Hey Losingitslowly,
I wanted to write this to you as I see that you have relapsed. An older wiser woman from my Gamblers Anonymous once said this in regards to relapsing (she may have directed this comment towards me after a relapse, I don’t remember for sure, but), she said, “Even when we relapse, we don’t lose our clean time, and that clean time was still clean time.”
When she said this, it helped me feel better, because I would beat myself up (mentally and emotionally) every single time I’d relapse. Her comment is accurate though. If we would have gambled instead of being clean on those clean days, we would have caused so much more destruction than what we already had caused on our non-clean days.
I share this not to encourage relapses nor to lessen the negativity of relapses, but instead to share that we should be graceful towards ourselves as we are working to get rid of this demon/addiction. The goal is still to quit for good, but when we stumble, we should not view that stumbling as a reason to give up the fight and throw it all away and let the addiction win and just gamble for the rest of our lives (that is what we should not do). We should instead, look to pick ourselves up, see what we can do to better our lives that doesn’t involve gambling, and appreciate what we have (as there are always people out there who have less than us).