It is progress to be able to walk away with a win. But at the same time it is still a relapse.
I have experienced it before also. I’m not sure about how you were previous to becoming a CG but a lot of gamblers including myself are actually quite tight with money in real life (I’ve always been a very good saver and I assume you are quite financially astute as well). Yet at the peak of our CG addiction we become desensitized to the bursts of dopamine that a win produces. We need bigger doses which come in the form of larger wins or more consecutive wins.
There were times where I’d win 1-2k and not even blink.
However once I stopped gambling regularly…over time my brain “reset” itself towards normality and even when I did have minor relapses, even a couple of hundred (win or lose) became significant to me again. The thought of going back to very high stakes scared the hell out of me…whereas I didn’t even blink an eye putting 1k on a hand of blackjack this time last year.
In other words I think it’s important that we regain our sense for the value of money again. It’s tough after making very high stakes and high risk bets over a prolonged time. It will take at least 3-6 months of heavily reduced/no gambling to reset our brains so we are not desensitized to “small” wins and losses and we start to value money again (perspective).