Today marks a potentially huge milestone in my attempts to
stay gamble free.
I’m now 24 days gamble free (woop), but today marks the
first payday in that period. For a compulsive gambler, every payday is like
Christmas! Chances are we blew most or all of our money within days of our
previous payday and we have been eagerly counting the days until we can do it
again!
However this time circumstances have changed and it’s one of
the first big hurdles to overcome. I was very glad indeed to hear that I had
achieved my bonus for this year and have received a cool lump sum that I wasn’t
expecting. Happy days! Money has been a problem for a while and it’s a nice
little boost to the old bank balance.
Obviously, the gambler in me has been thinking about having
a bet. You know how the compulsive brain rationalizes things. Nice bit of money
received, might as well have a punt. What does it matter if I lose £200 this
month. And after that’s gone why not another £200. And so on. And so on… until
shit, I have fuck all squared again!
Fortunately, there are a few things I have firmly
implemented to stop this from happening. Firstly, the missus monitors
everything now so that’s a pretty big deterrent š And I’m quite literally excluded from EVERY
CASINO ONLINE. And I’m a slot man, and no online casinos, no slots for me!
In reflection, the biggest thing that’s helped me feel positive
that this time is different is the transparency of my issues. Now the
girlfriend knows everything, I don’t feel in as big a hole as I did before, and
a lot of the guilt has been lifted from my shoulders. Being open and honest is
probably the most difficult thing to do as a compulsive gambler, but equally I
think it’s the biggest obstacle to our recovery, and that things can’t get
better until the true scale of our issues are out in the open.
It does suck that so much of my money is already accounted
for. I got myself in a bit of a mess with payday loans but with them being paid
off today without new ones to replace them it’s the first step to getting my
finances back where they need to be. Seeing all that money going out of my
account on payday has been a trigger to gambling in the past as you desperately
want to replace it, but I won’t allow myself to fall back into that trap again
of borrowing more and getting smashed by high interest payments!
Have a great day!
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