Dear all, not sure if this is the correct chapter to post this , if it needs to be elsewhere please let me know and I will move it.

I just want to write this to tell you how I have stopped gambling, and how that makes me feel. All in order to maybe help one or some of you. I never searched for help online even when I did try to find 

out why I was gambling. Why on earth was I so self destructive ?? I am not sure what exactly caused it but I do know the gambling did overall  NOT make me feel better.

A little background on me..

I only started gambling 3 years ago. I did start in probably a typical way,  got an email saying I had free money to try on a casino. I got 5 euro’s free, and I thought, well why not ?

As i did not know how it worked I incidently bet with that 5 euro, so  i only had one spin and I won 1200 euro’s.. I was SO happy. I did a payout, which was not an issue strangely, and then didn;t play for weeks I think. 

Then I had a very tough time in my private life and unexpectedky became single. I was so sad and alone, and that is when I started playing in the evenings. So for sure the misery I went through triggered my

gambling as it actually did make me feel happy, when I won. In the begining I was wise and when i deposited 50 euro and could pay out 150 euro I did.  I did lose sometimes but overall not much, as I did  pay out when a 

I had some winnings. My private life howvere did not get better and I started feeling depressed. I started to play more and more and started using my savings. I had quite some savings, around 50.000 euro’s and one 

evening I had a lucky evening and I started incrasining my bets. I played with 40 euro’s at the time with a certain game, just lost 2000 euro with that until I won..45000 euro. I tried to make a payout, but unfortunately

with that casino the payout was limited to 5000 euro’e per month. I was so upset with that as I realized I would not be able to wait that long and indeed…I didn’t. Within the course of 3 weeks I lost everything except

 10.000 euro which I managed to pay out. Fast forward..last gambling months I started spending more and more of my savings. When I won, sometimes substantial amounts, I did not stop but continued to

play until I lost everything. I woke up every mornng feeling miserable, and I felt more and more depressed. At the same time I realized that I seemingly diid not play to win because when I won, I would most of the times 

not pay  that out. I realized when I lost,. I wouldn’t play for a couple of days and I would feel miserable in those days. I didn’t allow myself to buy nice clothes anymore, presents for my friends or family, and started saving

on food, alll so that I would not run into problems with paying my mortgage for example because  of my gambling addiction. And that also made me feel really bad.

I did very well realize that that depressed feeling, that feeling of loss, the shame, the struggle to continue to be able to pay the mortgage was present almost every single day, and I lost almost all of my savings. 

Including that big winning I had, we are talking about close to  a 100.000 euro’s. And it was obvious it was not about the winnings anymore, it was about playing and the adrenaline kick that gave me.

I started trying to protect myself and set limits. I decided not to play anymore with casino’s which would hold your pay out for a couple of days. That didn’t work as you coudl easily change the deposit limit, and a week 

later I coudl deposit thousands of euro’s again, lost it , and felt miserable again for a couple of days, did it again, felt miserable, and so on. I started blocking myself from casino’s, only to open a new account with less relaible 

ones. 

Until 2 months ago all my savings were gone. Then I said to myself, I cannot waste my life and feel like this every single day, to the point that I was considering to commit suicide. I was feeling depressed still, but potentially

not anymore becasue of what happened in my private life but becasue of the gambling. I tried to find a programm that could help me as obviously I was to weak myself to do what I really wanted, which was

playing for fun ( impossible by now, as I tried that and i failed) or stop. So i found this programm, which is ridiculously cheap, called Gamban. I believe i paid only 12 euro’s. Intiallially  I tried K9 web protector or something,

but that didn;t work for me as I coudl change the settings myself. With Gamban you cannot. You can not delete it or change it ( maybe unless you are a computer wizzard) and when you contact them to have it changed

they won’t. It is there for a year. 

The first days I felt somewhat sad, mainly because I do like playing games in general and I felt bad I could not continue with this which i liked so much in a controled way. But I realized at this point I couldn’t. after a 

couple of days I started feeling proud. My salary arrived and for the first time in 2 years I had money left at the end of the month. I didn’t feel depressed anymore. And now, almost 2,5 months later I feel happier and happier again.

I took a netflix prescription for those hours when I am bored in the evening, and watch a good movie or follow a series. I feel so utterly relieved ! It is unbelievable what a change this has made to the way I feel and the

way I look at myself. In my view gambling addiction is a disease, so I should not be filled with shame. The games are made to make you addicted, just like sigarettes. The fact that I finally ( a little late) found a way to

work on this and fix myself, should make me proud,. Occasioannally I do feel regret when I think f the money I lost, But I also realize that is a useless feeling as it will make me feel bad but won’t bring the money back.

So I force myself to forget about that and look at what I am building again.