Hello James ,

Great job reaching out for help.

I have been a gambler for 5 years and I always thought I was in control or had a strong desire to be in control. My recovery could actually only start when I had admitted the I was defeaten by my addiction. Just to be blunt, we cannot gamble and control ourself, because if we could we would stopped and have not accumulated a debt.

There are three steps here on this site that help you to stop gambling.

1. Money
Restrict access to money and give someone your finances temporarily.
2.Time
Think about how you want to spend your time with non gambling activities.
3. Access
Make it hard for yourself to visit casino’s site, by installing software that will block casino websites, ask for self exclusion on casinos ect.

Keep strong and keep posting.

Kind regards

Following on from Joerdg’s good advice – I would add:

4. Get good support for yourself. If you are able to talk to someone you trust in your family or friendship circle – who you know will support you in this. You could also consider a self help group like gamblers’ anonymous http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations
Or you could see a counselor – as you are a student you should be able to access free counseling from UCF https://caps.sdes.ucf.edu/

Obviously, because of the current situation there may have to be other ways of reaching out – but I think most services are using skype or similar instead of face to face meetings.

There are also the support groups here – and on Monday’s and Thursday’s there are facilitated groups for new members – check the calendar under “support groups” for the times.