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DayOne · 08-22-2007, 04:33 AM

Hi everyone. This is my story...

I went through a couple of years of university with a nice student loan and working part time. I'd saved up thousands of pounds and although a lot of that was still technically debt (as it was loan money) I was reasonably well-off for a student.

Then, and I have no idea why, I decided to open an account with a gambling website and have a bet. I won and turned five or 10 quid into over £50. Great! But then I lost it. Ah well, I'll deposit a bit more....I lost that too. What seems laughable now is that at that point I was probably £50 down...NOTHING....But to win it back I placed hundreds on a very short price favourite: Chelsea to beat some terrible premiership side....they lost....and now I was really in trouble.

Fast forward two years. I have no savings left and a maxed-out overdraft of £2000. I can only estimate my losses at between £5000 and £10000. This is painful for me to write.

However, I recently started taking action to turn my life around. My life isn't bad otherwise by the way, I have a brilliant girlfriend who I love to bits (who doesn't know about all of this. Nobody does.) and I've just finished a Physics degree that I didn't like and got onto a Media course which I think I will. I'm working part-time and there's a strong chance I'll get some unpaid work experience soon which will really help with my media career prospects.

This has all started falling into place in the last few months, however I have been gambling throughout this time. Until today. Today I downloaded a program to block all gambling sites. It seems to work well.

So now I'm accepting the measly amount of money I have left as it is enough to last until my next pay cheque at least, and after that I know that I have enough income to slowly rebuild my financial situation.

At the end of the day, although I feel stupid about losing such a huge amount of money and therefore have the urge to try and "fix things" by "winning it back" I know that I'm better off cutting my losses. It's possible that if I carried on gambling I might win it back - I've come close in the past - but crucially I've always blown it again when I have come close and there is also the very real risk that I could get myself into a much worse situation.

So my philosophy now is: I'm done with gambling. I've lost what equates to between a quarter and a half of a years wages when I start working full time, which in the long run won't drastically affect my life.

So here's to the future. Improving things starts here (hence my forum name

).

08-22-2007, 04:33 AM	#1 (permalink)
DayOne Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 21	Recovering gambling addict. Hi everyone. This is my story... I went through a couple of years of university with a nice student loan and working part time. I'd saved up thousands of pounds and although a lot of that was still technically debt (as it was loan money) I was reasonably well-off for a student. Then, and I have no idea why, I decided to open an account with a gambling website and have a bet. I won and turned five or 10 quid into over £50. Great! But then I lost it. Ah well, I'll deposit a bit more....I lost that too. What seems laughable now is that at that point I was probably £50 down...NOTHING....But to win it back I placed hundreds on a very short price favourite: Chelsea to beat some terrible premiership side....they lost....and now I was really in trouble. Fast forward two years. I have no savings left and a maxed-out overdraft of £2000. I can only estimate my losses at between £5000 and £10000. This is painful for me to write. However, I recently started taking action to turn my life around. My life isn't bad otherwise by the way, I have a brilliant girlfriend who I love to bits (who doesn't know about all of this. Nobody does.) and I've just finished a Physics degree that I didn't like and got onto a Media course which I think I will. I'm working part-time and there's a strong chance I'll get some unpaid work experience soon which will really help with my media career prospects. This has all started falling into place in the last few months, however I have been gambling throughout this time. Until today. Today I downloaded a program to block all gambling sites. It seems to work well. So now I'm accepting the measly amount of money I have left as it is enough to last until my next pay cheque at least, and after that I know that I have enough income to slowly rebuild my financial situation. At the end of the day, although I feel stupid about losing such a huge amount of money and therefore have the urge to try and "fix things" by "winning it back" I know that I'm better off cutting my losses. It's possible that if I carried on gambling I might win it back - I've come close in the past - but crucially I've always blown it again when I have come close and there is also the very real risk that I could get myself into a much worse situation. So my philosophy now is: I'm done with gambling. I've lost what equates to between a quarter and a half of a years wages when I start working full time, which in the long run won't drastically affect my life. So here's to the future. Improving things starts here (hence my forum name ). Last edited by DayOne; 08-22-2007 at 04:44 AM.