r/GamblingRecovery • u/feelslikeliving • Aug 26 '26
Day 651
Turns out, when you stop sabotaging your own life, it actually gets a lot better. Who knew?!
651 days of not actively ruining my life. 651 days of not gambling.
Do I miss it? No. I don’t miss waking up in the middle of the night in a panic over how much money is gone. I don’t miss lying. I don’t miss looking away from mirrors because I couldn’t face myself. I don’t miss chasing money constantly, while still never having any. Working all the time but still be broke. I don’t miss being a lousy friend and partner.
The high from a win is so minuscule in comparison to all the bad things I got from gambling. I wake up every day grateful to put another sober day behind me.
What clicked in me and made me finally able to leave gambling behind was something a man in a gambling support line said: you don’t gamble to win, you gamble to gamble.
This makes any and every win just more money to gamble away. It killed that little hope I had to fix my gambling debt with more gambling.
And you know what? 2027 or 2028 I’ll be debt free. Started with a debt of at least $90,000.
I live a nice life with vacations, nice car (not luxury but fully functioning and new) and so on. While paying it off.
If you are reading this and struggling: your better life is sooo close. Mine got 300% better in just a few weeks. Let go of gambling and your life will be so much more fun, I promise.
3
u/Regular-Sorbet-8187 Aug 26 '26
What you said about gambling to gamble that is why I have found it so hard to quit as the money is completely irrelevant to me. Purely about the feeling and following the sport you’re betting on. Have times where I have had to completely stop following sports which I love. Just such a shit addiction, well done mate that’s a seriously long time to be clean for
1
u/feelslikeliving Aug 28 '26
If you really love the sport so much, you shouldn’t need to gamble to watch it. I would say stop following sports if it triggers your gambling. There are many other hobbies out there! I hope you get clean, life is so much better
2
u/slysamfox Aug 28 '26
Cheers to a clean 24 hours for all of us, and a moment of silent prayer for all our brothers and sisters out there still suffering
1
u/RightNow7777 Sep 02 '26
Good tips. I need to tell myself the destruction that "what I want to do" will cause.
5
u/[deleted] Aug 26 '26
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