Here We Go Again

Day one is fully underway and definitely feeling some mixed emotions. Didn't sleep a wink last night. That used to be a common occurrence for me when my gambling first started to spiral out of control around this time last year and it isn't something I can be dealing with again.

So felt pretty miserable all night, felt the same at 7am when I finally gave up on sleep and pulled a sickie at work. It's strange how being a compulsive gambler effects literally every single aspect of your day to day life. Work is another thing that has suffered over the year and it's about time I really got back on top of it and started to push my career forwards.

Had a small victory this afternoon. To cut a long story short, the one site that was still available for me to play at hadn't honored my previous self exclusion. I thought I may as well try and argue that I should have my deposits refunded and the Manager I poke with on live chat was possibly the most pompous, arrogant and unprofessional prick I have ever come across in my life. So I sent an email to the actual license holder directly stating my complaints and received an extremely apologetic phone call from a lady from the license holder who was very unimpressed with the casino when I presented the evidence to her and promptly processed the money back to my account, assuring me that they were taking this matter very seriously and the representatives involved would be strongly reprimanded (Fuck you David you smarmy Git!)

Phew, now I have that out my system, it's time to focus on how I am moving on from this blip, and more importantly how I am going to break the news to the missus. I have some plans to put in place that I didn't have before to prevent this from happening again. Really thought I had reached my rock bottom a month ago and turns out I wasn't as on it as I thought. You really can't afford to get complacent in fighting this, it really requires full hands on deck at all times. Kinda a scary thought. Do we have to battle every day against this for the rest of our lives?

I have been questioning the wisdom of getting obsessed with the number of days we stay GF for. It seems to knock you back really hard when you fail and almost makes the relapses worse. Kinda difficult not to think about it though, it does give you some measure of progress which I think we are all dying for.

Main focus now is just to not fuck up Christmas like I did last year. Just want a nice day without having the guilt of gambling between now and then hanging over me and to have a few quid in my pocket to get something for those I love to show them how much I appreciate them supporting me through all my shit when I wouldn't blame them one little bit for telling me i'm on my own with this one.

Onwards and upwards!