Hey Mav (always tickles me writing that),
I hope you are having a good day. I don’t know if you have ever done thought experiments, but I have a few now which work for me. Even though I am coming up to my year I get odd moments where a thought about gambling appears. Maybe I am low on money, or bored, or just day dreaming. Instead of pushing it away I play with it.
I picture myself logging on online and playing online poker. I then imagine myself playing, waiting for cards, winning a few, losing a few and then I get a bad beat and suddenly I am on tilt, just chucking money away, getting more frantic. Then I am on roulette, chasing my losses losing more. And suddenly all the hard work I have put in means nothing. I have to tell everyone I love I gambled again, and that makes me feel sick. I take a deep breath and smile, and remember why i can never gamble.
Sometimes I picture myself winning, but then I keep playing because I can’t stop until I have lost it all. I have lost hours and hours and hours of time, money and again, I have to tell everyone. Or I have to keep gambling to try and win it back, which is highly unlikely, and then I have to lie and the depression starts again and I am back to square 1.
These scenarios and more are based on my personal experience, your thought experiments will be based on your experiences.
I cannot, no matter how hard I try, ever imagine a positive gambling scenario. It’s impossible. If I win I will keep playing until I lose, and if I lose I will chase until I lose more.
And then I feel free again, and I am pleased with what I have achieved so far in my life, and how much more I want to achieve.
I remember the first time I heard about you, I thought it was amazing someone chose the name Maverick. It is obviously so close to my chest and something that comes up a lot in my therapy, how much I have been affected my whole life by my attitude to the name I was given by my dad. That’s one of my burdens in life, one I will grapple with all my life.
GA helps me, but the thing that helps me the most is remembering that I cannot win at gambling. Long term, no one can. And the mental damage it does is not worth it.
I hope you have a good day, take care and all my love.
Mav