Originally posted by Carolyn
… If I had three wishes …
Good morning Carolyn, my name is Larry and I am a compulsive gambler, my last bet was August 13, 2009. Welcome to GT, a place where you will find that you are not alone when it comes to the problems and consequences of you gambling, and are also not alone in working on recovering form this baffling and insidious addiction of compulsive gambling.
Your topic title and parts of your sharing looks as though they could come from a Dear Abby column, and I am pretty sure that the advice in that reply would be for you to move on with your life also. Your ex-husband has found something that he may have been searching for anyhow, and you have found that his and your love was not as strong as your addiction. Here and in most recovery rooms we have another term, one we use for our addiction but can apply to all aspects of our lives as well; "Let go and let God"; moving on takes more strength than we can find in just ourselves, or in the advice from others.
As for the wishes, the key part of the statement is "if", "if only" is something that many, including myself, hold onto for many reasons; the ifs, wishing, and just hoping for something to happen, or not to have happened, is a good way to express regrets, but is also something that only holds us back in living life, and is definitely not something to use in recovery. In recovery such wishing keeps us form the actual doing; in recovery we have to "do", we have to take actions to make changes and work on the ways and means to make the changes work for us — Recovery works if we work it, it don’t if we wont.
However, part of your last wish can be realized, you can live a more happy ever-after-life by living it gambling free, a CG can not gamble for anything; gambling for us only destroys us more and separates us from even more things and people. In working of recovery and changing the character flaws that the addiction feeds on, we can once again be happy and be the person that we were meant to be, we do not have to just wish for this.
Keep coming back here and using all of the services that GT offers, learn from the mistakes of others, and yourself, and just as important, from the success that many experience for a greater part of their recovering process; recovery is a process to guide us in living a more normal way, it is not a plan for achieving perfection. Set up barriers to help you overcome the urges or temptations that will ***** during this journey, barriers that will give you time to think rationally before gambling again, and ones that will provide you with quality gambling free time that will allow for any of the needed changes to take place.
God’s speed, use your Higher Power to guide and strengthen you.LarryThanks to my Higher Power, My 3G’s – God, GA, and GT, "Day Two Is Another Day Behind" and with the help from all , I will continue to remain gambling free.