When I started this journey, I promised myself I'd buy a TV if I reached 1 year of not gambling. I thought setting a reward for myself could be helpful as incentive. I've always thought those big TV's were so amazing & for me, that was I'd always wanted - not a vacation to Disneyland, a new car, or anything else. And so I set it as my goal. When I hit hard patches or just felt down, I could turn my focus to how great it would be to succeed AND have a great TV.

Well I DID hit my 1 year goal of absolutely no gambling. But I didn't buy a TV. I invested in the stock market instead. After I did that, I started reading how there are gambling addicts IN the stock market and that scared me. I was worried I might have just set myself up, but I know how my gambling addiction feels and so I thought, 'I'll just put the money in like a savings account and watch myself carefully. If I see I'm just changing my addiction to a new game, I'll pull the money and go.'

I'm happy to report, that I didn't treat it like gambling. I avoided the day playing (easily in fact - I guess it just wasn't my road to destruction) but I definitely can see how it could happen. Anyway, I just sold my stocks after making a fairly good return over a year and a half and bought my TV! A 50" 3D Smart TV that took a month of comparisons to choose (who knew how many kinds of TV's there are to choose from!?) I am loving the one I eventually chose. It's the best picture quality I've ever seen and watching movies in 3D make me wonder if I could ever go back - and DON'T get me started on the voice & motion activated remote! It's been a joy and it cost so much less than I thought it would when I originally set the goal.

So much less, in fact, that after I gave it a week to decide if it WAS great or just the fun of something new, I went out and bought my Mom the exact TV! She's retired and can't really go out and buy things like this, so I checked with her (I never just buy her stuff unless she's really interested in the idea) & we went down and picked it out and set it up for delivery & installation onto her living room wall. We've since prepped her wall so the wires will all be behind the wall for a neat and clean look and she's all excited for this coming week when it arrives.

So I ended up doubling my reward, have halved my debt (that's amazing to this day), have my budget under control and am thoroughly enjoying my life. And all that for LESS than the cost of one of my benders when I gambled.

THIS is how life is supposed to be. Fun. Calm. Enjoyable. Joy filled.

THIS isn't how life was when I was in the throes of gambling. No wonder those sites and the casinos advertise so much. THEY want what we deserve. Our money. Our fun. Our calm. Our Joy. And they know, thanks to the addiction, that they can take it from us in an evening.

My God, I used to give to them in a session, what it ended up taking me a year and a half to decide was worth giving to myself. The big difference is that they PRETENDED to occasionally give it back to me (I'm NOT giving back the TV - pretend or otherwise ) and so I opened up my wallet, my bank account, my credit cards and took out loans so that some strangers who don't care about me could have the life I was supposed to have.

I'm grateful that it's behind me now and intend to keep it that way. It's fantastic to be rid of the agony of this addiction, the fear of not trusting myself, the devastation I always knew was coming, even as I continued to feed the beast. I'm free now. And it feels better than any words I can use.

Well, ALMOST better than any words I can use. The next ones are pretty damned close...

Today I will not gamble. Never again.