I have $120.00 left until next Friday's paycheque. That's after I bought groceries & sundries, & bought a birthday present and card. And AFTER I paid all my bills & got out of one overdraft, paid down another, made my current payment into my line of credit, & paid my credit cards (which are both BELOW my limit AFTER interest charges and payments owed were made - AMAZING!), so I'm feeling good. I also do not have an outstanding payday loan.

Wow. Thanks to quitting gambling.

And I'm STILL 3 years away from being in the black...

Thanks to gambling.

But you know, I can't change the past. I just have to hunker down and pay off my debt. But I CAN change my future. I've already started. It feels absolutely amazing to me that I'm sitting here today not aching to get some money so I can gamble and not wishing I had some money just to eat. AND not experiencing how easily the 'ache' trumped the 'wish' every time.

Having the options I have now, like popping out to buy groceries without thinking 'Oh, right. I'm broke... again,' is almost miraculous in my eyes. Seriously. It's been so long since I've been this stress free, this unchained, that I find I'm having to learn how to live a normal lifestyle again.

THAT is (for me) a real eye opener about how completely owned I was by an addiction I never saw coming. An addiction I never even thought WAS an addiction until it caught me. And even in the depths of it I simply didn't see an addiction. I only saw a 'bad run' or a 'money management' problem.

I never took the power and devastation of this addiction seriously. It's not like it was drugs or alcohol. I just needed better will power. I needed to just smarten up a little. I made myself a working pauper and even put my work and home at risk and honestly thought I just needed to calm it down a little - find a way to make it work. What should have been the tip off (but wasn't) was that I tried to figure out how to make the rest of my life work around gambling. It never occurred to me that I put gambling first - that was just a given.

I didn't SEE. I didn't THINK. When you're gambling, those two things just get in the way. So I kept coming up with one statement after another that allowed me to continue.

"I'm broke. I'll just gamble and hope I'm due for a win." That made sense. I'd won before, and I sure needed it. It makes complete sense until you DO win big. Then suddenly your new statement is, "I'll only gamble X amount of the winnings to get more. I can use more." That makes sense. I COULD use more. But I'd lose X amount and then try to get it back, saying "Just until I get back to the orignal win." Makes sense, no? After all it's free money anyway. I would come up with a 'non-zero bottom' like $1,000.00 that I wouldn't go past, then once I got close, it would become $900.00, then $800.00 and on and on. So I'd lose it all slowly and since it was all free money, why not? Another win was just around the corner.

Sometimes they came sometimes they didn't. But either way, I'd end up putting in more than the original X amount, rinse, repeat until I hit either my limit or theirs. Then I'd feel ill and walk away thinking, 'What did I do? What have I done? Never again!'

I was full of statements. But none of them really mattered. I'd get paid again or take out a payday loan and the whole process of making logical statements began again. Those statements weren't real thoughts. They were just permission to wallow in my addiction. And boy did I wallow. Then one day, DURING my gambling I realized I wanted to stop. I didn't, but I wanted to. That's a very disturbing feeling. I WANTED TO STOP and I couldn't. I felt physically sick. The taste I always loved turned bitter.

Now that, alone, isn't enough I don't think, to end an addiction. But it WAS enough to begin a journey of recovery. I've had a great deal of good luck, determination, and tools to help me on the road to recovery and believe me, I took shameless advantage of each. The farther I get away from my last bet, the easier it becomes. I think the saving grace for me was SEEING I was addicted, not just 'gambling a little too much'. I also think that it's ESSENTIAL for me to see that I'm not 'cured' and it's not something to take lightly even years later. I will always be an addict - that's out of my control. I CAN be a recovering one, though - and THAT'S completely in my control.

Once I took it seriously, I seemed to be able to have more control over my choices. Realizing the voice saying 'Go ahead, gamble' isn't my voice, but the addiction's voice, changed everything.

I'm at the end of my 5th week today. I'm sitting with money in my pocket and there's no hole. I'm sleeping and waking without dread. Life is becoming good again. Really good. And all I have to do now is all I ever had to do, if I'd only known. Not gamble. Not now. Not ever.

Today I will not gamble. Never again.