Well. Things are not good. Decided two weeks ago that as I was feeling confident about not being at risk from certain types of gambling that I deserved as much a chance as anyone else at winning the lottery so bought a couple of lottery tickets for the week. After work last Sunday ended up having too much wine to drink. Went out after midnight, withdrew £200 cash from the cash point and got taxi to the casino. It was closed for refurbishment. Got taxi back home. Played the lottery again last week and had day out arranged for yesterday (sunday) to watch the footie in the pub with guys from work. Decided on Saturday that the guys from work would be putting football bets on and I wanted to be involved so I took the £150 that was in my flat (what remained of the £200 I had lifted from the bank the previous Sunday) and went off to place my bets for the football on Sunday. Placed £20 on a couple of bets for Sunday, ended up also putting £20 of bets on for the Saturday games and then lost my remaining £110 in the machine. Sunday came, bets lost, ended up spending the cash I had on me in the fruit machine in the pub. Withdrew the last £130 from my account, went to the bookies and lost it in a machine. Now I’ve got four days to wait until payday, a couple of eggs and a tin of tuna and 7p. A familiar situation but one, I had hoped, I would never be in again.
Conclusions –
1) I thought I was OK with raffle tickets and lottery tickets but they were the starting point for what quickly escalated into uncontrollable gambling.
2) I need to stop drinking alcohol. I’m making excuses now that it’s OK because I’m making friends and being sociable but when the social time ends and I end up on my own I’m a liability.
So, back to square one, no more gambling of any sort and no more drinking for any reason. I desperately want the frame of mind back that I had when I was in residential therapy so need to work at getting that back.
Some positives for the last two weeks, my essays and exams have gone well. Got one more to go on Thursday. Also I joined match.com and it seems to be going quite well.