I started to realise that my gambling was out of control when I found I had no time and no money to do the things I wanted. That is what compulsive gambling does – it takes away your time, your money and your life.
By taking back control I unwittingly did the 5 things that I believe you need to do in order to stop and stay stopped. That’s not to say that I found stopping easy and I back-slided, (slipped) on more than one occasion. Hopefully if you are wanting to stop gambling – these 6 actions will work for you.
- I carried as little money as possible. I wasn’t in a relationship when I made the decision to quit and as I have no immediate family, I had to handle my own finances. But I made sure that I only carried enough money to cover immediate expenditure and did not take any cards out with me. That meant that if I was tempted to gamble, I would have to go home to pick up cash – another barrier in the way.
I cut out making time for gambling. My gambling was in pubs in the evenings and in arcades or casinos at the weekends. So, I decided that I would cut out going to these places. I researched pubs that didn’t have fruit machines (mostly real ale ones with better beer!) found alternatives to the “pub culture” and took up courses at weekends to ensure I had no time to play. One of those courses led to more than I could have expected – read on …
- I found a community. One of the courses that I found when I was looking to use my time up was something called co-counselling. I had only a vague idea of what that was, but it sounded as if it might help and the course was for two weekends. TWO weekends sorted. Here I found a way of talking about what was going on for me and receiving non-judgmental support. In fact, in the first “free attention” contract – I was just listened to – with no feedback unless I expressly asked for it. Even though I was able to talk about things – it was several months before I came clean about my compulsive gambling – such was the shame I felt. When I did and listened to some advice, that advice was to find a group of like-minded people, which led to …
- I got support from others in the same position. It seems odd that it took feedback from another co-counsellor to do this, but I finally made the call to “Gamblers’ Anonymous,” some six months after I had decided to stop. I’m not sure why I put it off – maybe because I was finally admitting to what my problem was. But I went my first meeting in Manchester on a Saturday night – and was led into the GAMANON* room as I had arrived with another gambler and they thought I was his friend. Eventually that was sorted and I was listened to again. This time more specific advice was given, but still I kept ‘slipping’ so …
- I decided to put as much effort into my recovery as I did into my gambling. It had to be done. I was stopping then starting all over the place and so was my brain and my finances. Eventually, I decided to go to a GA meeting every night of the week if I could find one AND keep up my co-counselling and other courses at weekends. Eventually though I made the biggest decision of the lot which was to move house and job to another part of the country. And that was because I couldn’t do then what you can do now – which is …
- Bar yourself from places where you gamble. It just wasn’t in place in my time. Sure, I could ask individual arcades and casinos to bar me, but I wasn’t certain that it would be enforced and I know I would have found ways around the bans. Now there are websites like GAMSTOP and MOSES who will cover multiple venues. On-line gambling was still in its infancy when all this was going on for me – I never got involved. I think that must be a pernicious way of getting hooked and I hope people can use GAMSTOP for help with this. The websites above are for the UK only but there are similar schemes in place in many other countries.
So there you have it – The 6 ways in which you can stop gambling …
I hope this will be helpful to others struggling with gambling addiction and you feel I have missed anything, why not share what has worked for you.
*GAMANON is an organisation for the friends and families of compulsive gamblers. There are meeting usually at the same time and place as GA meetings. Family members concerned about a person’s gambling can go along with them and attend the GAMANON meeting – or you can go alone. Get help for yourself – not just for the gambler.
