Hi!
A little update on how things are going for me. I’m now 10 days clean from gambling. A lot of things have happened personally that has kept me busy, and today I knew that the busy-ness would be coming to an end and really felt that urge to go – realizing I tended to gamble when I had spare time and no structure. But I am staying true to myself and fighting that urge and made myself work on some things and take time to write on the gambling help websites. I did end up taking a week off, last week. I then decided to finally get myself off this anti-depressant that I had been tapering down off of for months now (okay-ed by doctor of course) and I had been going through severe withdrawals, so I submitted for a personal leave of absence – kind of tieing everything together – stopping gambling, going through the withdrawals, and once those withdrawals stop (coming soon, it’s already been getting a lot better), going to be looking into finding a new job and looking into going to school. I took my own advice, some advice from people on forums, and took the leap of finally getting out of the call center field I’ve been stuck in for years. I am going to find something new and take a leap of faith. I know a horrible job is a huge reason I do gamble – to escape. When you’re in a job – whether you want to admit it or not it’s the majority of what you do during waking hours and if you don’t like it, it’ll slowly kill you inside. So, I still have my job, but I’m on a leave and hoping to find a new one. In the midst of all this was some legal issues with my sister’s boyfriend so I was helping them out with that and being there for them. I’m feeling pretty good… withdrawals are still there but getting better (its hard to explain, but the medication Effexor is horrible to get off of and it takes so long to finally feel “normal” again). I’m damn proud of myself for not gambling throughout this 10 days and I’m gonna keep fighting it. That’s all I can do! It’ll be a bit tough financially on my boyfriend and I during my leave and finding a new job, but it has to happen. If I don’t do it now, I don’t know when another opportunity will come. Saw my therapist again yesterday and that was really good! It made me feel good about my decisions – I laid it all out to her – explained everything that’s been happening and she agrees with what I’m doing. She really helped me to realize I am one that needs structure, no doubt about it. I always kind of knew I thrived better with structure to my day. But I’m now realizing how important that really is. It’s when I have no plans and am bored that I am most likely to gamble. So I’m going to try and plan my days with structure and instead of overwhelming myself with this big task – find a job that I can do while going to school that doesn’t make you wanna shoot myself – I need to break it down into little bite-size pieces and schedule it out. Write down the goal and all the different branches that stem from that goal in order to achieve it.
Here’s to not listening to that horrible little voice trying to get you to gamble!! The little voice was nagging me today pretty bad for a bit – but I was vocal about it – to my sister and boyfriend and they helped remind me not to do it, and it felt good to be honest that it was happening a bunch and own up to it. Usually I’d internalize it until it bugged me enough to give in. NOT ANYMORE!!
I also mentioned to my therapist that I am interested in the counseling field and was thinking that I would make a great addiction counselor once I have more recovery time under my belt. I felt kind of silly, since I’m just now starting my recovery – but she made a good point. That a lot of addiction counselors go into those fields because they once were there, too. And starting recovery and then looking into it and educating myself and taking steps to make that profession happen are all part of my recovery, too. And it would all be helping me and making that much more capable of helping others, while helping myself. Just a thought – not sure that’s what I want exactly but I think I’d make a damn good one 😉