Your post reminded me to tend to my own endeavours in this area of life! ?
Just saying hello Louis i hope everything going ok with yourself? Im not on here that much these days theres a lot of new people, however we all have the same problem!
Gav.
Really looks like the heyday of gambling is over.
I’m relieved. Acknowledgement at last of practices which cause one way traffic harm.
And bizarrely, non-gambling politicians are more pro-regulation than many addicts on here.
However, also tinged with mixed emotions. My gambling addiction came at peak de-regulation. My addiction very much a product of our time.
on the other hand, what other outlet would my self-loathing, escapist, repressed-self have sought? It had to go somewhere.
Potentially something not so socially unacceptable-something invidious which could have gone on longer below the radar?
Hai Louis,
That's pretty cool, never really got in to the hate of the industry as still think like anything in life, moderation is the key. Yet, not for the likes of compulsive emotionally immature people. Also as you've mentioned above, I've strangely seen gambling addiction a saviour of sorts to the slipperier slope I could of gone down.
Has been a while, so this post is more of a hello and trusting that you are well and enjoying life in Yorkshire. Possibly neighbours soon as I seek to take the slow road back up north, planning to sell and a few ideas to wheres next.
Life going ok, albeit work is possibly primary compulsion and can have the tendency of random punts and yes the beer. Hai ho, no complaints.
Still very much seeking the simple life and read that the most simplistic brains root programming is - Despise Chaos and create Order. So very true and leads to perception of the addict mind.
Moral is - a long winded hello from a train journey
All the best and a beer in Yorkshire one day
Hi Louis 🙂
A welcome step indeed but sadly I fear there's a long, long way to go judging by the snail's pace action on reducing the maximum FOBT stake.
Like you, too late for us but anything making the industry take a step or two back into the shadows of yesteryear is welcome. Even more welcome if there was a way of claiming back the ruinous losses many of us on both sides of the fence have sustained.
Dreaming on 🙂
Well hello.
It's been 2 years since I last posted. 8 years since I last gambled.
I remember wondering if I could ever truly be happy if I stopped smoking. Ditto with gambling. In both cases it turns out that the questions I was asking were being determined by an addict-addled mind - rhetorical questions with only one answer.
I can now see that shame was had basically imprisoned me. It had made me secretive. I needed an antidote to secrecy and shame. I found this initially here - coming here was the first step in opening up and admitting I had a problem. There was some fundamental shift, the first time I logged on here.
Key other steps which I now see as transformative are:
1. Telling my partner, family and friends the whole truth
2. Learning and practicing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
3. Mindfulness
4. Committing to not lying at all
5. Some counselling (in hindsight I might've continued longer)
No doubt people are different and with different degrees of addition. But for me it was all to do with shame and secrecy. Shame of my dirty past-time, shame of not feeling good enough. This was covered up by a kind of bravado that I was special.
I think there are two ways of looking at addiction, both of which are true. There's the kind of armchair-psychologist approach along the lines I've said above - e.g. in my case the fact that I was deeply ashamed that I held some kind of core belief that I wasn't good enough.
But then there's a more neurobiological explanation around dopamine. From the first time I gambled, I was basically chasing the original dopamine hit, whilst my base-line dopamine levels sunk lower. Learning about dopamine and how pleasure and pain are interlinked, is fascinating and useful to understanding addiction. Yet on it's own it doesn't quite tell the full picture, it's just a biology lesson in some ways. It doesn't explain 'why me'.
Would recommend acceptance and commitment therapy if anyone wants to turbo charge their recovery. 'The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living' is highly accessible and can be VERY effective at helping you to turn your life around.
Wish all who are struggling the very best. Don't let an addicted mind set limits on what you can do!
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