My story and a start to a hopefully a new gambling free life.

[PaulSmt]

Hi all,

I am David. 33 years old. I am a chemist with a regular job, a loving family and girlfriend who do not know about my bad habit. We have separate bank accounts and we are planning to buy a house together in the near future.

A few words on how I everything started.

I gambled for the first time in 2015. It was online poker. I started because common friends at that time used to play poker and I joined them for some beers and fun times. I played very little money. 20 to 50$ a month. One year later I got more confidence in my gaming skills and, with a friend, I started playing higher stakes. Poker cash game for 500$ a night. I was going to play 4 times a month. Poker was the only card game I used to play.

I though that playing any casino game other than poker was a waste of money.

I was winning most of the times I used to play. When I was loosing though, I was loosing all my earnings plus my salary. For 1 year I spent all my income, regularly on poker.

2017. New job, this friend moved out of the country for work reasons. My urge to gambling was reduced. I started playing 5'000$ a year but I started with some other bad habits (strip clubs): another 15'000$ a year.

Job was ok, life was ok. I was not even worried about the money I was spending since I was making more than enough to maintain this lifestyle.

I continued spending in gamblling. I was not really counting the amount of money spent.

2018. A very particular year. Went to a casino with 200$, for fun and alone. Came home with over 25'000$ playing only blackjack.

Enough said, from that moment (may 2018). I spent over 100'000$ in blackjack online, in bitcoin casinos and in other casinos.

In this timeframe of about 4 years of heavy gaming. Today was probably the one that hit me hardest.
I lost over 20'000$ in 10 minutes, playing online. 20'000$ in 10 minutes. 4 Blackjack hands.

I am about to buy a house with my girfriend and I need to stop wasting money. Now I have 50'000$ left in my bank account. The journey of keeping this money in the bank and start saving starts today.

I decided to write this down in order to understand if I can help myself getting out of this miserable situation. Hopefully this will inspire others.

I plan to write down a small diary every day to keep you updated with my journey. Ideally I would like to stop gambling. I self excluded from most of the gambling websites I know.

One very important thing. I have a very active mind and I tend to dream and imagine about big wins playing at casino games. These imagined wins keeps me thinking I might win big.
Indeed I experienced multiple big wins and I was able multiple times to transform 200$ to 10'000$ playing BlackJack. And this possibility keeps me always on the loop of potentially being able to gain back the money I lost by playing one more time.

Another thing. I self excluded from most of the gambling venues but I am not sure this would be the best thing do do. I would like to be able to control myself.

Thank you for your time.

David.