Hi Butch
Well done on telling the family. It’s the hardest thing to do. It will leave you very low and ashamed. I still am. Today is day 15 without a gamble for me, but the hardest now is the wreck that my life is and how that has impacted on my wife and son. She works for my business and now we have no work due to gambling/ depression and a series of bad decisions I made last year – namely to gamble instead of doing the work and making good decisions. I am starting to remember all the time I spent gambling and it hurts me to the bone, how I was unable to think of the future. Even when I wasn’t gambling, I think I was thinking of it all the time.
The most frightening part of this is that I do not know how I will earn money in the future. How I will close the company down, bearing in my mind the debts I have allowed to build up both personally and business wise. This is the worst illness in the world as it steals so much from us, not just money. It is the self respect, self loathing, and time spent away from the family.
I am having new episodes of self harm brought on the sheer self hatred I feel. I have started hitting myself in the face and head butting walls. This is no normal. I cannot get out of my head the the waste of time. I can clearly remember the time I spent gambling last year and how many times I said it was the last time. I do not know why i didn’t seek help sooner – I knew I had a gambling problem.
I would be in a completely different place right now.
Stay strong BU, if you can do it we all can. I know I have to push through this one day at a time, and I have to let the past go and focus on the future, but thinking of the future is so difficult at the moment. I am consumed with self pity and regret.
Good luck