BBV4L: would you feel sorry for this guy?

[Chino987]

Online Poker Addict

My story of beating my gambling addiction
My story begins around the summer of 2003. I saw an advert in a men's magazine for online poker, sounded like fun!

To my detriment I had a wireless network in my house newly setup which meant that I could install this “poker” and play in the living room while still speaking to my partner who was watching the TV.

It took a couple of minutes to load/install the program and I was off…buzzing.

Imagine being in a “live” poker game while sitting in my living room! Cool.

After 20 minutes I won $137 with a full house, and well if you are reading this then I guess that sound small, but when you started gambling – that was a monster! Remember? No? Hmm I know, what would $137 accomplish now? Nothing.

No lecture here then, my problem, online poker.

My losses, hard to pinpoint but it would be safe to assume it is around £30,000/$55,000 which is enough to shame most people into thinking dark thoughts.

Yes, I lost £30,000 gambling online, it’s not like it feels like real money! Right?

Well, not until the credit card bills come flowing in and you lose the struggle to transfer a balance from one card to the next, always running over your limits and getting phone calls from credit card companies you try and hide from your partner.

I am guessing if you are reading this you are either

1/ A worried partner or friend 2/ Like me, a compulsive internet gambler.

Either way the world of online gambling can lead to a whole pile of problems.

For me it was one bad night with a few drinks inside me and I made a big loss, lol, in retrospect it was not a big loss but it was back then. I lost $200 and went back in to chase my losses, on the tilt, more drinking, more trips to the cashier and $1000 down for the night at which point I was at my monthly allowed withdrawal from the gambling site. Off to bed, depressed.

If I could have learnt that expensive lesson and walked away then life could have been so much better! I didn’t.

The next available opportunity to get back to the table was taken, after a quick phone call to raise my limit – no problems there!

The game was now entirely different, I was not playing the cards, or the other people, I was playing with the $1000 loss in my head that I “had” to recover, this led to chasing flushes, trying to buy pots that I shouldn’t and to cut a long story short it made for another evening of drinking and another $1000 lost.

Oh how the plot thickens, I am not an uneducated man or stupid-generally, but in this world I could not walk away. Many months afterwards when talking it over with my partner I was asked why I didn’t just stop and say I had a problem, even when it was losses of around $5000 I could have admitted it and we could have worked it out. I didn’t. I chose to continue leading a secret life of stress and alcohol in my case. Many a night at the end of another credit card at its limit I would lie in bed, depressed, and bang my fists against my skull, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Why didn’t I stop? I was ashamed and embarrassed at how deep I was in already!

Many nights I swore to myself that was it, enough is enough, I am not going to recoup these losses by constantly chasing hands and betting larger amounts. Do not get me wrong I had quite a few good wins including $2000 in one pot in a larger game, but even when $2000 up I knew it wasn’t enough and kept playing into the small hours ending up with $0 at around 4a.m. and crawling once again into bed when it was daylight, quietly, and trying to act refreshed and innocent at 7am when I had to get up for work.

The drinking increased, the smaller games were of no value if I won $200 so I had to chase, and chase I did, I was actually a good player! Well I thought I was. I would generally always go up a few hundred dollars but it was never enough. I had to go to the bigger games with bigger swings and more money.

Over a period of around 6 months I barely slept and lost around $55,000 which is mostly on credit cards, in the end I had them all at or over their limits and ran out of money to gamble with – if I had more money I presume I would have kept on going, however I was broke, I didn’t have enough money in my account to cover the direct debits that were coming off the next day and I broke down on the steps of my house at around 2a.m. with grave thoughts in my.

A cry for help?, my partner found me and I told all, Jesus she was upset, amazed and more than anything else she was disappointed, that hurt the most and was probably one of the biggest driving factors for me that kept me gambling rather than stop and tell her earlier, I was ashamed and couldn’t face telling her and disappointing, it had to happen at some point and if only I could have told her at $5000 rather than carrying on until I reached the point that I couldn’t gamble any more.

I had not stopped, I had been stopped by the lack of funds – this did not sit well with my conscience either, it leaves a pretty sick felling in the stomach, but at least she knew even if she could hardly look me in the eye for a while.

To her credit she soon arranged to speak to someone for herself to try and understand the addiction and to get me to speak to someone, she handled the whole situation a lot better than I deserved, make no mistake about it, not everyone will be as lucky as I was in that respect.

At least it was in the open, she knew my habits and it all made sense to her looking back at my behaviour over the past 6 months, for me though I still had a problem. Yes financially I am knackered, the interest alone on the credit cards would scare you, but gambling is still there, worse it is everywhere!

I use the computer for work so it is not practical to get rid of it as some suggested and it is important for the family not be further punished by my behaviour, I therefore decided that like any addiction be it alcohol, smoking or gambling if the cigarettes were removed from all shelves then we would find it easier to give up. I cannot close down all gambling websites, remember only a small minority develop a serious addiction/problem like myself, however I decided to pay a programmer to develop a program that can be installed on my two computers that after setup will block access to all my favourite gambling websites.

There are many moments when you may feel – that is it – no more gambling, however the next time you are alone, maybe some alcohol helps, you will get the urge, it is very difficult to stop just like that so I needed an aid just to make sure when my resilience faltered at any point I had an extra back-up.

It is very easy to stop gambling and delete the programs and walk away, unfortunately it is also very easy to go back to the website and download the software and log back in, on broadband a couple of minutes and it is installed again and you are back at the casino/poker room.

The program I had developed for me blocks these websites and that really is that, even if I was to be weak and try going to download and run the software – I can’t the URL’s are blocked. So I thought I would share this info with you, learn from it.

Is the program I had developed a miracle cure- NO!

I am afraid if you are like me you will always be in rehab, this program may save you thousands, if only I had it during one of those many times I decided to stop but went back, maybe I might have only lost $1000 or even $5000 instead of $50k

Anyway, I hope some people use it, if nothing else you may be awoken to the vicious circle that leads further and further down a dark road to huge debts and an addiction of compulsive online gambling whether it be poker or casinos, internet gambling exists, bit for me it is now less attainable.