[Dark Energy]

Day#25,
nice number.

[Dark Energy]

congratulation on the 9 months mark, I am sure you will calibrate the one-year mark soon.

[Dark Energy]

congrats Don on Day#1, it is a start and you look motivated to change and this is important.

keeping the money away is the best thing that can be done to guarantee recovery.

[Dark Energy]

thanks Don for your support,

hi JVR I think yes I have ADHD, but really I think I have anxiety and depression as well, I am not sure if this is a temporary thing that will go after 6 months or a year of recovery. but the focus at work is really something that I daily struggle with and I feel bad about it once I back home.

I have searched for a few supplements for anxiety and mood regulation, I will experiment with them next month.. and for sure I have to visit a doctor to check if I really have ADHD, I hope I can find a good doctor because it is easy to trick inexperienced one since I know all the symptoms.

finally, today is Day#24, 3 more days to receive my salary, I am almost penniless at this stage but everything is covered till payday, this was one of the hardest months for me and I am glad I will pass it without borrowing money from anyone, I didn’t borrow money from friends and family for the last 3 or 4 years and I need to keep it this way till the end of my life.

[Dark Energy]

thank you Albuseverus for your support.

today is Day#21, this is the first milestone in my gambling recovery, the next will be 45 days, then 70, 90, and 188 days.
45days look easy to achieve but at the 70 days milestone, I will really have a sense of achievement because I didn’t reach that level for almost a year.

overall I have a tough week to go before receiving my salary, it is tough because this month I am living on 40% of my normal monthly budget because of the last relapse. I could ask friends to borrow some money to pass the next week, and at the end of the month I will pay it back, but I prefer to tough it up and survive with the little amount that I still have.
I haven’t borrowed money from friends and family for 3 or 4 years and I am not going to do it now.

aside from that, my next work carrier step is still foggy, and I really have an issue which is I am not productive as I should be at work, and that is really a painful thing for me because I am feeling that I am wasting my time, I don’t have the feeling of achievement and it is depressing to live my life this way.

the reason for that honestly I don’t know for sure but is either a one or a combination of all the below:
1. gambling addiction, no surprise.., but this should be for the period of the relapse and for a week or two after the relapse “until the withdrawal symptoms fade away”.
2. I started thinking that I have ADHD, and looking back at my life I guess yes I do have ADHD.
3. consequences of gambling addiction: depression, unmotivated, insecurity, anxiety…
4. maybe because I am overwhelmed with all the issues that I have to deal with because of years of addiction. all my peers are 10 years ahead of me in their personal lives and many are ahead in their work life.

5. also I think I had a bad career choice, I am more about technical and engineering work but because it pays less I have accepted project management work and I am stuck with it for the last 7 years or more. and at this stage, I am thinking it is difficult to change careers.
6. routine, I stayed for a long in the same company, usually I was changing jobs every two years, within the two years I am motivated to prove myself and to do the best work I can.

honestly, I don’t know the answer, and I know gambling and its consequences are part of the equation but I don’t think it is all about that.

I guess I should start with checking the ADHD part next month after receiving my salary and passing this tough week, but the career change or at least a job change is a hard step to take because of all the debts that I have it is a highly risky step.

any advice here!!

[Dark Energy]

Day#19,

[Dark Energy]

Day#16,
the numbers are adding up, 16 days look good, I had a positive day, and get a lot of work done.
that’s it,

wish you all the best.
DE

[Dark Energy]

this has been suggested to me by other members more than once, at the first time I thought I don’t need to comment on it, but somehow I am triggered to respond to it now. so bear with me.

as an atheist ( which is on the far right compared with agnostic which is in the middle between the two sides).
I have attended GA once online (there is no GA where I am living) and right from the start a lot of red flags were raised in my mind,
it looks like a cult for me, taking a book as the ultimate reference, a book written in the 50s for AA, and then tweaked to fit Gambling, and the core message on it is surrendering to a higher power and asking it to give us the strength to overcome this addiction. this all sounds wrong to me. and tweaked it more to fit the atheist by just changing the understanding of the higher power really doesn’t help.
these are a lot of changes to the narrative of that book. if GA or AA fits with your beliefs and works for you then good. we owe ourselves to do whatever that we can do to overcome this addiction.

for me, I found SMART a better choice but the problem with SMART is the general nature of it, it is designed for all types of addictions, so sitting in a SMART meeting hearing from people with drugs or alcohol addiction sometimes I really can’t relate, but their methodology is a science-based approach that keeps changing and not fixed to old books.

so finally no need to tweak the message more, keep it in its original format if an atheist finds help in GA meeting it will be from listening to the other’s experiences and learning from them, and getting support from them. it will have nothing to do with adding a higher power or changing the understanding of what a higher power means.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Dark Energy.

[Dark Energy]

congrats on your 308th day, you are one of the few who made it, from statistics: only a third of gamblers on recovery can make it to 1 year free of gambling.
so be proud of yourself and keep your guard on, because statistics also show that half of that third can make it to 5 years free of gambling, yes the odds are better “50%” after that one year but it is still a high risk, so keep your guard up.

handing over the finances to your family was a great step, I am planning to do the same in the future just i need to get things a bit better before I do it.

wish you all the best.

[Dark Energy]

Hi Risingphonix,
actually, FOMO caused many relapses in the past, I have blocked the websites that I was used to checking the market charts, but it is quite unavoidable it is everywhere on the news, on chats with friends …etc. anyhow the blockers helped a lot to reduce these FOMO-related urges.
and thank you for the link for the 12-steps for agnostic.

today is Day#14, and two weeks passed, this time I am quite positive that I will cross at least the 100 days mark because everything is prepared and arranged to protect myself from this gambling insanity.

[Dark Energy]

Day#13,
just another day free of gambling. and that’s good enough for me.

[Dark Energy]

Hi Jim1818,
thank you for your post, I remember Murr’s posts it touched me as well, I hope he is doing well now, I didn’t see a post from him for a long time.

your comment is very valuable to me because as you mentioned comes from an outside observer who may see something that I can’t see from within.

I can see the similarity with the 12 steps in your comment about surrendering, but there it is surrendering to a higher power, and to be honest with you I don’t have this option, I am an atheist so I am on my own in this life, which is not a bad thing this makes me really focus on the issue itself without waiting for the solution from any higher power that may or may not help me, as you know “they work in a mysterious way”.

I reached the state of “surrender” a long ago but it is just the first step. all that I am doing now is closing the holes in my strategy each time I relapse, and I have closed many of them I hope it will work this time.

I don’t know why you think “I am rationalizing the relapse”, what I am doing is analyzing it to find the errors in my strategy to fix them.
I know that I can’t do it with willpower “I am powerless against this addiction” so all I am doing is to fix it from the outside and to have enough recovery time to heal from the inside.

thank you again for your reply Jim1818, wish you all the best.

[Dark Energy]

hi Yoyo and albuseverus,
thank you for your support, it is a hard addition and we need all the support that we can get even if it is just posted between anonymous people. believe me, it means a lot to me.

Today is Day#12,
motivated and in good mood, there is a saying here in this part of the world, I know I am translating it poorly “if the wind is to your favor today use it” in my case is in the days where I feel positive and motivated I have to use them to the max because I don’t know what the future days will be.

[Dark Energy]

Hi Don,
the best tool for that is cost-benefit analysis,
list all the benefits of gambling “and yes there are some benefits”, then list all the costs and all the suffering. put them next to each other and ask your self you still need to gamble?
if you still say yes I need to control it, go back and start questioning the listed benefits, are they real or they are just illusional benefits?
there are many tools, the above is one of them,

CBT is very good to take you from position A to B.

in my case, it was experience and relapses, and reaching a rock bottom that let me move from point A to B, but you don’t need all that suffering and you don’t need to waste another year or two of your life to reach point B and start addressing this addiction in a proper way.

a depressing note: point B doesn’t mean you recover, but it means you are now ready to start your recovery. it is a long way, but you need to start walking on it.

[Dark Energy]

Hi Don,
I have real concerns about what you wrote, it seems you are not someone who is planning how to recover and doing everything to get rid of this addiction, but you seems like someone who still trying to gamble but he needs to control it.
because there is a difference between the two cases.

this may sound a bit harsh but it is for your benefit, I asked you last time to post because I am reading your posts for the last 2 or 3 months, but till now I can’t tell at which stage of recovery you are.

there is a difference between:
A: someone who is still gambling and sees the damage that is caused by gambling, but he is still trying to win, trying to control his gambling.
B: and someone who is admitting that he is a gambling addict and he needs to find his way out of this addiction ( here there is no “control” it is either to stop or to continue gambling).

I was in position A two years ago, and now I am in position B and trying to find my way out.

so honestly where do you stand, are you in position A or B?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Dark Energy.

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