I am 35 years old. The first time I went to a casino was in Canada when I was 19 years old. I think I maybe spent $20? It was something to do while on winter break during my freshman year in college. I was not a frequenter of casino's until I was 22. I had started dating my boyfriend my senior year in college and we had a local casino and it was just something to do. Little did I know it would turn into this terrible disease that I can't seem to get rid of. It started out as something to do together, like going to the movies or dinner. Seemed harmless back then... He played black jack and I would wander around and throw in $20 in a slot machine. If I spent $60 that was a lot. Then I would watch him play black jack and eventually learned and started playing myself. Then the spending started to increase. $100, $200 or more. We went from black jack to Caribbean stud. We played that for years and then got into 3 card poker, our game of choice now. Now spending hundreds if not getting into the low $1000's each time happens quite frequently. As my boyfriend said a few weeks ago, when we go to the casino our motto is "everything you got, every single time", meaning we will spend ANY available money we have when we are in the casino. ATM cards, cash advances, whatever we have available. Definitely NOT a good motto to have. We both are gambleholics, whether he will admit it or not. It basically has taken every dime we have made the past 10 years and then some. It is really sad. We have good jobs, yet we still live in an apartment. Everyone else our age has a house and has kids and we can barely afford our rent some months because we waste so much money.
I am probably $47,000 in debt with all my loans and credit cards. I have had revelations of paying credit cards off by taking high interest loans thinking I will just have 1 payment then and I will stop gambling and save my money.... Nope, doesn't happen. Not only do I have those stupid loans, but then I charge up my credit cards again by taking cash advances and then still have to pay those off too. It's a never ending cycle it seems. The worst time for me is the weekends... Friday and Saturday nights. I can get through the week just fine, but then comes the weekends.
Me and my boyfriend can easily trigger each other. One little mention of "buffet" or "Brussel sprouts" (this one casino near us has these great Brussel sprouts at their steakhouse) or any other little mention of a word related to the casino and the other person is like OK. Or we have a weird thing with time.... like, look it's 3:33, or it's 2:34 or 4:35 or 5:55... like those are triples or a straight in 3 card. Our brains our ###$ up. And once it is in our heads, we can't seem to let it go. We HAVE to go then. It always ends badly too. He is usually lucky and can win, but then we stay too long and lose it all. And then win it back. And then lose it all again... I always say with 3 card poker (and probably many other games) it is like a roller coaster. You go down and then you can go up and you have to know when to get off, and apparently I can't get off until I lose everything. I don't know why. It's not even fun anymore. The minute I start playing and then I start losing this panic comes over me like, why did I come here? I know I am going to lose. Now I have to win this money back too. How am I going to pay my bills now? I am so stupid. It's like the same thing every time. I hate it. It has only been 1 day. I went last night to eat with my friend at the casino and then I knew I would gamble. I shouldn't have suggested going there to her, but she said yes. I put myself in these stupid situations I know are bad, but I can't seem to stop myself sometimes.
I realize I just need to stop. I can never gamble again if I ever want to pay off my bills or have any sort of money or life in the future. Gambling is the only thing my boyfriend and I argue over. We will never have anything in life if we do not stop. I really hope we can. I really really want to.... I tell my boyfriend that we can reward ourselves by stopping until our bills our paid off by going to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. How stupid is that? Reward ourselves from not gambling by going gambling? Ugh... My brain really is screwed up.
I am hoping that sharing all this and seeing everyone else's stories will help. I read the other topics and see that there are others who have stopped and how much better they say it is, and I really hope to be one of those people someday. I want to help others and make others realize that you can get out of this. Debt or not, little by little, you can work your way out of this feeling of hopelessness and have a better life. I know it will be a struggle for the rest of my life, but I have to try. There are so many other problems, bigger problems, that people fight their way through, like cancer, and they fight. So we can fight to. We can beat this. Here's hoping that April 28, 2017 was my last day of gambling....