Hi Mav, you are on your own personal journey of recovery. Please continue to use whatever support you can to stop for you.
How I stopped was I became as addicted to this site . I read posts every few mins, I posted onto lots of threads, I used the helpline and all the groups .
It doesn’t matter where anyone else is . This is your journey and you can beat this .
I really thought last summer that I would never stop.
I felt I couldn’t .
I didn’t find new hobbies straight away and it’s not easy . Even tonight I found myself thinking could I? Should I?
Thankfully I didn’t.
Life has a way of filling itself once we stop. But it definitely takes a little time for our brain to feel normal.
The buzz… I think the secret is to let our brain “normalise ” so that it doesn’t crave the buzz.
You will realise this has happened when one day you, quite soon. You are doing something nice like having a meal out or a great conversation and u will think I am really happy!!
You won’t need the buzz. It will be replaced by a longer lived contentment . Kinda like instead of burning an exciting firework, burn a big piece of coal which will give you a warm
Glow for a long time!!
Hope this all makes sense . Just remember others will chose to gamble or not, but you are master of your own destiny.. And I know you have a great gamble free future ahead of you