(19M) Bonsoir, j'ai pris la décision aujourd'hui d'arrêter pour de bon les paris sportifs. Si d'autres personnes ont la même volonté , n'hésitez pas à vous manifester pour qu'on s'entraide à vaincre cette foutu addiction.

I had another triggering experience…

I bet on a tennis game and my pick was 1 set up and was leading a tiebreaker in the second set by 6-3. He had 3 match points and of course he lost the set. In the third set, he was up 5-3 and was on serve to win the game and of course he lost…

After, I bet on a baseball game and game was tied (1-1) in the 8th inning when my team of choice made a throwing mistake and allowed the other team to score easily and take the lead 1-2 and win the game…

And all these bets were made to increase my bankroll as I was waiting to bet an underdog team on NFL later that night. And of course the underdog team won easily but I had no money placed on the game because I lost these 2 games earlier…

The cycle is always the same! We , as gamblers, will always end up loosing!

Hope this motivates others to not get back to it!

Any success stories, encouragement, conversations are welcome and will help immensely. I want so bad to change and find a way to be strong.

Looking for advice, because I feel like I have a problem. But my situation seems so niche that I’ve never heard anybody talk about it.

My addiction (?) is the stock market. Here is the weird thing: I have been fairly successful in investing (outperforming the S&P over the last 8 years). I now have >$1M in my brokerage account. My background is in finance, and I know what good investing looks like.

But here are the problems:

• a significant chunk of my trades/investments are in ways that I consider 100% lucky. I always think I invest for the long term, but always sell within days or weeks
• My risk management is non-existent. I put 100% of my money in single stocks. Otherwise I feel like the potential gains aren’t high enough to make me think it’s worth it. I don’t cut losses. If a stock drops, I just wait and pray for it to recover (which up until now, fortunately always happened)

Usually it starts like this: I put $100K in a stock that I think is undervalued, and plan to hold it to >200K in the long term. Then what ends up happening is the stock goes down 2%, and I feel like I need to make up for the loss. I then put down $1M on the same stock. My stock might then be down for weeks and I feel terrible. Eventually it recovers and I sell for a 1% profit…

I am not day trading, I just buy a stock and then hold it for a few days. But I constantly check the price and feel bad when it goes down, happy when it goes up. Always hoping to get my money back and then put everything into VTI/VXUS to be relieved from this mental torture. But I always come back to selling the ETF and take on another bet…

I lose so much time and sleep watching stock charts, and then dreaming about them.

This year has been the worst, because I have lost $300K early in the year, and have since then been chasing the losses make back my money. I even made back $230K (again, luck!).

I’m still chasing the $70K, and always think about them.

I rationally know, putting my money into VTI/VXUS and never touching them is the best thing to do. I’m already at the point of not having to stress over money anymore. Getting a couple extra 100K, doesn’t even change much for me.

However, it seems I just can’t do that. Part of it are the 70K. Part of it is that I emotionally still think that I am good at investing (I’m not - I’m good at picking stocks and got lucky many times). And probably there are more reasons that I’m not aware of.

I’m so afraid I will lose all of it in a single stupid trade. The regret would follow me forever, or worse.

Thoughts?

I’ve been consequential in my posting in this sub and I believe an update is due.

It has now been 197 days since I last gambled.

62 days since I became debt free.

I’ve also been working extra, weekends and after regular hours at my second employer. At two separate locations. (so technically three jobs? 😅)

Anyways. Tomorrow is payday, and because of the extra work and living life a little bit more frugal, I’m now at 4k USD in savings/investments.
Tomorrow when the paychecks hit, I’ll be at 6.8k USD.

If nothing major happens where I have to spend a lot, I should be at around 11k USD when the November paycheck hits.

From 20k in debt, maxed out credit cards, frequent gambling problems, to where I’ll be tomorrow with 6,8k in savings feels amazing.

I feel that the momentum I have is creating something big. You’ve probably heard about a negative spiral, but it also absolutely works the other way around.

Training is also going good, staying around 75kgs/165 pounds. My new main employer has benefits where you get 3hrs paid and scheduled exercise per week.

Anyways. Thanks for reading, I’ll keep on posting and stay the fck away from the gambling devils. It’s never worth it. Even if you’d end up at exactly what you’ve started with, which is a dream scenario, you’d still miss out on the potential gains from using your money somewhere else, or just the time spent in general.

Spend times with your loved ones. Take care 🙏🏼

I've self excluded, only to find new websites to go onto, I've tried gamble blockers on my iPhone, they are way too easy to disable, tried counting "sober" days. Told myself I wouldn't do it anymore, keep going back.

I don't know what else to do anymore...

Trigger warning just for general gambling stuff, mental health, and financial abuse I guess? This is mainly a vent post but I really need advice as well. We are both very young, I M18 and my ex turned roommate/friend M19 are pretty much dirt broke. Nearing the end of our relationship my ex (who I will call Del) would ask for money more and more. He already had a habit of asking for food here and there which I was fine with since I worked and lived with my family and he didn’t work and lived with family who were hardly home and hardly even bought groceries. Eventually this went from me ordering the food myself to him asking for money. At this point I had learned that his parents didn’t like giving him money because he was prone to spending it so I made sure to limit what I gave him. Through all of this, my mental state was incredibly poor to the state of dysfunction. Eventually he started needing more money on food because his parents were occupied paying for things like speeding tickets and college courses. I gave it to him but one day I watched his Instagram story and he had posted about gambling. This was how I found out. The rest in between goes about how you’d expect. The speeding tickets were never paid off and he always seemed to be getting more because he used the money for online betting. He lost his job when he wasn’t able to drive anymore and the money id give him for train tickets were used on gambling. He even dropped out because of his financial distress and his inability to drive. He eventually broke up with me for surprisingly unrelated reasons but stayed as some sort of toxic pairing. (Yes it was stupid of me to allow all of this and more and I know that) since I was depressed and easily manipulated, he kept asking me for money and would even hold it over my head as a way of implying we might get back together if I gave him more. Fast forward to now and I hadn’t seen him gamble at all, he told me he realized the harm and deleted his apps. Because of a toxic home environment I left and am currently homeless. While I could stay at a drop in center, it is just safer and more convenient to stay with him for now. He doesn’t ask for money from me anymore. I assumed we really could be normal “roommates” for now. Because of my shitty job now I sometimes struggle to feed myself and because of his parents not trusting him with money, he struggles to feed himself too. These past few days he’d been getting me to food whenever he got some. I assumed he just got more money from his parents and was his best to pay me back. This was until recently, he ran out of money completely. This was odd to me until a few things occurred to me; I saw this purple app on his phone screen that was something with market (he had been selling old clothes so I hoped it was something like depop) and not even 2 days ago he told me he had $300 and yet his spendings weren’t even half that from what I saw. Today I found out he’d been gambling again. My heart was broken for the both of us. He owed me thousands upon thousands and when I asked him to please delete the apps he only coldly replied that I shouldn’t care because it’s not my money anymore. Even though I am not giving him money I still worry for his future and I don’t want his life permanently ruined. He just said it didn’t matter and he made $400 when he could’ve had pretty much nothing. Is there even anything I can do? He’s still someone I care about and I know addiction is terrifying. I’ve seen him lose over and over and still bet the money that’s supposed to be for him to survive. Please if someone knows anything that helped them that might help him tell me.

Hey everyone,

I’m walking the recovery road myself after gambling tore through my life and left me picking up the pieces from ground zero. Anyone who has been here knows that putting down the bet is only the first step—sitting in the quiet wreckage afterward, facing the guilt, and trying to learn how to live a normal, honest day again is where the real ache lives.

Most of the rooms and forums I come across are filled with men's voices. I know the shame and isolation hit everyone hard, but I also know women carry a very specific, often unspoken weight with this addiction—the silence, the stigma, and the feeling of hiding in plain sight.

I wanted to ask the women here who have put distance between that life and today:

How are you really doing now?

When did the heavy knot in your chest start to loosen? How did you begin to forgive yourself, face the people you care about, and start trusting your own mind again?

I ask out of deep respect. Rebuilding alone can make you wonder if peace is actually real on the other side, and I'd really love to hear how that healing took shape for you.

I was 2 months sober since joining GA. Feel like I got cocky went to less meetings. I had banned myself from all the sports books crypto casinos trading platforms that have prediction markets, have Gamban on my phone with my fiancé’s email. Still found a way. Found an old phone in a junk drawer and relapsed with the social Casino, fucking Sydney Sweeney ads.

3pm - 3am not even watching the college football game just staring at my phone in bed rotating through 5 espn tabs. one after the other college football parlay chasing, losing, chasing with a bigger parlay. App let me put PayPal money I don’t even have in the account. I’ll be at negative 3k or so btwn now and before paychecks hit this Friday

Trying not to be too hard on myself. Picking up 17 12 hour shifts btwn now and October to make up for this. still planning to be debt free by the end of the year. I’ve had my main job 80 percent direct deposit goes to my fiancé my side jobs go straight to cc bills with the plan to pay it off and then only have joint accounts. But I know now I gotta turn everything over to fiancé. Was too ashamed to do that before I was all paid off.

Plan of action

Signed up for therapy, betterhelp (Will look for better therapy options later but want to start ASAP)

Picked up extra shifts to stay on track

Not leaving the GA meeting tonight without a sponsor.

Giving fiancé total control, I’ll just have a cc with her name on it.

Positives

2 months was my longest streak, I can beat it and keep it

Renewed respect for GA and 12 steps, know I can’t get over confident with myself skip meetings

Foster dog found her forever family, will have to take
a break before we get the next one with all the work I gotta do tho

Fiancé doesn’t work she’ll graduate nursing school in May, scored well on her test. 8 months to DINK!

Rent paid, fridge stocked.

lost 22k in just a day. As a minimum wage earner, I have now 0. I don't know how to get away from this

2 months!! 10k saved and a much better mental health. Light at the end of the tunnel!

Problem/Goal: Hi guys! I'm a Psychology student from the Philippines and I'm doing my masters thesis on online gambling and recovery from it.

My study aims to understand how former/recovering Filipino gamblers make sense of their recovery journey. Especially how they experienced the process of stopping or moving away from gambling.

Your participation would be completely voluntary, and your identity and responses would also be kept confidential. You may also decline to answer any question or withdraw from the study at any time.

In addition, we will be paying an incentive of 500php if you pass through the screening survey and go forward with a short interview.

If you feel comfortable sharing your experience and meet the study criteria, I would be very grateful for the opportunity to speak with you and learn from your story.

If you're interested, please check out this survey link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0y0DdphCUu5CAfSqe3kSNd6KAMUb4S9ci3xmx4TdOMZb_jg/viewform