting tool I have ever come across on a mobile platform. For additional motivation, take a look at your recovery pot.

Xoi

Day 3 GF with new coping mechanisms in place and I feel really good about that. My £1 Recovery Pot in my new Monzo account is really helpful too. A lot of good ideas and constructive feedback come from this website so I’m happy to be here. 

No real urge to gamble anything today really the moment the thought even briefly comes into my head I look at my Monzo pot and remind myself why I set it up in the first place. 

onwards and upwards 

Day 5 GF today. Ive been getting confused where  I’m at as my Monzo recovery pot has £3 in it meaning 3 days & my recovery thing on here says 5 days so it’s 5 days GF & 3 days since putting Monzo in place. 

feeling positive. Thanks for all the support. 

Top it uo with another £2 you deserve too

Well done on 5 days ..your making great progress x

Well done pal, keep up the good work!

Okay so a few things happened over the weekend that I’m not proud of but well I would be defeating the entire point of this diary blog if I didn’t mention it here. 

A mate of mine lives alone & has been struggling over the lockdown. He is also a gambler. After a few drinks he was gambling on his phone & then knowing what he was doing I asked if I could have a gamble after him (I’m on gamstop). The short story is I transferred every penny over to his account & lost everything that night. The casino even logged us out determining my mate was gambling more than he could afford (they weren’t wrong but most of the damage had already been done at that point). 

I know I need to keep my distance from people who have the same problem as me. Thing is we would usually meet up at a pub or some place social & gambling on our phones just wouldn’t come into it. However just drinking in his front room that’s how it happens. 

Anyway I probably will avoid him now face to face until we can meet in a bar or something. I’ve adjusting my GF clock & Monzo recovery pot accordingly to reflect the weekend I’ve just had. 

Here we go again. 

CJ

@cal-j forget the pots and books and doing everything after the event. Nothing is going to change unless you do.

You have to want to give up, you have to say to yourself I have had enough. If you haven't then you are going to struggle to stop. 

Can you find and attend a GA meeting? Can you look at yourself and then start changing to stop the relapses?

Why a GA meeting? Because it works and has worked for over 60 years using group therapy. There are others like you and you will be able to identify with them. You will have support from others who know exactly what you are going through. 

Chris.

i havent and wont attend  GA for personal reasons but im doing well in recovery and have no intention to gamble. I found the online ccbt course through gamcare helpful and speaking to professionals users and getting the blocks.

At the end of the day different therapies are helpful for different people i guess thats why their is different forms available. But if you want to stop you do need to change how you think and feel about gambling and i dont advise being around others gambling

Lou x

Thanks for your replies 🙂 

I think the pots will work and besides I like being able to look at the amount of days with what the £1 represents each day. 

My main thing is to consciously be aware to never put myself in situations that may trigger my gambling & it’s something I need at the forefront of my mind. 

I saw a psychiatrist at one stage, around 2018 & we went over strategies that would help assist me resist the urge to gamble when I find the compulsion beginning to develop. I think I’m gonna dig out the notes and stuff we wrote down from those sessions. 

C

Hi cal if you feel the pots will keep up your motivation then do whats right, i use my day count tracker on profile that keeps me going. Different things work for different people. My only advice though is careful that you dont end up tempted with a pot of spare money  to gamble with.

Great that you have some old notes to dig out..sorry if i have already mentioned it but it helped me to write down the pros vs cons of gambling and the effects of each i soon realised the cons outweighed pros and it wasnt worth that impulsive moment to ruin progress 

Lou x