OH IDI!!
You and your deleted posts!
I read your post just as I was going out to work last night and started a reply to it, by the time I’d finished and went to post my reply, you had edited it and added quite a bit more. So I changed my reply a bit and all night when I’ve had 5 mins here or ten minutes there I’ve added and altered it, go to post it this morning and it had gone!
Third time lucky!
You mention that there two types of gamblers, escape and action, and I don’t disagree with you. However I believe there are more types of gamblers than that, I know that the last time I was in crown court I was described as a pathological gambler. The judge was very interested in this description and researched it and I think he looked at guidance published by the world health organisation, I did see a print out of the evidence submitted and there was a list with about 7 or 8 different types of compulsive gambler. I’ve tried googling it the best I can come up with is here http://www.calpg.org/identifying-types-of-gamblers/ . This wasn’t the list the judge was shown but it just goes to show that although some people believe compulsive gamblers fall into one of two groups there are actually many more groups. Just going off the two types you mention though, escape and action, does this not point more to the reasons we are actually gambling, rather than a specific way of recovery for each?
As far as I can tell by reading peoples stories on therapy sites, we all suffer from the same thing, whether we are just escaping from life or something in particular or whether we “on one” big style because we want to give it the “big one” coz that’ll show ‘em!
We have all at some stage started gambling, and for some reason or other have found it very hard to stop. We all have ended up in dire straits because of gambling, and found all the sites like this one because we genuinely wanted help to stop, I would hazard a guess that most of us had tried loads of times to stop without help and found it too hard.
There are a lot of characteristics that all CG’s share but there are lots of traits that don’t apply to all of us, I suppose though if we answer yes to 7 of the 20 GA questions we are as thy say, a CG.
I agree it’s not nice to be tarred with the same brush so I apologise if I’ve ever offended you, because I am well aware I have used the phrase “CG’s can be the masters of manipulation” dozens of times over the years on GT. All the opinions I express in my posts are my own opinions based on my personal experiences and observations. Obviously the CG I have the most experience with, and observed the most is myself. I am forever saying it is my biggest fault fearing people will go the same way as me. But I did. And at nearly every step up the progressive CG ladder I thought “That’s it I can’t sink any lower”. I’ve heard enough people say it even on GT only to return weeks, months or years later after crossing another line.
Manipulation, deceit, and lying aren’t only traits that action gamblers possess any CG is capable of crossing these lines, even escape gamblers, expanding their own personal boundaries and doing things quite matter-of-factly, things that only days or weeks ago would be abhorrent to them. Likewise some action gamblers will have the tenacity to stop gambling before they resort to lying and stealing.
It is really good for you that you know what you were escaping from, if you’re absolutely sure about this. We all have our own F+F and some are very understanding and supportive, some are not. I am sorry that you have to deal with a F+F member, and I know it’s something you’ve posted about for a long time, so it’s obviously an ongoing situation.
I was quite shocked at the rest of what you wrote about F+F in general. As you’ve deleted you’re post I won’t make any further comment. Suffice to say when I read it I got the impression that you were tarring all F+F with the same brush, and as you’ve already expressed your frustration about when this recently happened to you I thought, “You can’t have your cake and eat it IDI”.
At the end of the day IDI you’ve gone 34 days without any sort of gambling, that’s no more than anybody else over the same period of time. You might reach 34 years one day at a time and your controlling F+F might still refuse to accept that you’ve stopped. So what. At the end of the day the most important statistic has surely got to be….another gamble free day.
If we all agreed on everything IDI, wouldn’t forums become a lot duller?