[Steev]

I speak from my perspective of being the son of a compulsive gambler (as well as one myself) and I know the majority of arguments between my parents were because of my father’s lies, rather than his gambling.
I think my mother became used to the idea of not having any money and having to hide what little she had from him – but not being able to trust him and asking him what had happened when money went missing (and he always denied taking it) just tipped her over the edge.

Good to hear that you have admitted you have a problem and you have registered here and with Gamstop. Can you involve your husband in your recovery? Is he able to handle your finances for you – so that you don’t have the ammunition to gamble with? Can you access support together? There is a families and friends forum as well as this one on the GT site and specific support groups for F&Fs.

Well done for reaching out. I wish you well.

[Steev]

Yes, I remember you from chat, earlier in the week. Great that you have found the forums and I hope that reading through them has been helpful for you.

My only advice would be to seperate yourself from your “gambling” behaviour – and whilst you are fighting the behaviour, you are also being gentle with yourself, allowing yourself what you need to keep going.

I hope you can keep posting here and we will keep answering. Good to keep up the dialogue with you. Go well.

[Steev]

I am so glad things are working out and congratulations on your gamble free time.

I have found that I get passions for things which take over my life for a while and when they fade I often find a new one comes around. Lately I have been teaching English on-line and have rediscovered my interest in language and keep watching videos on the subject – which I would never have done before.

I am so pleased you have found an income stream in this difficult period, not easy I know. Good to hear from you and further updates would always be welcomed!

[Steev]

I’ll take the easier one first.  I post on the forum to give something back.  So many people helped me in my quest to end this behaviour – that I firmly believe this is pay-back time.  However I only started posting here 18 months ago.  I took quite a break from gambling – even stuff to do with recovery because I needed to work my own way out and I found that hearing other people’s problems with it was a trigger for me.  As part of my journey, I did study psychology and counselling and I did work with addiction issues – but with drugs rather than gambling (I have never used hard drugs) and with families rather than users (I have no family) so I was able to double distance myself.  After so many years of not gambling I now feel I can work with gamblers without being restimulated.

Do I feel it would easily creep up on me?  Yes, I don’t believe I can ever gamble on slots again.  I know that my brain is wired to keep playing and the only way to stop this is not to start.  That is no great hardship though … most people don’t play slots and so I am just joining the majority.  Gambling plays no part in my life any more – other than discussing it on here and occasionally through social media.

Do I feel playing games for virtual wins cheating?  That is a difficult question – and there is some discussion of issues around alternatives to gambling on my thread at the moment – which you might want to visit.  But my honest opinion is for people to do what works for them.  I still play the odd computer game (free and without any money award) – not often but occasionally.   I remember when I had been stopped for a while, playing pinball which was a little disturbing because it was putting money in a slot – but apart from free games there was no monetary reward – and I did not find it “addictive.”   I think the important thing is to focus on our recovery from gambling and one of the ways to do this is to find other uses of our time.  Yes it would be nice to think that that would always be useful things like arts and crafts or learning a language or creative writing … but the truth is that sometimes we need to pig out by binge-watching Netflix or playing computer games. 

In the post on my thread – I tried to compare it to giving up caffiene, where the sensible thing to do is not to give up suddenly, but gradually over time.  I think maybe the same could be done with games where we use it as a way of weaning ourselves off our destructive behaviour and if we feel that this in turn is becoming destructive – then we use the tools we have learnt to wean ourselves off that as well.  However, I am aware that this is a controversial view and others may have more to say on the subject.

Congratulations on your gamble free time.  Keep doing what you need to do to stay stopped.  Don’t forget that you can get support from others online through online meetings such as GA or SMART or counseling and I hope you get a lot from your journey of recovery.

[Steev]

As you could probably tell from the tone of my post – I was not sure about this either. Is it useful to give this advice if it descends into another form of gambling? If someone “gets lucky” and has a good find … and makes a lot of money, would it tip them over into gambling again?

On the other hand there have been a lot of posts recently from people who are watching gambling videos or playing free (or even paid for) games – who would not consider they are gambling but are perhaps more at risk than doing something like this … if only that buying postcards or selling stuff on ebay, takes them out of the gambling environment. Like I tried to show with my coffee analogy, making a clean break from gambling is tough – and this might keep some of the “entertainment” going without the actual gamble.

I’m not sure – and I would welcome more comments!

[Steev]

And great that you took the action you needed to.  You know now that the difficult part of taking action is the lead up to it.  Once we take action there is a relief and that thought “it was so easy why didn’t I do it sooner!”  I know this is just the beginning for you – take action if you do find yourself relapsing, (maybe as Monica suggested you could start by changing your posting name!)

As for me – I haven’t had a bet for several years – over a decade, but then I am considerably older than you.  Am I recovered?  Do we ever recover?  I know that I can never place a bet again and have no intention to.  That is recovery enough for me.

[Steev]

Your comment, “I will miss the entertainment … ” got me thinking. I have put my thoughts down on my own thread as I am interested in other people’s views and didn’t want to clutter your thread with them – but I do invite you to read the post and maybe comment. Thanks for the inspiration!

[Steev]

This comment, “I will miss the entertainment …” on someone else’s thread, got me thinking.

My only experience of ending an addiction before gambling was caffeine. I knew I was drinking too much of it – 7 or 8 cups of black coffee a day – but I had no reason to stop. Until a visit to the doctor’s who diagnosed high blood pressure (from gambling?) and suggested I needed to cut down. Of course I knew better and thought I could just stop. Oh boy, was I wrong! Massive headaches, sleeplessness and just feeling so angry at the world. I went back to coffee.

A few months later and I decided to take the doctor’s advice – I did it her way. Slowly but surely I came down to my present consumption of just one cup per day.

Why is this relevant? Well I’m aware that when I (and others) talk about giving up gambling – it is the all or nothing scenario. Now we all know that “controlled gambling” doesn’t work for around 90% of those of us that try it. (I should know I have tried it many times) We are just not wired that way. But it seems to me what is missing is the “entertainment.” Is there a way of getting the payoff of the highs of winning without actually gambling? Maybe there is.

One of the many things I tried when stopping gambling was to become (in my own small way) an entrepreneur. It was very small because, (of course) I had no money to start-up with – but instead of slot arcades I started visiting charity shops, (thrift shops in the US.) I didn’t know much about anything, but I bought cheaply and tried to sell for good money on certain internet auction sites. I did this whilst I was still working full time – so I wasn’t risking a lot of money, but I did have some success. So much so that in a few years I was able to give up my stressful full-time job to sell books online full-time. I had my own business and some of the “entertainment” of gambling was redirected into my business. There was the highs and lows of buying and selling either at a profit or a loss, there was the “entertainment” of finding out more about the subject (the research of sport’s betting?) It gave structure to my life – I looked forwards to visiting a place to see what gems I might find there. It certainly kept my brain working and I could lose myself in it and not worry about other things. (OK so there were down-sides too!)

I never took things to another level – i.e. bought premises (I stored stock in my attic) or hired staff – but that would have been the way to go. I might have done so if I had been younger.

I was reminded of this by another gambler who did the same thing, only with old video games (a subject he knew something about) and he became quite successful with this as a side-hustle.

I also knew someone (without a gambling problem) who probably went for the cheapest “in” possible – by looking out for old postcards. This fulfilled her interest in history – and she “won the jackpot” when a card she bought in a job lot turned out to have been sent by one of the members of Scott’s expedition to the North Pole and was the last thing he ever wrote – it sold for thousands.

So the entertainment is out there … you just need to find it. What are you interested in? Could you make a cheap start in this field? Are you prepared to learn? Yes it is about taking chances – but in a more controlled way and could be the “doing things slowly” way of ending this addiction.

Food for thought? I would welcome comments.

[Steev]

When I first sought help for my problem in my early 30s, it was the size of my debts and the increase in the repayments that made me seek help. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be unable to function as a normal human being with a job, somewhere to live and food in my belly, unless I found a way of stopping the leeching of money to the machines and began to make amends. But then there was still this idea in me that the “Big Win” would make it all okay.

So, hard as it was, I had to give this dream up in order to stay stopped. I was not going to put right the damage caused by gambling by doing more gambling.

In order to achieve this I realised these 10 things.

1) The odds are impossible.

Let’s face it – if I am playing regularly on a machine that has a maximum payout of say 200 – and my debts are 40,000 – how many times would I have to win?

That’s if a) I ever did walk away winning and b) I could ever wrench myself away from the thing. That was my logical mind working for a change!

2) The cost of gambling was the price I had to pay to realise that I was a compulsive gambler.

I know this might be a hard one to swallow – but I have learnt a lot about myself because of my gambling. I would have had to pay out thousands to counsellors, therapists and other professionals for this wisdom. Perhaps not as much as I have lost over the years but it is a way of writing some of the losses down in my mind.

I was stubborn. If I could have realised I had an addictive personality much earlier then I would have saved myself a lot of money and grief.

3) Other people, (non-gamblers) can lose thousands, why can’t I?

There are plenty of stories out there of people who have lost money through business’s going bust, scams, fires, floods and other disasters. They have pulled themselves out of it – so what is to stop me? I know one thing is that I felt bad about it because it was self-inflicted, but that is no reason not to draw a line under things and start again.

4) Thoughts about chasing losses come from my emotions.

It is my emotional mind that thinks about the losses – NOT my logical mind, (see above.) I know it’s that petulant child that thinks – “it’s not fair – I deserve to win.”

Maybe I do, but it is not going to happen for the logical reasons already stated. Wishing it was different is not going to make it happen.

5) If I did win, I would just keep the cycle going.

If I didn’t win the full amount I needed I would keep playing to win more. If I won more than I needed, I would think I could afford to gamble with the excess.

Soon I would be back to square one or worse.

6) I need to learn that there is more to life than having money.

Again – another hard one for me, but not having money has allowed me to discover I can have a good life without it. My favourite pastime, walking is free and I enjoy going to libraries etc. where they still exist. I have also learnt the value of money – how to make savings and of alternatives such as LETS.

7) If I win big, then other people lose.

Yes other poor gamblers like me or you – and if I really want the gambling industry to stop making big profits, I need to stop feeding it. The dream of the big win is what keeps the betting shops, casinos and on-line gambling sites going. A dream is all it is.

8) Dreaming of the big win gets in the way of reality.

It is not the big win which will get me out of debt. I need to really look at what the debt is and how much is needed to bring it down. Reading Robert Kelsey’s book, “What’s Stopping You,” helped me see that my fear of failure stopped me from trying new ways to make money and thus go back to things that would never work, gambling.

I needed to concentrate on the possible.

9) It will be small steps that will make a difference.

A few extra hours at work here – finding small ways to boost my income. It may take time, but then I will save time by not gambling, not having to seek money to gamble with and not having to deal with the consequences of my gambling.

10) The Einstein rule.

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Now, I know this is true for gambling as a whole – but far more so for chasing losses. If I have chased losses before and it hasn’t worked, what on earth makes me think it will work the next time?

Be like Einstein – don’t chase losses!

[Steev]

I hope you are busy trying out all the suggestions that have been made to you, but it would be good to hear how you are getting on.

Hopefully you have tightened up your defences against gambling and have ensure your blocks etc are in place.

I hope you are getting good support for yourself, there is a lot out there now – with meetings and one to ones in several countries being accessible on-line. Please avail yourself to as much as possible. Plunge in and leave your worries and concerns about things behind – revisit them if you need to once you have some days of sobriety behind you. I wish you well.

[Steev]

But I expect you know what I am going to say! At some point in my recovery – I think when I was going to GA again and again with another story of relapse, I was told I was acting like the gambling equivalent of a “dry-drunk.” I didn’t know what it meant at the time … but looking back I can see that even when I was not physically gambling – it still filled my thoughts. I was still scheming ways in which I could “keep my hand in.”

I remember one time I thought I could get my fix by just watching other people playing. I think that lasted maybe 2 or 3 days. Inevitably someone left the machine after a run of bad luck and my thought was “it’s bound to pay-out soon” so off I trot to the ATM and … well you can guess the rest.

There wasn’t one answer for me. It was a combination of keeping myself busy, trying to work out what was going on for me (through counselling and self-help groups) and remembering that I was “in recovery” – so that even thinking about gambling was a no-no. I became someone who is in recovery – and thought that person does not try and hone skills, (are there any skills in playing slots?) I knew that the person in recovery does not visit gambling places for any reason, so instead I put my focus firmly on things I needed to do to get myself well again.

Listen to the part of the brain that wants an end to all this suffering you are going through. Do what is healing and what will take you away from this madness. Keep to your recovery strategy and stay well.

[Steev]

Yes – I still remember the mental turmoil I went through when I was gambling … Not just the act itself, but all the stuff that went with it; to chase or not, where to get money from; how to find the time (as I was working my fingers off trying to stay afloat) flitting into recovery and then back out again. So much calmer now …

Beware of feeling too calm and almost missing the “excitement” of gambling. That shows itself as boredom and was a big trigger for me during my early recovery. I have since learnt that when those feelings come I need to do something else – anything that will take my mind off things and then later, when I am feeling stronger, take on a bigger challenge that will keep me interested and away from gambling. Previously that was travelling, right now it is language – not just foreign ones … I am getting so into the ins and outs of English now I am teaching it.

Enjoy your gardening and your DIY projects when you get to them. See you in chat soon?

[Steev]

Da – još se sjećam mentalnih previranja kroz koja sam prošao dok sam se kockao … Ne samo sam čin, već i sve stvari koje su s njim išle; ganjati ili ne, odakle novac; kako pronaći vrijeme (dok sam radio na prstima pokušavajući ostati na površini) ulijećući se u oporavak, a zatim se opet vratiti. Sada je toliko mirnije … Čuvajte se osjećaja previše smirenog i gotovo da ćete propustiti "uzbuđenje" kockanja. To se pokazuje kao dosada i bio mi je veliki okidač tijekom ranog oporavka. Od tada sam naučio da kad se jave ti osjećaji moram učiniti nešto drugo – sve što će mi oduzeti misli, a zatim kasnije, kad se osjećam jače, prihvatiti veći izazov koji će me držati zainteresiranim i dalje od kockanja. Ranije je to bilo na putovanju, sada je to jezik – ne samo strani … Ulazim toliko u detalje engleskog, sada ga predajem. Uživajte u svom vrtlarstvu i svojim DIY projektima kad dođete do njih. Vidimo se uskoro u chatu?

[Steev]

Sim – ainda me lembro da turbulência mental que passei quando estava jogando … Não apenas o ato em si, mas todas as coisas que vieram com ele; perseguir ou não, de onde tirar dinheiro; como encontrar tempo (enquanto eu estava trabalhando meus dedos tentando me manter à tona) para me recuperar e depois voltar. Muito mais calmo agora … Cuidado para não se sentir muito calmo e quase perder a "emoção" do jogo. Isso se mostra como tédio e foi um grande gatilho para mim durante o início da minha recuperação. Desde então, aprendi que, quando esses sentimentos vierem, preciso fazer outra coisa – qualquer coisa que tire minha mente das coisas e então, mais tarde, quando estiver me sentindo mais forte, assumir um desafio maior que me manterá interessado e longe do jogo. Anteriormente, isso era viajar, agora é um idioma – não apenas estrangeiros … Estou entrando tanto nos meandros do inglês agora que estou ensinando. Desfrute de seus projetos de jardinagem e DIY quando chegar a eles. Vejo você no chat em breve?

[Steev]

Ja – ik herinner me nog de mentale onrust die ik doormaakte toen ik aan het gokken was … Niet alleen de handeling zelf, maar alle dingen die ermee gepaard gingen; jagen of niet, waar je geld vandaan kunt halen; hoe ik de tijd kon vinden (terwijl ik mijn vingers afwerkte om te proberen het hoofd boven water te houden) om naar herstel te flitsen en er dan weer uit te komen. Zo veel rustiger nu … Pas op dat u zich niet te kalm voelt en bijna de "opwinding" van gokken mist. Dat uit zich als verveling en was een grote trigger voor mij tijdens mijn vroege herstel. Ik heb sindsdien geleerd dat wanneer die gevoelens komen, ik iets anders moet doen – alles wat mijn gedachten afleidt en later, wanneer ik me sterker voel, een grotere uitdaging aanga die me geïnteresseerd zal houden en weg van gokken. Vroeger was dat reizen, nu is het taal – niet alleen buitenlandse … Ik raak zo in de ins en outs van het Engels nu ik het onderwijs. Geniet van uw tuinieren en uw doe-het-zelfprojecten wanneer u ze bereikt. Tot binnenkort in de chat?

[Author]

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