Main picture (above) by John Noonan via Unsplash
You haven’t heard from me for some time because I haven’t posted on my blog for the whole of February. Why? Because I have found it so difficult. I started to write a post in the “gambling” section of the blog and had to keep stopping and starting because I did not know how to do it.
It was about “Me Too” and what happened to me at 12 years old. I have decided I can’t write about it.
The post was about how gambling can mask other things that are going on in our lives – how we gamble (and indulge in other addictions) to block out pain from our past and in some cases, our present. Stuff that perhaps we should be dealing with and are failing to do so.
As a recovering compulsive gambler, I have heard lots of people’s stories. People dealing with illness, either their own or that of a loved one. Others still dealing with the grief of losing someone close to them. I have heard of gambling as a way of not looking at problems in a marriage – some of which borders on, or is, actual abuse. Then of course, there is the pain that long-term gambling can bring in its wake issues like debt, bankruptcy, divorce, homelessness and prison.
So, in deciding that I didn’t want to write about my 12-year-old self, I think it was about not wanting to take myself back there. I started this blog in order to talk about the benefits of stopping gambling. Perhaps I was naïve, but I didn’t realise how much I might have to share about myself.
I am an expert on me. Part of my self-esteem problem manifests in worrying about what people think of me, especially when I am talking about something where I might be seen as an expert. I am on safe ground when I talk about my own experience – that is my reality which others can’t argue with.
I don’t know what drove other people into the clutches of having a gambling problem. I hear people’s stories but I also wonder what is “not being said,” similar perhaps to the stuff that I find so hard to put on paper.
I’m told, in the recovery rooms, that it is possible to be a dry gambler – in the same way as it is possible to be a dry drunk; someone who has stopped drinking but still thinks and acts like an alcoholic in all other ways. I think we all go through that stage. I am not sure I have totally left it. Nowadays I think of myself as a non-gambler.
Gambling does not enter my thoughts in the same way as I don’t think about skiing or “World of Warcraft.” I know there are people whose lives revolve around these things – some of whom may even be addicted, but for me they are foreign territory. So it is with gambling. I still feel a spasm when I see a fruit machine, either in person or on a screen. But I just notice it and move on. I don’t act on it except to move away – so that I am not affected by it any more.
In order to get to this stage, I had to work on the things that were causing me to think about gambling. For me these were very much things from my past. The “me too” trauma from being 12 was an obvious starting point, but it then led on to so many other things. The fact that I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened because my Dad was out of the picture and my mother would have blamed me. Then I had a memory of something similar happening at my school and having to deal with that. Remembering a period when I hated men as being abusive, difficult because it meant that I was hating myself. Using gambling as a means of NOT making any meaningful relationships, even though I wanted one, because that was too scary.
As you know, if you have been following my story, my way into talking about myself and my story was co-counselling and for a while that was enough. Eventually I came to see that speaking with a professional counsellor allowed me to be pushed into areas where (given that co-counselling is self-directed) I was unwilling to go. Counselling held me through this process and allowed me to deal with what happened then and reassess the situation in the present. I felt that the combination of counselling and co-counselling worked well for me.
It is a move beyond the traditional 12-step model of Gamblers’ Anonymous. Here, the reasons why we gamble are not really considered. The emphasis (rightly so) is helping people who first come to the rooms to stop. My need was to stay stopped.
I haven’t had a bet in the lifetime of this blog (nearly 12 months*) and for many years before that. I don’t even remember the date of my last bet. I am now looking towards the future and new adventures in new places meeting new people. I am happy with where my life is now, a life without gambling. I hope one day you can say, “me too,” meaning, “I am gamble free as well!”
*Update in April 2021 – now over 2 years.
