Good work on the 33 days.
Wanted to comment as my story is similar. We around the same age, my life time losses are close to the same and my income is also north 6 figures. One of the things that was a big wake up call when was I realised a guy I used to hang out with was earning about 1/3 of my income but had a higher net worth. How the hell does that happen? GAMBLING!! It took the bleeding obvious to make me realise. But of course my solution was to gamble more.
Anyway I just wanted to add you need to really check out a book by Allen Carr called ‘The Easy Way to stop gambling’. Check out my other posts as I elaborate more on it. I have tried countless times to kick the habit. This is the first time I can honestly say I have totally different perspective on gambling. Don’t use willpower alone – you will fail! Instead the solution lies in how we see gambling and why we think we keep needing to have a bet. Once you change your perspective and realize the urge to place a bet is just our psychology trying to get us back to the ‘normal’ state of mind, the urge just goes away. The contentness we think we feel when we gamble is how non-gamblers feel all the time!! Please, if you are serious about your recovery, read this book.
The other part of this is getting past the losses and putting some financial controls in place. For me this was hard also. The constant thinking about what if? What if I had done this, what if I had done that. You need to forgive yourself and accept the loss. Make small goals, get gazelle intense about achieving them. Maybe set a savings or investment goal. If you have debt, list them all on paper smallest to largest and just snowball paying them off – one after the other. Live on a written budget, cut up and close off the credit cards (research and go listen to Dave Ramsey) and just work your butt off to make up those lost years. This is the only way – there is no easy way out of this, it is going to require hard work but the pay off will be worth it!
Imagine how different your life can be in just 6 months from now if you stop gambling. In a year or two, this may all be just a bad memory.
That’s how I am choosing to deal with it. I intensely believe my life will be so much better and different (in a positive way) 12 months from now, that this horrible period in my life will be nothing but a bad memory.
Good luck this time around.