I have been a gambler for over 10 years now. My first time gambling was when I turned 18 in 2012. I was just buying scratch tickets at the time. Also, I began dabbling in sports betting in early 2012. On Bodog I was placing bets on sports. After losing some money, I barely continued to do sports betting.
2015 was the year that my friends set foot in the casino for the first time. I won ten bucks on a slot machine and went home happy. As I got bored and depressed later that year, I would often go with about 20-40 bucks. Sometimes I won or lost small amounts of money. This addiction I had would slowly grow as I would eventually play bigger games. I now have an addiction to poker and blackjack.
Now I have some money saved up, and have played some blackjack in the last couple weeks. Most of my sessions were winning sessions. I profited about $2000 over the course of the last week or so. The thing is no amount of winning is going to satisfy me. I will never find true happiness and fulfillment by gambling. I would win a few hundred playing a session of blackjack and it happened so fast that I would barely feel any satisfaction. It got to a point where I realized the futility of the addiction. If I didn’t have good self-control, I would have continued all the way to the point of being broke. Thankfully, I have my money intact after having a profitable period of play.
The goal of any addict is to reach a feeling or make a bad feeling go away. I want boredom to go away when I gamble, and it works. If it didn’t I wouldn’t have this addiction. But I also don’t want to repeat prior mistakes. The reason I want to quit this time around isn’t just about money. I want to abstain because my brain chemistry will be much better. Gambling spikes up dopamine, and creates a lack of dopamine when out of play. My goal is to have happiness, not constant happiness but true long term fulfillment.
Money is not the complete answer to happiness. A gambler may have a skewed relationship with money. Thinking money is key to fulfillment is misguided. Right now, my money situation is actually near an all time best. I have over 5 grand to my name. This may not sound like much to some people, but this is really the first year of my life that I found a way to save consistently and have that much. But my mood and happiness is not at an all time best. Being able to pay my bills early and be way ahead of my bills is a good feeling, but money alone doesn’t solve fundamental lifestyle choices.
Boredom is my biggest challenge. No amount of money alone is going to solve this. The issue that I cover up by gambling is solving my lack of human connection with others. I have friends, but I feel very alone these days. I need to actually have more time with either new or current friends. I haven’t played ball hockey or went to the gym in a month. I used to really enjoy my life, but as my addiction got worse, I lost enjoyment for what I used to enjoy. Playing a free poker league game at a bar on a weeknight is good social time, but it becomes a problem when I gamble alone.
So the real coping skill for cravings to gamble is to do positive actions to improve my brain chemistry. From April up until early September, I was not gambling. I was at an all time best with where my money was going. I was saving money at a good pace and not spending much. In that stretch I was able to put away 5 thousand. Thankfully, after a month long stretch of gambling that money remained intact. I had made a small profit. It could have went way worse. Going to the gym and playing hockey would do good for my mind. There are other ways beyond gambling that do a much better job of optimizing brain chemistry. My goal in recovery this time around isn’t to do with money, it’s to do with having true joy and a greater level of connection with life.
To your success,
Angus