[I_Maverick]

Hey Adam

Great post. I am really struggling at the moment with the chaos that my gambling has caused. The truth is the longer we go without the gamble, the harder it gets as we will always have to remind ourselves what we are: CGs. We can never have one bet again. I have met so many recovering CGs who went years without a gamble and convinnced themselves they were cured, so they could gamble responsibly again. It usually comes crashing down on our heads really quickly. I am only on day 8 and now I have to deal with the wreckage that is my life.

You are still young and you have a job. Gambling is no way of life. The odd bet for most people is fine. I know I cannot do that anymore.

Keep posting mate, keep us informed. How are you feeling? I love reading your posts.

All my love and strength.

[I_Maverick]

Charles, I often find myself re-reading your posts as you come across as so mature and in control. You are doing so well, and I feel like I am doing so badly. I am panicking at everything. My wife threatened to go to COlombia next week and it destroyed me. I feel so helpless. I am an adult of 42 years old who cannot live on his own, yet I am the architect of my own misery. I simply do not know what to do.

Keep posting, you are a hero. Knowing you are doing it keeps me strong. Had the most insane urges today to gamble not to win, but to lose. The self destructive part of me really took over and said that if MOnica goes, what do I have to live for? How can I cope. It’s so stupid, but my feelings are all over the place.

Stay strong, you are in a great place and you have all my support. As I said, I love reading about your small victories.

[I_Maverick]

That’s such an amazing post BU. You are talking a lot there about mindfulness. The work on attachment is so true. I am only now coming to hard conclusions about my ability to connect with people and how I attach to them. I always thought I was sorted, but for the last 20 years have lurched from one crises to another and am now in the biggest crises of my life.

I know what I have to do, but getting the strength to do it is so hard. I just want to wallow in self pity, but that will take me nowhere. But the strength to climb out of this pit is insane. I feel like digging myself deeper.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and answer, it means such a lot. I know you have experience of medical issues, so I take what you say very seriously. My big problem is that I am finding it hard to motivate myself to finish the jobs I have to finish, as there is nothing at the end of them. The gamblong last year has seen to that. I hate that I have not been able to give us. Sure I am 8 days in now, and I intend to stay away from gambling, but I am craving it like a drug right now. That it will make all mt worries go away for a while – and that is true. But I knowthey will be there for me afterwards, with avengeance.

I think I am very sick mentally, and the fact I have to keep working is not helping. I do not ake care of myself, eat every couple of days or so, do not excercise and am smoking a lot again. I am slowly killing myself.

This has to stop somewhere – a stand has to be taken.

Lots of love

M

[I_Maverick]

I am in bits and am desperate to gamble only to destroy myself. My wife has booked her tickets to colombia for next week and I am not sure how I will cope on my own. My head is full of the most hateful thoughts, and when she said she had had enough and was booking tickets my first thouht was to gamble everything away. Just destroy myself to I could then kill myself.

I do not want to do this. Gambling has destroyed me over 3 years, the fact that I lied and gambled last year meaning that this project is now so way pverdue, added on top of that depresion and massive low self esteem I truly detest myself right now and I do not know what do to. I am crawling the walls. She is entitled to leave and its probably the bst thing for her and our son, but I do not know how I will cope.

I just found myself about to use her computer to find a new online site and play some blackjack. I managed to stop myself, but for how long. The gambling is no longer about money it is about self destruction. I realise that is what is has alwasy eben about – part of me is trying to destrouy myself and I don’t want that at one level, and on another it would make all this pain go away. I know no one here can help me, but I feel so lost. So helpess. But all of my sorrow and misery is of my own making. If I Had been stronger and not gambled last year non eof this would be happening right now. We would have finished the project and owuld be getting ready for the holiday in Colombia we promised ourselves. But no, I am a —- up and I have to destroy myself. How long amd I going to be like this?

I do not know if I can cope being on my own. It sounds so pathetic, but t is true. I hate myself so much.

[I_Maverick]

so on day 8 today but feeling terrible. no energy. no motivation. worried sick. Had a meeting with the psychiatrist yesterday and it looks like I have been differing undiagnosed clinical depression since my teens. I have poor coping skills and low sef esteem which have led me to be a gambling addict, as well as suffer other addictions. And I am now lost. I do not know where to go from here. How can I fix mself. Lets say I never gamble again – what future do I have?

I know that if I gamble it will be the end of me. But I feel like it is the end now anyway, so what would it matter? At least i would go out on a high as it were. But no, I cannot think like this. I must believe in a future. But I feel totally unemployable. What is the future? I’m losing the business, family, home everything. Why can’t I cope?

I just don’t understand why I didn’t see this coming? Why did I continue to find ways to play, ways to get money, time that sould have been spent working/ with my family etc. Why am i such a fucking loser?

I know this is a depressing post but I am just trying to get my thoughts out. I feel like shit. If I had qquit gambling when my wife first saw I had a problem I would have quit 3 years ago. Or last year in January, I knew it was a problem again. And in June of last year, or October of last year, or January of this year.

I think I must be suffering from withdraweel as I do not have access to playing, which is good. But I am craving it really bad. I am craving the escape. Just to forget.

God, I am so pathetic.

[I_Maverick]

http://www.ncrg.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/monographs/ncrgmonograph6final.pdf

It’s an american PDF looking into the neuroscience of gambling. I have not read it all, but it is a real eye-opener. Prepare to have you brain and impulses examined for what they are.

I am going to continue reading, just wanted to share.

Love and peace

[I_Maverick]

Dude, that is so fantastic. Really happy for you. So you panicked a little bit over what you imagined as a bigger problem that what it was, and you sorted it.

2 weeks no gambling is such a great achievement. One day at a time really adds up. I find the success stories here so important for my own recovery. I have such a huge journey, but as the drugs kick in and my days without gambling add up, I become more clear headed all the time.

Keep posting L, I love your style.

[I_Maverick]

SO weird, I wrote a long reply here to you Adam, as you are one of my GT heroes at the moment. Someone whose progress I am following as avidly as I might a serial. Someone in whose struggle I see myself, and for whom I want to success against the odds in the manner of a old fashioned Greek hero.

However, after I posted the system seemed to shut down at it never got posted. In essence, I am rooting for you. I know that you know that the next bet is the one to avoid. You will never be up enough – and when you are you will only gamble again to lose. I know understand how you can never win from gambling. There are so many stories on here of people being 12K, 20K up and then instead of pocketing the money and leaving it for a few weeks, before ertruning with a clear head, you think you have it sussed and so increase the bets until its gone – and then some. CGs cannot win – I cannot win. The other night I was 1K up from an inital £10 deposit. I proceeded to lose that and then almost a lot more.

The reason you are one of my heroes is that you remind me of me. The way you write, the way you describe yourself. I think we are very different apart from we are CGs. I see you as Hercules fighting the Hydra of gambling. You can never beat the Hydra totally, but day by day you can chip at it until, after a long while, it is small and depleted. But what I now understand is that you can never bet again – because if you do, it will grow and grow.

Please continue to be a hero for me – I come to this site a lot as reading about stroies of success give me strength. I am close to wrecking everything I have. I am 42 and everything I have worked towards is almost gone. I am that story. I don’t want to go further – which is to be homless, in poverty, in prison, thinking about suicide. I want my story now to be the turnaround – but that will not happen overnight. I have so much work to do on myself. My coping mechanisms. I need to understand what the urge to gamble is. It is when I am happy, or sad, flush or broke. I have played online poker in my pants having a shit, on the bus with a dodgy dongle, in cafes, in parks, sneakily at home without the wife seeing. I am ashamed of the times I have gambled and lost it, absolbed, ignorant to my young child. Over 3 years it has robbed me of so much and it robs us all. Becaiuse it is not a simple form of entertainment for us. It is class A drugs – it does the same to our brain as herion or crack, and that is whym in the sane way as I cannot ever take heroin again, I can never gamble again.

I feel calmer now understanding this. I knew this before, but didn’t undersatnd it.

I wish you all my love and strength, and hope to read tomorrow that you were able to delay the urge to gamble. And that tomorrow will be day 12 for you and day 8 for me.

Peace, love and strength

[I_Maverick]

Charlster, you are doing amazing. I really wish I had found this site 3 years ago. I am so daunted by what I have done and how to get out of it. I feel like such an idiot for gambling my future away, for all the lies I have told. The person I have hurt the most is myself, and my wife and my son. And now I have pushed them away for good.

I just cannot make sense, as I sit here, how I lost so much time gambling when I knew I was losing. Not just money, but time I did not have to complete our project. And now that money is gone.

I am sorry to post on your site, but I see how well you are doing and if you can do it then I can.

I am going to have to learn how to live on my own, I have to get a new job, I have to do so much.

Keep up the good work, your posts are insirping.

[I_Maverick]

The truth is I wasn’t clear for a year last year as I wrote in my opening post. That was another lie. Just like all th eother lies where I promised my wife I was clean. I just became better at hiding it. The truth came out last night because she is using one of our work computers and she found a log from an old POkerStars and FullTiltPOker application in the documents folder, which had a list of hands from Feb of last year onwards. I didn’t even know I had used that computer the gamble on. The truth is, I lost lots of time last year gambling when I should have been working, and while the monetary loss was not major over a period of 8 months (about 2K) the loss of time is priceless. That is why my company and the project I have been managing is where it is, and it is why now I am fearful of my future.
Gambling robs you of everything. I cannot gamble normally, once I start I cannot stop. I am on day 7 now, and that is the truth. However, if I didn’t have gambling blocking software on the computer I would have gambled, I am sure.

I will lose my son now, I will lose my business. Myabe that was the subconcious plan all along. The only way my brain could stop me gambling was to take everything. I decide that today is my rock bottom. From here I can only go up. The sun is shining, the pills are working, I feel kind of hopeful I have a future because I can decide what future I have. And the first thing is that it is a future without gambling, whatever that takes. I believe the next bet for me, whether online, offline, on a frutie, the lottery, whatever, will be my death.

I must accept the harm I have done myself and those around me. I have destroyed a massive part of my life. I have lied, cheated, been lazy, stolen, committed fraud. I am a degenerate compulsive gambler and the sooner I understand that and accept the sooner I am likely to be able to have a fulfilling life.

What will I do for work going forwards? I don’t know. I know I have some skills, but not sure how valuable they are in the wider work place. I will need advise on that.

But until I have stopped gambling for good, I can’t move forwards. As the orange book says I have to make a fearless moral inventory of myself:

At the moment, I am lazy, I lie, I cheat , I am lazy and am doing nothing to sort myself out.

So this is where it has to change and move forwards. I have to do the right things where my wife and child are concerned and take care of them. I have to grow up and accept that this day was always coming as long as I continued to gamble, the losses would mount and the depression would increase. I do not believe it is possible to be a CG without getting more and more depressed because we hate ourselves for it. I am disgusted with myself, but I accept I am ill. It is a progressive illness which will lead in time to poverty, homelessness and suicide if I do not stop. I can stop the rot here if I choose.

I have never aken this disease seriously. I have always tried to gamble on the sly, as if that is my right. I so wish that 3 years ago, when my wife first realised I had a problem (after just 2 months of poker) I had seen the light.

But, and I do not mean this in a disresepctful way at all, I do not want to be saying this in 1, 3, 5 or 10 years when I am 50 and have nothing. I can still dig myself out of this hole if I work on it.

Today, I will not gamble. Today, I will work hard, be fosuced, treat everyone with repsect, not lie and go to bed satisfied with my performance. And then tomorrow, I will do the same.

Much love

Mav

PS, I am so impressed with the stories of recovery here and I am a little jealous that thus far I have not had their character to stick to it.

[I_Maverick]

YOu’re doing so well, you;ve seen the truth. I think for me I am still getting there. Today is day 7 for me, but I think the nightmare of recovery is still beginnig because I haven’t been honest and truthful with those around me.
Well done, you are a beacon of life Fritz. Danke Shoen.

[I_Maverick]

So had an awful day today. Really struggling with anxiety, depression, the feeling of hopelessness at the totally hideous sitiation I have created. And it is all my fault. The fact that I have lost another 5 weeks becasue of gambling (getting caught, losing money, the feelings of shame this has brought) is not making it easier. My mind is a horror movie at the moment, tormeting me, stopping me from progressing. I am totally swamped and I cannot see a way out – all I see is misery. I am glad I stopped gabling, but I realise now the relapses were because I wanted to escape from these feelings. I know that to gamble risks everything, and the truth is I can;t if I wanted – but the urge to blot everything out woith a gambling session is overwheling. The fact that I can;t makes it worse.

Just doing some research I found this

http://www.alternet.org/how-gambling-can-kill-you-faster-drug-abuse-or-alcoholism

I am sure I can get through this, but I am so scared by what is on the other side. I think it;s because I have to accept myself as a failure, as that is what I am. No career, business gone, wife gone soon, depressed, moaning, whining etc etc. I am the most shit person in the world. And I cannot shake this.

I am not sure that the pills are working, they may me making me worse. Although I had already lapsed when I started taking the pills, my gambling urges seemed to come on stronger after upping the dose. Is there a link? I am seeing the psychiatrist tomorrow to discuss it.

I need ot think positively again, but all I feel is a sense of despair, that I am lost forever and there is no way out. I try to let the thoughts pass but they are lodged.

i see so many great stroies here it makes my heart swell, and I think why can;t I be one of them.

Lots of love from the bottomless pit

Mav

[I_Maverick]

They say that Gambling once you become addicted is MORE addictive, because it is purely mental. It is hard to lose all your money with alcohol or cigarettes. You certainly don’t chase thousands with that.

Anyway, well done mate. You are another hero. Keep posting and stay strong.

[I_Maverick]

I know what you are saying Charlster, but my problems seem so massive I do not know where to start. I just want to run away. I have waves of negative thoughts, memories, emotions – all from times when I should have made different descisions, and not all to do with gambling. It’s mainly my lack of self-esteem and self-worth that has held me back all these years, which I have never recognised. I realise that my low self of self led me to becoming a gambling addict. And then I had the chance to stop very early on because my wife recognised it – and I didn’t. For some reason I had an urge to keep gambling ever greater amounts, in secret, until that led to now. I can see that all my problems I face are directly to do with my gambling over the last 3 years, and especially in the last year when I should have been working. I have totally neglected my life, my family, my career – all to play a stupid game. And now that has led here. I can see that now – I just need to some clear headspace to work out what my priorities are before everything disintigrates. I have never felt this hopeless before. I am overwhelmed.

And I still have work to do, which I have been paid for, and it is hard to summon up the energy. I need some new techniques.

You are very mature and I appluad your honesty and approach. I wish we could meet face to face, as I now I would draw strength from you. It’s probably not a good idea anyway, but I do hope you get on the course. Have you been given a date yet?

Keep up the good work

M

[I_Maverick]

You are doing so well Charlster. YOu are totally in the zone, you are an inspiration. I need to change my mindset to one more like yours. I need to make a list of everything I have going on and get it out of my head, I just don’t know where to start and so I am overwhelmed. Keep posting the good news, it;s wonderful.

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