My Story - (The journey so far)

Hi, well done on 14 days. Please don't feel it is insignificant, we all start on day 1, it is what happens after this that counts. You sound really determined to rebuild your life and I hope you have all the help you need in place. Yes it does get easier and as you say you already feel better about yourself. I always describe the feeling I have as if a thick fog has been lifted from my life and I can now see clearly what my wife and family mean to me and what a good life I have. 

I am approaching 100 days and life is so much better without this evil in my life.

Stay strong and focussed on your goal

Thanks Bladesman, that's a good point.

Yes I am more determined than ever before, and I can do this and I will do this. Looking forward to sharing more.

Today hits 14 days GF for me. Mini celebration 🙂

Happy with the small milestone and looking forward to updating again at 1 month, then 2 months, etc 🙂

Congrats to everyone else who had a gamble free day, if we take it 1 day at a time we'll soon get there ☺ M

Thanks Klamm!
Day 16 & happy here.

Just been looking into ways of saving money today. Opened a new bank account with a better interest rate when making a regular deposit to it. Also considered stocks/shares but then thought, is this a form of gambling? Essentially there is a risk to it and therefore you could lose money, so is it a bad idea? - My instinct tells me it is so I am not going to do it, but does anyone have experience in that 'grey' area?- I know it is not directly gambling, and it is more "smart gambling" but there is still a risk.

Also if anyone has any tips on good savings accounts or places/ways to save money and make some money on their savings (without risk) do feel free to share 🙂 - From this month (as mentioned in my original story) I have put together a savings plan and if I can have this increasing a little bit, that would be nice 🙂 - Ultimately even if it is not increasing, I am still happy in the knowledge that it is not going to decrease, by going into the casino again... so there is a sigh of relief at least.

Hi michaelscott. Do you know was that thread removed that seemed to be advertising disciplined gambling? My blood was boiling and I was writing a post when it disappeared !!

Posted by: Charlieboy

Hi michaelscott. Do you know was that thread removed that seemed to be advertising disciplined gambling? My blood was boiling and I was writing a post when it disappeared !!

Do you mean the one in the intros forum, with the last paragraph about sports betting? - Yeah I think it got removed, I had it open on a tab to see who was going to respond, and after refreshing it, it just comes up "404 Not found" - My guess is it was removed!

Yeah that's what come up When I pressed reply button my rant disappeared lol

Good evening Michaelscott and Charlie,

Just to confirm the post in question had been flagged to Forum Admin.

As per the rules it was not deemed 'to be sensitive to how your messages may be viewed and perceived by others' and it was 'promoting gambling activities. '

As such we felt it best to remove the post and keep the Forum space a supportive space for recovery rather than a potential risk of triggering others.

Apologies that you were unable to post on the thread but after it was flagged to us we felt it best we took action.

We will continue to encourage the original poster to seek support, but without the promotion of gambling.

Kind regards

ChrisK

Forum Admin. 

Thanks Admin for the clarification.

As a side note to my diary - Enjoying day 19 today, not having the feeling of destroying my life for 19 days in a row feels great. Not much of an update otherwise, just posting to stay present (and to keep on track), reading the new intros and saying hi 🙂 

Hi michaelscott. Days are starting to tick up keep going. Stay strong and positive

Hey all,

I wanted to post a quick update as I haven't been on here in a while.

I unfortunately had a long afternoon at home alone, and boredom got the better of me. I found an account I still had active and had a small issue with sports betting (but did not completely destroy myself like I have often done in the past). One small 'innocent' bet lead to another (as it does and as you all know) and I ended up blowing more money than I had originally intended. The good news is, that I stopped myself before it got out of hand and I have set my account on a self exclusion for 5 years so I cannot reactivate it. I now have no means of online-betting anymore. I am accepting this as a small blip and not going to 'kick myself over it', so to speak, even though I regret my actions.

That said, I have still refrained from entering any land-based casino or buying any physical lottery tickets, I have also not entered any betting shops, so the path is still clear for me to make corrections.

I also received a new bank card today and wanted to share this in my update. I signed up for a free bank card (no overdraft facility) with a digital bank (I won't promote the name here). It's one of those digital banking things (I never tried digital banking before and I am more of a traditional bank person) - but actually, after I started to explore the features, you can 'turn off' any gambling transactions on the account. I know you can do this with a normal bank too, but on this one, you cannot reactivate and turn this setting back on for 48-hours. This seems to me like a good way to get rid of those short term urges that come, and prevents any problems happening from a short term urge that may occur. Even if I turned the setting back on, after 48hrs, I will have come to my senses and turned it off again. (Usually I don't always think in 'the moment' when I have been gambling but later on realise how stupid it is, or my thoughts were).

So yeah, that's a cool new feature I'm looking forward to trying as part of my recovery, and hopefully the app works nicely. If it is easy to use I will probably continue using it as my main bank account, but for now I will just test it out 🙂

Hope you all have a nice gamble-free day.