Your story is very similar to mine and many others on here and basically the end result of every compulsive gambler. The only good thing I can say is your binge happened very fast. It’s like someone that passed away quickly vs someone who suffered from an illness slowly over time and then died, like most people on here battling this demon for 1,2,5,10,20,30 years of the feeling you have after that loss. Imagine feeling that feeling over and over week in and week out of relapsing for so long. You felt it, you learned from it, you admitted you have a problem, and you will now never make that mistake again I can almost promise you that just by reading your post and seeing how upset you are. What stuck with me most is a similarity to myself in which sparked your first bet, a fight with your lady. I was the same way.. every time my gf and I would get into a fight, I would travel to the casino to gamble – I would forget about all of my problems while I was there. The second thing is the substance abuse, I too was and still am going through that to this day, guys like us who have been through that love to gamble because it gives us the same euphoria that drugs did and like you I was able to quit drugs way easier than I was able to quit gambling. You mentioned you have a lot of great things going for you man- great job, gf, material items… we all want that stuff and then we realize once we have it, something is still missing. I wish I could tell you what it was and I wish I could figure it out myself, but I think we will one day. Counselling is a great option for sure in which I have tried with some success- trying to go back and figure out deep rooted issues why we used drugs, gambled, filled voids with things that released dopamine and made us forget about our issues. It’s good you came here after you lost man, and don’t think of the 50k, consider that you only lost 15, the 50 was never yours.. I know it sucks bro…but with your good salary you will make the 15 back in a couple of months I assume and will never look back and never gamble again.. like I said, it was short and painful , rather than long and painful and I would be grateful for that. I hope you do what it takes to combat this demon and don’t chase that 15k because I can promise you through experience that will double, triple etc etc should you continue to gamble. I am 30 this year also and we are considered young to a lot of people on here, at GA, and they always told me they wish they had stopped at our age before they lost millions, businesses, remortgaged homes, lost their partners , families, became homeless.. etc etc. This is a bottomless pit and it’s a very dark addiction that truly can always get worse.. I talk through experience and what I’ve seen it do to myself and people I know and have read about. I wish you the best man- keep posting and know things will be ok… take care.
