I left you last time grieving over my mother’s death and gambling with her legacy to me. This was all the more heart-breaking as I knew she had saved this money in the teeth of my father’s need to gamble it all.
My sadness is that she just hoarded it – and didn’t spend any of it on herself.
So I gambled it away.
I gambled it away – it still hurts to write that even now.
Then I started on my own money. Not that I had any, but I had access to loans and credit cards – a good job in local government meant that I was credit worthy! So I was gambling with other people’s money – but I didn’t see that at the time.
I never had the crash that drove me to look at what I was doing, it was a drip, drip of constant losses and the sheer amount of time I was wasting in arcardes and the like.
But whilst I was playing, there was a small part of my brain that knew I was self harming. That it wouldn’t happen today or tomorrow; but if I kept playing then the result would be that I would become homeless, bankrupt and maybe even end up in a ditch somewhere.
So like most gambler’s do – I decided to try and control things better. Not going out at certain times, only gambling what I had on me and no more, trying to keep busy so I would have no time to gamble.
That last strategy was probably the one that worked best for me. I did keep myself busy, particularly at weekends (which were always dangerous) by taking up courses in subjects I was vaguely interested in. Mushroom hunting and dowsing come to mind. One of the courses I discovered was co-counselling and that was the course that made the most difference to my life
I knew a little about counselling from my training as a careers adviser and was interested that this was more of a self-help approach, so that I could be more in charge of what I worked on etc. What I hadn’t expected was how powerful it would be – both from being able to find new ways of letting out and dealing with my feelings and the connections I made with other people on the course.
What also helped was that it was cheap. I had to pay for the initial 40 hours training and then any further “sessions” I fixed up with other trained people were essentially free. Additionally there were some cheap residential courses which I went on – which meant other days free of gambling. But it still took me some time (maybe a year) of co-counselling before I could admit to this as a problem.
Why didn’t I admit things? Embarrassment, feeling silly, still thinking that slots aren’t real gambling, the way sport’s betting on high-stakes casino games are.
But it was someone in co-counselling who suggested that I consider gamblers’ anonymous and having made a decision to say yes to any suggestions to get help – I one day phoned the help-line and went to my first meeting.
I remember it well. For a start it was held in the probation offices in the seedy area of a big UK city. I had to ask a “woman of the night” where the entrance was and she said, “well if you are going there you won’t be able to afford me!” When I went down to the basement – two other people were in just before me – a mother and son – he was taken to one room (for GA) and she and I were taken to another (for GAM-ANON) I was in the wrong meeting for almost half an hour.
But the stories I heard there and the advice I was given, finally drove the nail home that I did indeed have a gambling problem, that I would end up in serious trouble if I didn’t do something about it and I would not be able to do this alone. I wasn’t sure about the last piece of advice – but I decided to really try and stop gambling and got involved with GA. I guess there is more to come another time.
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