My gambling addiction

My story..I didn't start gambling until my mid forties...about 3 years now. I didn't even like gambling the 1st time I tried it for fun. I'm a responsible business owner mom to 3 children I have an extremely hard working husband who earns a very good living for our family. We have a child University. etc...I have got us so far in debt playing slot machines and then came the 1st confession 44 000 worth to my husband, He was very angry but excepted it ..chalked it up to kids leaving him being occupied with work etc mid life crisis if you will. Since the confession I moved on to online gambling the 1st year I was actually up about 12000 but hubby was still giving in letting me go to the occasional casino outing like 5 times over the year ..but I lost like a manic those 5 times prob over 3000 each visit. He took me to Vegas the trip was free...except I dropped 7500 while I was there. ..Hubby had no idea. We make over 200 000 per year and owe $150 000 in unsecured debt plus our mortgage and car loan... We have good credit and I'm making payments but hubby does not know the extent we have about 35 000 more debt then he is aware of. I'm of course desperately trying to win online and everyday I tell myself no more. ..but I seem to go back. I guess I just want to win enough to take some of the debt off before he finds out. .crazy I know this. The lies and hiding things...To top things off they just opened a brand new casino in my city..I use to have to drive over an hour to get to one. ..I'm running out of credit room too..its getting bad. We are going on a family cruise next month and we should not be going at all...I need to stop..but If I give up trying I feel like then I have to except the debt where it stands.. and that's scary. How do I stop the madness? Has anyone else climbed out of a debt hole this deep??
Thanks for reading.

Welcome to the forum Traced ,

I am sorry that you are struggling with this . You are not alone . I urge you to seek out some kind of help , whether it is GA or professional counseling for addiction . There is also a lot of good advice to be found in our Strategies thread at the top of the page too . These are things that helped our members , things that worked for them .

The amount of debt is immaterial . The real issue is how you got there . Please consider having an honest , heart to heart talk with your husband and telling him how bad it really is . Yes , he will probably be angry . But not half as angry as he will be if he discovers the truth himself .

The reality is that you have an addiction and an addiction is a disease . It can be managed and treated . It can be overcome . But nothing will happen if you don't take action to stop it .

Hi traced,

Like you, I didn't become a gambling addict until my 40s.

I think your worry is misplaced. You seem more concerned about the current debt than your gambling. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but as someone who has been there done that, you need to first take control of your gambling.

Gambling more is not going to help. You will only dig yourself in deeper. Even if you were "lucky" enough to win some money, do you really think you could then just stop? If you're anything like me, winning will only make it worse. I had a very hard time walking out the door with any money.

I agree with NewSunRising, you need to talk to your husband. I think keeping how bad it is hidden is not helping either of you.

You need to exclude yourself asap from the new casino, and any others you have access to. Self excluding was hard and honestly embarrasing, but it was probably the single biggest help for me at the beginning.

I was never an online gambler, but I know some on here are, hopefully they can give you advice on blocking online sites.

As for the debt, yes you can pull yourself up from it. My debt was over 55k not including my house, and I"m a single mom making under 50k a year and I've paid off over 75% of my debt in the last 3 years. It's not easy, but it's possible. I can say with certainty though, that if I had not stopped gambling, I would be in a much different position today. I have not doubt, I woud have lost nearly everything if I had continued on the destructive path I was on.

Best wishes

I'll put in my $.02 worth. The two things you are very mistaken about is:

1) Thinking you can go back and win it back; I'm sure this is what got you this far into the mess anyway.

2) Keeping it from your husband. You need help. Thinking you can secretly continue to gamble with the hopes of winning it back is the road to ruin.

traced wrote: I'm of course desperately trying to win online and everyday I tell myself no more. ..but I seem to go back. I guess I just want to win enough to take some of the debt off before he finds out.

Hi Traced. Welcome to the forum. What science shows is that addiction is about the drive to connect to something/someone. You gamble because you have a relationship with gambling. Even if you win enough to get rid of your debt, do you really think you would stop gambling? If you read the stories here, time and time again folks write about "getting back to even" and then gambling it all away again and then some.

Your debt is not the problem. Those of us who seek out gambling have a problem of lack of a deep connection in our lives. Something inside, some sadness or anxiety, makes us want to flee to gambling as a kind of release. I hope that you can get to the root of all of this. Gambling is not a solution. Being gentle with yourself, and living your inner truth are better alternatives to gambling.

I am wishing you 24 hours of no gambling. I will take 24 hours GF myself, too.

There is a scene in the movie the Gambler with James Caan where Lauren Hutton says to James Caan, "The way it seems to me, you're just throwing it away and I don't mean only money." James Caan is a literature professor with a good family in the movie. The Gamblers Anonymous book says that compulsive gambling is an emotional problem and that compulsive gamblers create mountains of apparently unsolvable debt yet the financial problems are often the easiest to solve. Very often the compulsive gambler will struggle back dream more dreams and of course suffer more misery. It also talks about incomprehensible demoralization after returning to gambling. I guess what I am saying this is not just about $$$$$ it is so much more. You didn't write anything about any of the other effects of gambling on your life. How can you be there as much emotionally for your children and your husband? What about your business? The same focus and attention cannot be there. One woman talked about how her children were always waiting for her to pick them up, she was always the last one to pick up her children from school or after school care because of playing slots. Peace of mind is something compulsive gamblers do not have. After big losses, I would be very impatient and often rude with my wife and kids. I remember getting into a big fight at dinner, for absolutey no reason, after my wife picked me up from work. I had just place $2,500 to win on a horse (who I was waiting to run for a month) at 6/1. The horse lost by an inch after he was boxed in almost the entire race. It cost me $17,500.00 and then I had to act normal around my wife-IMPOSSIBLE! Relationships with friends will often deteriorate, either because you no longer have he time for them or you have no attention or care about their life issue any more. Of course, no new relationships are developed because gambling is our new lover and we don't need anybody else. Bottom line: this insidious disease seeps into all areas of our life and character. It attacks our soul. You need to understand that you can lose everything that is important to you, including your husband and children if you let this addiction progress. Get help now,

I've been in your shoes. If I can just give you once advice it would be to open up to you husband. It will be very difficult but if you want to quit you need to do this. One thing compulsive gamblers do well is manufacturing lies. Lying to cover for your gambling habits, your doing it now and will only get worst if you don't come clean to him. You are justifying to make yourself feel better by gambling (to get out of debt), so this hole that you dug, you hope to get out of it by gambling more, it doesn't make sense. Sooner or later the losses will take over your family business, and then your family home and you may lose your family. You've read the stories here, it won't be any different. Please Tell him everything, do not leave anything out. Tell him all the times you went, how much monies you lost, how much debt you are really in, and Tell him you need help, and him allowing you to go a casino or near a casino creates the problem.

Kudos to NLB and Prologx for the last 2 postings; they said it a lot better than I did.