Trying to stop gambling since June 28th

Hello all,

First of all, I am not a native English speaker, so my post will probably not be in perfect English, hope you will still understand. Secondly, I want to speak out my gratitude to everyone on this forum. A lot of heartbreaking stories, but also some very inspiring stories about people that managed to go gambling free for such a great period of time. Anyway, let's start with my story.

I think I was always kind of "obsessed" with money, as a kid I sometimes counted my savings multiple times a day and was always comparing it to my brother and sister .
I was always very frugal and that lead to a nice 5000,- savings. Until I learned about online gambling..
In high school I sometimes played poker with some friends and they were talking about online poker and how easy it was to make money with it. So I thought, let's give it a try...
I think I first lost 20,- in a couple of days and was very upset about it and put in another 20 with the motivation to get that first 20 back (from the start I already behaved like a gambling addict). With that 20 it went up and down for some days, until I found out about the online casino. Within a few hours I went from 20 to 1600 euro, wow I was so excited!! When I look back at it, this was the worst thing that happened to me in my life, this win kept me hooked to online gambling. I canceled my withdrawal within a few days and lost it all in just a few minutes. From that moment things spiralled out of control and I started depositing hundreds of euros into my online account. This went on until I told my parents about my problem, which I could not keep for myself anymore because it made me so depressed. Luckily, my parents were very supportive and a huge weight was off my shoulders. From that moment I think I was "clean" for like 2 years, until I started studying in University. I felt quite lonely and depressed, far away from my parents in an unknown city surrounded by people I did not like so much. There the gambling started again, even worse than before. I think I lost around 10k during these 5 years, but it can very well be more than that. I could always hide my addiction very well from everyone around me, always putting up a smile, but I was dying deep inside. Long story short, I messed up my study to a certain degree (delayed 1 year because of gambling), got very depressed and felt very guilty because my parents had very severe financial problems while I was gambling like a mad man. Eventually, I told my parents, brother and sister again and this time I made a bigger effort to stop gambling. This time (June 28th) I was more determined than ever to stop gambling. Therefore, in a short time I signed in for counseling, gave my finances to my dad, self excluded from all websites I was gambling and started reading this forum. It resulted in 1 month gamble free, 1 small relapse and now 2 weeks gamble free. If you read until here, thank you very much for reading. I hope to post more messages in the future, when I am hopefully still GF. Let's fight this horrible addiction together!

Welcome GF4life !

Well done on making the decision to remove gambling from your life. That's a positive and powerful choice . 2 years of abstinence have proven that you can do this . There is a definite difference between abstinence and recovery though and I think it would serve you well to research that .

Online gambling addiction is one of the hardest forms of the disease to overcome . You've made good decision to tell your family. Their help will be very valuable to you in the coming months . Please consider getting a gambling site blocker for all of your devices . There are many types available online and once installed , you will not be able to access any online casinos .

Stay strong !