Quitting for Good

Identifying triggers and making adjustments are important steps. We are in it for the long run and want to make our recovery as strong as possible. Be aware that soccer days are triggers for you and be extra vigilant those days. Keep yourself busy and consciously avoid looking at scores and games. With time, it will get easier!

Thanks Aries for the pointers.
I have been keeping myself busy for the past few days.
I will be starting in a new company tomorrow, so I will take up this new challenge of being GF till Christmas, New Year 2022. I hope and believe my finances will improve in this period of GF.

Day 5 of GF.
I'm feeling much better now. Started my first day in the new company. It is work from home.

Not feeling tempted. Deleted all data concerning soccer as didn't want to remember any of it.

That's a good strategy Ricardo .

In the beginning of my recovery , I avoided anything that could possibly trigger my urge to gamble . I made it a point to avoid even talking about gambling and eventually just started staying away from people I knew who were still actively gambling .

That was hard because they are nice people and most of them don't have a gambling problem . It was inevitable though , at some point one or more of them would mention their luck at the local casino and the conversation would turn to talk about wins and odds and bets . I usually just made polite excuses and left at that point .

I look back on some of the things I did to avoid triggers and it seems extreme now but I know it was far better to be over-cautious than to risk a relapse at that point in my recovery .

Keep going ! You're doing great and congratulations on the new job !

Since the pandemic is getting worse at my country, I actually miss the socializing part, especially with my working colleagues. It is sort of a lockdown is my state.

I'm shouldn't be keeping thing to myself.
More than often, this gambling addiction and relapses, I have been keeping it to myself. But sharing it with my love ones, would open up the past wounds in them and myself.
That is why I still need to come here and read, or do my posting.

Sometimes I keep thinking of the "if only", and if I could turn back time. But we all know that it won't happen.

Yes NSR, I have to avoid those triggers and I should not even use money issues, or family disagreement as an excuse to gamble again.

Day 8 of GF.
Thanks NSR for the encouragement.
Looks like hardly anyone is posting in this forum lately.
Kinda miss that.

I'm still in my GF journey.

I thought I should jot this down.

When I had my relapse, I did make some small amount of money. I needed to earn some extra money during that time. It was sometime late 2019.
My car was leaking engine oil, the suspensions weren't good anymore. I took it to the service center, and they said that the repair cost would be a lot.
I had 2 options, either repair the car or sell it and use the proceed to make a downpayment, and settle some credit card debt.

I was determined to keep my car. So I had to raise enough cash for the repairs.
That is where I resorted to gambling.
I went to online casino to try my luck, and I won initially. Then the losing streak started to appear.
But then, I found another online casino. And over here, I started to have some confidence.
I would cap my winning for the day/session, and thebcash out immediately.
I started to get on a streak, and consistently win overall.
I would withdraw cash from the atm machine and keep it at home. I paid of my credit card debt, and even cancel one of the 2 cards that i had.

Lets all take this journey together! I am also on this GF journey and know that I will be doing it for the rest of my life.

That thought process was one of my trigger before. Sometimes I 'needed' money (really to spend it on yummy food I wanted to eat) and I would look to gambling to fund it. If I won this and then I could eat this and that. However, we all know how the story goes. More debt.

I am happy to hear that gambling got you out of some credit card debt. A very rare story on this forum. But at the same time, I'm worried about this positive experience you had with gambling because you might think you can replicate it. We also know how that story goes.

I guess I am making this comment because I have been putting gambling in such an evil light for so many years, that it hard to hear anything positive about it.

I enjoy reading your posts, so keep up the good work!

Part 2:
It seems like I was on fire. I was on cloud 9.
I was almost hitting the prime before the Covid-19 lockdown in mid of March 2020.

After paying off my credit card debt and having the extra (excess) cash in hand, I decided to send my car for a full repair. Got the parts changed, fix the dents and painted it, changed to new tyres. All done up.
And then BAM, covid-19 lockdown hit.

Just, before the lockdown, I was into 2 areas, the online casino and soccer betting.The online casino cards started to get trickier, so I would switch over to soccer betting.
I would alternate between both.

And when Covid hit, the soccer matches started to dwindle, and eventually I was playing in leagues that kinda nonsense. I thought I had the formula, but at this time, it started to get tougher.
And when it came to the online casino sites (which I had made quite some money), they started to manipulate it by arranging the card (pre-prepared).

I started to lose back.
The trigger point came when I had joined an online mobile games, and I started to purchase game packs to bring up my game to the higher level.
For the expensive game packs that I bought (I was still with excess cash (physical cash at home), I wanted to recover back those large amounts that I spent.
So, I resorted to playing higher stakes in the scarce soccer matches. I guess you all know the outcome.
I started to lose much faster.
And the stock of cash the I have started to dwindle.
Seems like now, I was chasing losses

-- Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:34 pm --

Soon enough the pile of cash was gone.
I started to go for cash advance on my credit card.

And then it came to the point of realisation, that I have spiral out of control.
I was becoming desperate.
I keep thinking of my situation of the pre Covid, when I had envelopes full of cash hidden in my study room (hidden away from my wife...lol).
I was telling myself, how could I have been so careless.
Why didn't I quit. If the pandemic had not happen, would I have cleared my last hurdle of debt, which is a bank loan (which was taken out to clear my gambling debt many years ago).

So fast forward to the present day.

I have just started with a new company on the 15th January 2021. I believe in this new start, that I want to start anew. I did open to see the soccer score between Liverpool vs Man U. And I saw the result of the matches in Bundesliga 2 which I was playing before I quit.
*(My apologies for being quite detailed).