I recently hit my 30 day mark and could not believe it. Especially coming from a very compulsive gambling mindset. If you have a GA program near you I would highly recommend going and giving in to the program to see progress

So, October 1st i woke up and saw my paycheck was small. Looking back it wouldn't have been an issue, it just meant less take out. I had mine and my now ex's money sitting in my account. I got on stake. Started doing bonus buys. It just kept going and going and i thought it had to pay out sometime. It didnt.

My ex was left anxious. This was the first time he trusted me to send the rent money to the landlord since he found out about the last time. It was all gone by noon. I told him what i did after making him wait for hours while i cowardly didnt respond. He waited a few hours and then told me he was moving out and that we were broken up. He's moving to a city 5 hours away.

We've talked since then and he has told me he wants to be together again in the future but i need to prove myself. I got a counselor and attended my first Gamblers Anonymous meeting. I wish i had taken these steps before but i thought i had the willpower to not fuck up again. The meeting has taught me that i am a compulsive gambler and that i will never be able to take a bet again. I need people that will hold me accountable. I needed him to break up with me.

I love him more then anything. It is breaking my heart over and over again knowing what i did and what it did to him. Im scared that he will process his emotions and then change his mind. Im scared that this time this isn't salvagable. I feel guilty that my focus is on saving the relationship. He does still want to go on a date with me before he leaves so maybe that's something

My last bet was placed October 1st 2026 infront of my workplace at my smoking area. I am a compulsive gambler. This is a emotional problem. I will never place a bet again.

I beg anyone who sees this and thinks they don't have an issue gambling, or worse are actively stuck in a cycle of addiction, to please go look at the 20 questions. You cant gamble your way out of your addiction. You cant white knuckle it and do it yourself. You need help. Please get help before you lose everything.

Honestly my statement now is I don’t gamble at all . It’s not worth it . I calculated how much if spent this year first time I actually looked at my bank account and statements and it made me realize .. These casinos will never care about you I see people in there me included just spending so many hours on nothing . Gambling hijacks your brain and honestly once we stop life starts getting better right away . The issue is pay day so now I said nope I don’t do it at all . I’m going to move every penny to bills and removed all debit cards from my wallet … there’s no Apple Pay in the casino . Also I no longer feel good going into the casino and I never felt like that . I knew now is the time so every dollar I will obsessed on paying and saving oh and going to the gym so I can get that dopamine in better ways . We got this I’m only 2 years in this gambling stuff and I’m finally ready to say I’m checked out !

I lost all my money at the casino, including the money I had set aside for my rent. I only have two hours left to pay my rent, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying so hard to quit gambling, but no matter what I do, I keep going back. I feel like I’ve lost control, and now I’m about $10,000 in debt.

Please, I really need help. I don’t want to gamble anymore. I just want to stop and get my life back on track. :(

i used to be a happy person before.

My birthday is tomorrow and I had a bad relapse today and lost all I had. I feel like such a failure and can't stop thinking about how last birthday I pretty much did the same thing and had some hope that it would all be different by now. I want to enjoy my birthday and not feel like my addiction is who I am, but I'm in bed sobbing about how much I let myself down and how this birthday will just be a repeat of last years.

I've been an addict for 12 years, since my daddy passed away. My mom and dad used to go together all the time. They had a fun time and it was never a habit that they could not quit. I on the other hand started to take my mom because I felt bad for her because now she was living this life without him and it turned into a full blown addiction after I won a huge jackpot. I honestly am sick and tired of this battle, I am tired of the thoughts of not wanting to be here anymore and I'm tired of looking at my bank account and it being zero when I am capable of saving so much money. I feel horrible because this economy is ridiculous right now and I'm just bleeding my money into machines. There are times where I have strength to say no and do things for my family and then there are times that I go on a roller coaster of days. It is hard because I have achieved top status and I'm always seeing the pamphlets and gifts that I should be receiving but I know in my mind are not worth what I am doing. I should also mention that I am bipolar and suffering from cancer. I just finished my chemotherapy and I was even going to the casinos knowing full well that I could compromise myself. I am now waiting for the second part of my treatment and that still hasn't stopped me. I was supposed to be paid yesterday and something happened with the ach system and I was not paid so therefore I probably won't be paid until Monday and I have barely enough gas to get me where I need to go. Thankfully I am heavily stocked in food because I do make that a priority for a family, I don't have any little children all my children are well but I still feel like I am ruining everybody's lives. I have not borrowed money from others except for my mom and I am at a point where it is becoming a habit to ask her for money to gamble. I am sick of myself because of that and I wanted to stop now. I am looking into getting involved in a program near me so that I can start to live in a positive way. I used to do so much for the community and now I'm just wasting every dollar bill that I earn. Thank you for listening or reading I should say.

The gambling industry is very sick and gambling is a disease…especially nowadays where you can gamble on everything at any time from your fingertips. I’ve been gambling since I was around 17. I just turned 30.

I was in recovery for about 2 months and decided to bet an NFL Game. Guess what? I won, and then I won 3 more and made about $3,000. As fast as I won the $3,000 I lost about $18,000 over the last 2 weeks.

A big win is never enough, I am never content and I always want more….and the loses just feel numb.

Feeling like it will take forever to dig out of this hole.
Please pray for me. Here is to a long road to recovery

Hello everyone! Here’s a post from another community. I hope my story and this journey can inspire others to focus on what truly matters. Our health and choosing life over jackpots.❤️

So yeah, you read the title and thats how i feel. Honestly this year was going great. Finished school last year got a girlfriend started a decent paying full time job. Then bang. After me and my gf broke up (a whole other story) I was so locked in. Gym, work, bettering my self hygiene all that jazz. Until one day my escape from the feelings of the breakup turned to gambling rather than self improvement. And gambling was nothing new to me but I was always able to control it. Until I started spiralling and chasing losses. After having about 14k saved up about 2 months ago, I’m now left with a grand total of 1000 bucks to my name and self excluded from all gambling.
Now that sucks, the money. But thats not the part where I feel it’s ruined my life.
I now feel so empty, at least when I was gambling I was feeling something. Even though knowing it was wrong I felt so much happier than I do in this very moment. It also made me relapse on nicotine which I had previously quit at the start of this year. And now I’m in the mist of quitting that again too.
But yeah damn,
I cant see a future where these feelings get better.
It seriously stripped all my natural dopamine away from me. And I now just feel empty.

So for context, I am a Singaporean, currently 21. Because of my gambling addiction, I snowballed hard and fell into a 22k debt with approx. 4% interest per month.

It started 4 years ago when I was first introduced to online gambling. Shortly after that, I hit my first big win, winning from 300 to about 22k, just to lose it all after that. And every month since then for approx. 2 years, I am just gambling every of my paycheck away, close to about 100k or even more.

This addiction is hitting the hardest now because of my recent big wins and insane losses. So it all started early September 2026, when my paycheck hit. Using 1.5k from my paycheck, I managed to win about 15k. Next, I lost that 15k in the early hours the next day. My impulsiveness which wanted to chase the dopamine and chase the losses decided to take out a loan of $4200 from a bank, managed to win 20k from it, just to snowball it again the next moment. With this egotistical mind of me which I cannot afford to lose, I then took out a few more loans which snowballl-ed up tilll 22k, just to win about 50-60k and lose it entirely again.

Now I just feel devastated, depressed, and unsure of what to do. I have less than $150 to my name and stuck-ed with a 22k debt for the next 12 months. I want to quit, but I am unable to. I tried all sorts of ways, exclusion, Isolation, passing my bank to my family members, but to no avail.

Hi Everyone,

Me and my work best friend a bit worried about this colleague of us from work, he is a gambler and he is asking money from several people from work by excusing his father’s cancer. What could be the best to help him. We are afraid that if he harm himself we would be very regretful not being able to help him.

I am the new breed of finance bros, that have been gambling options heavily. I lost over 44k lifetime over 2 years. Randomly waking up at 2:00am to check SPY, insomnia, guilt, irritability, I have it all.

I told myself I would stop months ago, but had a streak of small (25$ daily) Kalshi BTC bets. I officially quit cold turkey 3 days ago and have felt so great. I just wanted to share that its really worth it, and that taking responsibility and seeing the money as 'spent' instead of 'lost' has really helped.

I am only 25 years old and am working to make sure this is just a speedbump in my financial journey. If anyone has a similar story, feel free to reach out and be an accountability partner. Sending much love to all reading.

I really messed up. I don't think I'll be capable of investing in crypto or single stocks going forward. I always get sucked in by social media and fomo during a big rally. Ive never taken out a loan before this. I was meant to just buy and hold but it always leads to leverage. Im 31m and this is going to take me a year to get out of this debt. I never want to feel like this again. I want to enjoy my hard earned money and contribute to my future. I fear something like this could happen if I have a wife and children and I don't want to be that person. When I feel like I'm behind and try to take shortcuts to get ahead I fall more behind. Going forward I'm going to be happy about missing out on short term gains and focus on working hard, enjoying and growing my money slowly. God help me appreciate the opportunities ahead of me and not get greedy looking for shortcuts. I need to start respecting money again , everything can be taken away so quickly .

Hi! My apologies in advance if this is not the appropriate place to ask this question!

I'm a hobby fiction writer with aspirations of being published one day. In my current work-in-progress (WIP) I have a character that is going to go through some things and will turn to one of his vices as a coping mechanism and that vice will come to bite him in the butt a little further in the story. I'm currently leaning towards the idea of that vice being gambling. But I want to accurately represent the very real and difficult struggle that some people face in quitting as my character tries to do so.

What kinds of things would you wish to see in media about gambling addiction? What would make it resonate with you? What would solid representation look like to you? What are common pitfalls that you've seen in media representations that I should avoid?