I’ve been floating around this forum for about five months now and enough is enough. My problem is the online slots, and it's the usual story - started with some tempting offers, a few decent wins, and then suddenly I've lost hours and hours and thousands of pounds. I've signed up for counselling and I've self excluded from sites. I want to be as honest as I can here, as one of my problems is self-deception or flat out denial. Live in a very rural area so GA is too far away for me, am looking at Gamstop but I can't register online at the moment.
Will check in here as often as I can, let’s see if I can do Day 1.
Going to go ahead with 1 day. Small steps I guess, but whilst I feel really rubbish about getting through this month to payday, I'm hoping to make myself proud.
Hi Lil30, I hope you're ok. Thank you for taking your time to show your support on my diary. Well done for acknowledging that you have a gambling issue and well done for taking preventive measures to beat this horrible illness known as gambling addiction. Congratulations for completing 1 GF day. It's a long journey and we must show a lot of patience and resilience especially in the early days. I'm sure you will achieve success through this amazing forum. I wish you all the best in your recovery. Take care.
Pras
I just joined today. I am determined to beat this. Let’s do it!
Hi @peter200 - we can do it!
One of the hardest things for me is dwelling in what is lost. I just need to get through to payday and pay some immediate bills. It's also very hard around Christmas...
Okay 2 day GF - I'm still feeling lots of guilt and worried about the future. Think this may be the hardest time right now....
Hi
So you have every right to feel guilt right now... You own your feelings of course. But at the same time you have every right to feel immense pride and courage for finally admitting defeat to this horrible illness and combatting it. You decide which is the healthier mindset to adopt moving forward... :o)
Listen - I feel your pain. Day 2 and left with a s**t ton of worry and anxiety as a consequence of your actions... Taking stock of the huge mountain to climb in order to reach dry land again... However I heard somewhere (on gamcare I think) that a mountain climber focuses 95% of his attention to looking up when climbing a mountain... I find this to be a powerful analogy to take on board, especially in the early days - especially to manage your emotional well-being when moving forward. Dare I say you feel like s**t now but there will be times on this journey where you will feel a whole lot worse would you believe... However stay on this path and there will be times where you feel a whole lot better, where after a while you'll start to see the improvements in your life take shape as you get clean time under your belt and guess what... Those good times will become more and more frequent as time goes on... And yes maybe even the gambling pain will just become a distant memory over the long haul.
However for now don't overwhelm yourself with it all... You can clean up a bit of the mess every day... The money WILL sort itself out in the end. Your anxiety is probably due to staring blankly at the past which generates fear, regret, pain, anger... Visualise what you want your future to be and then day by day work towards that. Please remember Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is a successful recovery.
What can help with the above? Here's a tip. Go and read through the success stories section of this forum. Great place to start. Also if you get a chance read through my diary... You'll recognise the pain you're feeling in my first few entries and if you get to the end hopefully you'll recognise the potential for change and even inner peace and tranquility... As for the money... Don't worry your finances will settle if you stay on this path... And a good indicator of a good recovery is relqinuishing yourself of that original attachment to money as time passes (whatever that may be for you) - mine was not having any value or respect for the concept of money, which I certainly do now I only deal in cash so money is now a tangible thing that gratefully comes in and painfully goes out of my wallet on a frequent basis. Good luck, stay strong and keep in touch.
Thanks Signalman, yours is such a positive and helpful post! Just what I needed to read. Visualising what I want and how I want to be is much easier with the success stories here on the site, so that is really good advice! Thanks again, I will definitely stay in touch.
You're more than welcome. I only come on once or twice a week these days but please do not hesitate to post on mine if you need any advice or support. Also there are many others on here who are absolute gold dust so identify them and tap into them like I did, they will be only happy to help... Without them I'd probably wouldn't be sending this to you and instead hiding in the corner of some filthy bookies waiting for the football results to come in. Good luck with everything.
3 day GF - yesterday was fine, went out and actually didn’t think about gambling when I got in (which is what, I would normally do - attempt to win back the money I spent out!) been reading the forums here, finding I have a bit more time. Trying to read more...
4 day GF...
Keep it up man...I am on day 8 with no betting and its been strangely easy! No urges or anything! To be fair my wife told me that if I bet again then I am out for good! My inspiration is my wife and 2 kids...
Thanks! I just need to find other things to do on my downtime, but I've not had that many urges as yet....
5 days GF - weird today, it occurred to me that I never really knew just how much money I had (or didn’t have!) I was always waiting for a transfer to come though, or go out, or paypal to update etc etc. Now that the dust is settling it has made me more than a little anxious as I realise just how much money I wasted, but I am a little proud of a full 5 days. My mood seems to be stabilising a little, though it is on the down side somewhat. Very busy at work, which helps. Thanks for reading.
Hi Lil30,
Welcome to the Forum, and well done for sharing your story with us. It seems like you’ve been trying to do something about your gambling problem for a long time but you didn’t find the right time until now. Well done for taking the initiative to do something about your situation.
Maybe you’d like to contact our free phone Helpline on: 0808 8020 133 and speak to one of our advisers from time to time to distract and encourage yourself to abstain from gambling.
I’m also glad to learn that you’ve requested for counselling support, and you’ve also self excluded from various sites and I’m wondering if you self excluded using Gamstop?
Gamstop is very effective and has helped a lot of our callers and hopefully it will help you too.
You can contact Gamstop on: 0800 138 6518, and also check their website for more information on how you’d benefit from them here: https://www.gamstop.co.uk/participating-companies
I wish you all the best in your journey to recovery, and please keep posting!
Kind regards,,
Beatrice
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