ex and would be ex-gamblers support thread

Miss_Lia

Hi all,

1st time poster, long time lurker.

I have a long story on which i will get around to posting very soon.

I have a questions first is GA religulous, do have to be religulous to go or do they except everyone???

I would just like to thank everyone on here for your post and unbaised support.

riquelme

Miss_Lia wrote: »

Hi all,

1st time poster, long time lurker.

I have a long story on which i will get around to posting very soon.

I have a questions first is GA religulous, do have to be religulous to go or do they except everyone???

I would just like to thank everyone on here for your post and unbaised support.

hi miss lia, welcome to the board

GA isnt religious and they accept anyone, you will find a warm welcome from people just like yourself who have either stopped gambling or stopping. i find it worthwhile and the ability to talk to people who know what you are talking about is a comfort.

you wont find people here or at GA judging you.

best wishes in trying to beat it

cantcope

Hi miss Lia and welcome. I can confirm too that GA is not religious. We have people from all walks of life at my meeting from teachers, students, full time mums, professional sportsmen, 9-5ers... compulsive gambling does not discriminate which is why anyone can fall prey.

Riquel, sending you a big hug :grouphug: . Hang in there. Nobody said it would be easy. Your OH will feel like this for a long long time. And why shouldnt she after what you did?
The best thing you can do at the moment is prove to her that no matter how bad it gets you dont want to gamble again.

There;s a guy i know whose wife left him when she found out, he started GA and hasnt bet since. he did this without the support of his wife and has spent the last 18 months trying to convince her that he has changed. She was having none of it. Too much hurt, deceit and no trust. He never gave up though and decorated their house hoping one day she would come back with the children. Saved for presents and holidays and refused to accept that his marriage was over. Times were tough but with support from friends he got through.
Last night he told us that his wife moved back home with the children last week. She wanted to know he was serious about quitting and changing his life for good. Not just for a few months, six months, a year. but for good.
He is delighted and so are we.

Things can get better, be strong and dont give up at any of the hurdles

Miss_Lia

I would like to say sorry for my spelling and hope you can understand this.



Thank you so much for you reassurance. At this moment it time i am sitting here with a massive mug of coffee and a deck of fags (i know something else i need to give up to save my self money, but one step at a time) trying to write what i have done, how it happened, how it has effected me and my OH (i am guessing that this stands for other half) but it so hard. it making me face up to the fact i have a problem and i do have one there is no denying the fact anymore.

i know where it all started, i don't the time or date but i can rememer the feeling. I was in the navy for six years and had a great time till my last year of servcie. I fell ill and had to be shore based for a while. I was so bored, so i used to sit in the Naffi and drink. Shipmates of mine would play on the fruit machines and i would watch. This was all good untill i thought i would have ago, £3 in and i hit the jackpot!! What a rush, everyone congratulting me and that was it i had to get that feeling again. 4 years later, i left the navy anf got a really good job in the debt indusry (i know what a kick in the nuts! and no i don't work for a DCA or go knocking on the doors of old women demding money.) I am not on bad money and neither is my OH but he would allways wonder why i couldn't pay the rent or for food, the reason is simplie. I would get piad make sure my debts where paid, Loan, C/C and other bits like the concil tax and TV. But then i would take out evey last bit i could and go and play on the blckjack machine is the Bookies! I know the house allways wins. sometimes i would brake even but 9 times out of 10 i would go home with nothing!!

Me and my OH have been toghther for 5 years but been good firends for 10, no Kids and not married and living toghther. He has debts from before we got toghter (a diffrent story) i had none till last year when i got a loan and 2 C/C to fund my habbit blaming them on Holidays.

The lghting moment for me was about 4 months ago, i was of ill ( I am not allways sick) and sitting home not doing much, saw an advert for on-line bingo. So went and played, Won some money and then noticed they also had a Casino site with blackjack. £1200 pounds later, i was in a mess. The gult, remorse and hurt where far to much and i contplated killing myself. Untill my OH forced me to tell him what was wrong. So i told him. We talked for a long time, he didn't understand why i gambled, but he knew we had to get out of this.


sinice then i have had a few re-lapses ( but a gamblers re-lapse is a very costly one) but i want to stop.


Sorry for the long rambling post, hope it makes sence. This is my 1st step to freedom.

GeorgeUK

Well done Miss_Lia. You've started on the journey now - even taking baby steps forward will be beneficial as it will be taking you further from the addiction.

As a student, i was hooked on the puggies/fruitmachines/bandits, whatever you want to call them. If i couldn't afford to play, i'd sometimes watch others play. If i went into a pub or club, i was aware within seconds of where the machine was even when i made a conscious effort to avoid lookng for it. It was easier to avoid going to those places altogether until the "need" was less and then i could walk past a pub without looking in the window to see what type of machine they had. After about 6 months, i could walk past an amusement arcade without even noticing that it was an arcade.

One of the main things that you'll need to come to terms with is you will never be able to win the money back. Once you have done that it may be easier to not have your relapses. If gambling had made you feel better (not sure it would have the same effect now - is it more relief if you win now?) you need to find something else that can make you feel better or give you a rush that doesn't involve gambling. It won't be the same type of excitement, but even just regulat excercise should keep you sharp (i've heard - still to work on that).

The problem of online gambling is it's a little more difficult to avoid. Even a few months ago i wasn't aware of quite how many adverts there are for gambling on the television. You should email anywhere you have an account to tell them you have a gambling problem and would like to close your account. I know it's easy enough to open up a new account somewhere, but if you need to type in your card details before you are able to gamble, hopefully physically doing that will be enough to stop you. I had my relapse as i wanted to win money back - free of course, but i wasn't prepared for just how bad my problem was. You need to look at it as though you have absolutely no control after you cross a certain point, so you need to pull back before that point is reached. I think opening a new account may actually be more difficut to stop than going in to a bookmakers, so may be worth looking at some of the software mentioned in this thread.

The only cards i play now are credit cards - transferring balances to try to get the best deal possible. If you used your credit cards for online gambling, you will be paying a higher interest rate than the advertised APR as this is classed as a cash advance - not a purchase. I pay 0% for Virgin (1yr left), 3.9% for RBS (4/5 months left) and 7.92% for HBOS (Life of balance). I have a LTSB card with a nil balance so will probably try to get a 0% for 6 months when RBS runs out and transfer that and the HBOS balance. With the cash advance, you are probably paying about 24.9% so it would be a good idea to start a new thread to try to see how you can deal with your debts in the most economical way.

Riq - Glad you're managing to cope with this right now. I think you've come a long way from where you were and hopefully things will calm down soon. Has the missus had money on her mind recently - large bills or anything breaking down, looking at buying Christmas presents? I realise it must be difficult for both of you - she's paying for your mistake but hope this is only a bump in the road. Do you have a debt free date that you can focus on? Are you dealing with the finances now that you are in a DMP or is she still in the loop as to what is going on? I know knowing will probably not make her feel any better, but wondered if not knowing may be part of the stress.

I'm still aiming for that light at the end of the tunnel.
See you on the other side.

Marker_2

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Sorry to hear that Marker.

Sometimes people don't see gambling as a problem until they get a big shock - i used to be like that. I had gambled for years, not megabucks, depositing money a few times a month but seeing it as a hobby. It wasn't until i went totally over the top with a betting spree and panic bet a few thousand. I knew i had a problem, but didn't see a way out without winning some back.

I now have a plan on getting out of debt and am sticking to it thankfully. I think the problem may be that you are making the decisions to block his access to sites and he isn't. If he doesn't want to stop gambling, there is very little you can do to stop him i'm afraid - it needs to be his choice.

I don't go to GA, but i am at least committed to not gambling and to pay off my debts. For me i think the next big test will be to see if i start gambling again, even if it's poker freerolls which don't cost anything, once everything is paid off. I have a target right now, but after that - who knows.

Splitting up with you doesn't seem to have changed his mind so there is very little left you can say to persuade him. You could challenge him to play only poker freerolls to build up a bank to prove that he is good enough to go on the poker tour. This is by no means a solution, but it may stop him from depositing money he can't aford to lose.

Have you asked the basic questions about why he gambles and what he gets out of it? It may sound a bit strange, but i didn't have fun gambling. I did it because i was bored, then it became a habit. I played because i wanted to win money so i could do other things, but i had no idea what these other things were - still don't know what i would do if i had lots of time and money on my hands.

In the end it boils down to what he wants. Hopefully that'll be to keep the family together. If he is gambling because he wants to win back money, he should know by now that chasing losses is the sign of a weak gambler and is often a total waste of time. It may be an idea to try to get him focussed on his debts and the different ways he can save by paying less interest or charges. That would be a better addiction to have.

Hope things work out for you both.

We're together, and to be perfectly honest, I don't see me ever splitting up with him again over gambling. I know why he does it, he knows why he does it. But he can't stop. He gambles now because he is bored. When we are not around which is quite often and when hes away which again is quite often he gets bored, lobely and this is what he does.

He has been a good player in the past, doing quite well in the poker tour last year (until his life came crashing down when I left and then he lost). But lost more than hes won. Things wouldnt be to bad now if he couldnt do it on his phone. Yet another !!!!!! money making machine.

Im feeling quite positive about 2009 - see what that brings.

cantcope

Nice to read that you are feeling positive Marker.
Maybe try and find something else for your OH to do when he's bored? I got obsessed with soduko puzzles when i first stopped gambling. It's worn off now but it kept me occupied until i realised there were lots of other things i could be doing.

Maybe you could buy him a notepad and some pens and see if when he's bored he could start writing a journal, or a book of short stories. It's good to get it all out, how he feels when he wins/loses, the guilt or shame....

just a few ideas. I wish you both well xx

TotallyBroke

Morning,

Riq ~ there must have been something in the air what with me losing it and your OH. I can't suggest anything other than keeping your head down and your nose clean.
Marker & Miss_Lia ~ Welcome. I hope things go well for you both.


What you (riquelme) said about being there for the kids was exactly what my OH said about me. There was no intamacy between us, not even holding hands or a peck on the cheek. Nothing. That's another reason for us going our seperate ways maybe in time once I have respect for him again then things can start over. You see for me, (I've been thinking about this all weekend) respect is the key thing. I could have sex with a perfect stranger. But that's because I have respect for the person and the act. It's a one off and that's it. There are no lies nothing being hidden. But at the moment I don't have respect for OH. Every action has come with a price and always does it would appear. Usually me picking up the pieces. I've put up barriers to protect myself.

Me about to ramble to get things out. Please feel free to ignore .....
OH and I have split and I have asked him to move out, although he is still staying at mine at the moment. I don't know how long I can stand that for. Part of me thinks he is taking the mickey out of me and the house. But the other thinks, if I was renting a room to anyone they would be doing the same. He went out Thursday night and didn't come back. He came back Friday after work, went straight upstairs for a bath. Got dressed came down and was gone. I finally saw him Sunday afternoon. He came in, sat around for a bit, then went and had a bath and then went out. He came home at bedtime.
None of what I have just written is wrong behaviour for a lodger.
But OH is not just a lodger he is ds Dad. Friday he spent a max of 5mins with ds. Sunday he spent a couple of hours with him before ds had afternoon nap.
I think I need stability. I certainly don't need the unknown. ds asks for Daddy and I don't know what to say. Do I say he'll be round later or he's not coming. Either way I'm going to look like a liar at some point. He text on Sunday to say he was coming up to see ds. An hour later he still hadn't turned up. So after the umpteenth time of a 22mo saying "Daddy" I showed him which button on the phone to press and told him to talk to Daddy. Spoke to OH after and he asked "what was that about?" I replied "You text saying you was coming up, ds has asked constantly for you since. So because it has been over an hour from when you said you was coming. I told ds to ring you and ask you himself when you was coming" I think that is fair.
I'm also concerned that he has spent nearly all the money he had from his win. So I need to speak to him tonight and ask if he is any closer to moving out before the money is spent.

That's me done for a bit.... Sorry
Good luck to everyone hope today is a good one for you all. x

GeorgeUK

Hopefully he'll come to his senses soon and you may be able to possibly get back together at some point.

I'd recommend posting on this thread in the MS Arms - there are a few people who have split or seperated posting there. The thread started on the DFW board, grew too big and now this is the 2nd thread. You'll get lots of support and advice as well as good listeners. Feel free to rant as often as you need to on either thread.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1245343

Take care
George

TotallyBroke

Thanks for that link George I'll see if I can make time tonight to have a read through.