My recovery journal

I've been having a read of recovery diaries and they've helped me so I thought I'd try and start my own. 

Background: 

- 27 years old 

- Living with flatmates in a rented house 

- Employed in a temporary position that has the potential to lead to a good job 

Gambling situation: 

- Started gambling in May 2020 (I honestly partly blame lockdown!) 

- Been gambling free for 3 weeks and 5 days now 

- online casino gambling only 

How it started: 

How I became a gambling addict is still a bit baffling to me as it's not something I ever imagined happening. Before May 2020 I don't recall ever gambling before in my life (I'd maybe bought a scratch card when I turned 16 but that would have been it). In May I was working from home due to the pandemic and a random advert flashed up that offered a free entry to the lottery. As there wasn't anything to lose I went ahead and entered. A few days later I got an email for a promotion to the 'instant win games' on the lottery website. I decided to give it a go and was very happy when I won £50 for spending just £2. But from there that was essentially how it all started.

My gambling journey:

For the next couple of weeks I went back to those instant win games repeatedly, it didn't have too much financial impact at this stage as I would withdraw whenever I won a decent amount. This tended to go back into them again but I was probably breaking even at this point. However, I did start to notice my mental health deteriorate. When I was playing these games time would seem to stand still a little and suddenly I would realise hours had gone by and I hadn't eaten or drank anything. Or I would stay up late playing them and mess up my sleeping pattern completely. 

From there I decided to open up accounts with some other online casinos and soon I was playing the slots every day. At first I genuinely (and naively) thought I was making money as I had a couple of bigish wins. But soon I started to notice that everything I had won was going straight back into gambling with extra money from my savings. It didn't take long for me to burn through my savings completely but at this point I was so addicted I barely noticed and certainly didn't care. I was also (again naively) convinced that at some point I would have a huge win and then I could quit having made my money back. I was using my credit cards non stop for day to day living at this point as I had no funds left and it was during this time that I also took out a loan. I told myself the loan would be to pay off these credit cards at a lower interest rate, but ultimately it just funded my addiction. 

In addition to my finances, my work, friendships, and mental health were all being massively impacted. My job is very independent which means I can go months before someone realises how little I've done and this was paired with working from home, I'm sure most people will realise why this was not a great thing during my addiction. My friendships were taking their toll as I was very solitary during this time, I didn't want anyone to see I was gambling so would spend a lot of time in my room. I'd also become quite irritable and anxious whilst gambling. I did try at this point to self exclude from the main gambling sites, but with constant new ones to register with this only helped for a couple of days at most. 

The breaking point: 

The breaking point when I realised I really needed helped came at the end of 2020. At the end of November I received my monthly salary and without even thinking I went through almost all of it before I had paid my rent. This led to me having to borrow a few hundred pounds from a friend just to get through the month. After paying my rent I had a tiny amount left for the month and I still managed to gamble that. At one point during that month I had a big win on the online slots which would have helped make even a small dent in some of my debts, but I went through it all trying to win more and ended up not withdrawing a penny. It was at this point that I realised that it didn't matter how much I won, I would always keep gambling unless I quit completely. 

Quitting progress: 

I signed up to Gamstop at the end of 2020 and haven't gambled now for nearly 4 weeks. I still think about gambling a lot and I find myself feeling anxious when I want to gamble but having the access completely cut off feels quite good. This month was also the first month where I've been able to pay my rent, bills and food shopping all just from my wages rather than credit cards which feels pretty great. 

My goals: 

- Keep being gamble free! I know this will be the hardest one and I know many people do relapse but I am determined not to go back to that. 

- Get debt free in 2 years! This one will for sure take a while (currently about 12.5K in debt) but without any gambling I should be able to chip away at this each month. 

- Get back on track at work! With my work being from home currently and being very independent it was easy to put in the bare minimum during my gambling days. I now want to get back on track putting in the effort that I used to and focusing on my career. 

- Learn to live with it! My main struggle since quitting has been the anger towards myself for what i've done. Moving forward I hope that I can accept this as a difficult part in my life that I was able to overcome. 

If you've managed to read this far then well done as this was a lot longer than I anticipated! Moving forward I hope to keep going with these diary entries and updating my progress. I feel like it will help me personally and if even one other person resonates with it then that would be worth it.