Well. Week 6 and it only took me until Tuesday night to lose the money I’d won on Saturday. Gambling establishments are clever and they know how to manipulate their customers. The poker site blocked my withdrawal request and were making me jump through hoops to release the funds. Whether it was me justifying it to myself or really just wanting to get over the whole incident I played with the £525 I had in my online account until it was gone. It took a couple of hours. Felt real frustration and contempt for the poker site for blocking my withdrawal request which I requested immediately. I obviously had to wait until they released the funds before I self excluded. Anyway, lost my “virtual” balance and then self excluded. I’ve self excluded from this site numerous times over the years for 180 days at a time. This time I self excluded for life and felt happy that I’ve drawn a line under it and I’m moving on. No urges at all to gamble since. I feel the same way about gambling as I did a few weeks back before it happened so still really happy about my recovery. It’s 6 weeks now since I have been out of residential therapy. 6 weeks of always having money in the bank before payday 🙂 6 weeks of never being hungry 🙂
Still, the remainder of the week threw up another couple of incidents. Went to the pub quiz on Thursday night with my new friend from work. We started off well but fell behind on the music round. At the end of the quiz I noticed the barmaid out on the floor selling raffle tickets. Alarm bells immediately rang in my head as I knew I was in a difficult situation. I decided to wait and see how my friend responded when she came to our table. The raffle was for a rollover prize which was currently sitting at just over £100. Tickets cost a pound and the owner of the winning raffle ticket took part in a higher or lower card game to win the money.
My friend bought two tickets.
I bought a ticket.
Why, because my situation dictates that I cannot let this person know I am a compulsive gambler. Partly because he is my boss at work and probably because I’m still in the early stages of a new friendship and want to fit in. He knows I’ve gambled in the past and that I’m no longer betting on football but I felt for me to refuse to buy a ticket would have sent alarm bells ringing and may have led to an awkward situation. Neither of us won the raffle but, still, more questions are raised now about the motivation for being at the quiz. Does the quiz now play second fiddle to the raffle? I don’t know. Time will tell. Again, I can only try and draw positives from the situation as it hasn’t led to any urges.
Then, on Saturday, we were about to do a stocktake at work and we had run out of pens. My boss asked me to nip across to the bookies and get some. What was I supposed to do? I’ve not set foot in a bookies for over 4 months. I was a little nervous walking over but I felt I would be OK and I was. I was in and out in 20 seconds. Grabbed the pens and left. No feelings at all when I was in there. No feelings afterwards. Well, maybe a little pleased with myself that I had been able to do it so easily.
Other than that, was overplaying the playstation so have addressed that and now only going to play at the weekends. For the next three weeks anyway as I have a lot of uni work (essays and tests) due in, all of which counts towards my final grade.
I’ve been overspending on food. Too many takeaways. So I spent £30 on a weekly shop, all healthy stuff, to try and sort that issue. Still think I’m being bit careless with my money as still adjusting to actually having some.
I’m giving up on trying so hard to make friends with my flatmates. I think I’ve been trying to force it too much and I might be coming across as pushy or desperate. I’ve made invitations to all of them, the majority of which have been ignored so if I make friends or don’t, at least I’ve tried. If it happens, it happens. I won’t try to force it any more.
Decided to stop thinking about gamble free days. I’m doing good and that’s what counts 🙂