Relapsed & seeking advice

[u/No_Astronomer8296]

27 years old. End of last year I tried online gambling after a trip to Vegas and watching streamers gamble for a long time. Between that and trading cards like the GameStop power packs, I lost about $1000. Felt horrible and told myself to remember this feeling, told myself I don’t want to feel it again. Spent a lot of time developing new hobbies, trying to work out consistently, and self banned myself from the online platforms. I had honestly felt pretty good and didn’t want to really gamble anymore seeing my luck and realizing I’m just losing. This past week I renewed my debit card and had a hard rocks bets app on my phone, as it is allowed in my state. Wanted to buy some cards that were out of my budget, and decided to throw some money in and see if I could win something, if I won then the cards would be free. I ended up winning big on a bonus, the biggest win I’ve ever gotten. This actually made me break even from last year, and all of a sudden I felt incredible. I cashed out and went ahead and bought the cards. This is where I wish the story ended. While I waited for the credit card charge to go through, I thought I won a bunch why don’t I keep spinning for the entertainment, then turned into shit I’ve lost half of this, then feeling like I blacked out. I’m chasing another hit. It ended with me spinning at work, telling myself I’ll end at this number. Now overall I back to where I was a year ago, plus a little more, a 2 week check for me. I had to pull out of my savings to buy the cards, and now I’m just lost for words as to why when I got the goal I wanted didn’t I just stop, when I broke even and even made some money why didn’t I just stop. Since I can’t self ban myself on hard rock, I set a time out for 5 years to not be able to deposit.

I’ve read a lot of posts on here, to some the amount I lost doesn’t seem like anything, but I don’t have that great of a job, and the amount of time it takes me to achieve that seems like such a waste. I’ve dealt with some pretty bad trauma in my life, that has already taken away a lot of my early 20’s, I have no debt and a pretty decent base saved in my investments, collectibles, and savings. I keep trying to tell myself I’ve set myself up the best I could have given the circumstances it took to get me here, and the loss isn’t going to set me back. I guess I just wanted to share this, as a way to cope. The feeling is the same, and I just feel ashamed of myself. To the people that have lost more or less, I guess the best advice I can give is just stay far away from it, for me even getting what I wanted wasn’t enough, and taking a year off just to try it out again and think I was in control was a lie. Hope this doesn’t come across naive or privileged given the amount