I've been working for three years now since I stumbled into gambling that time in my junior year, and gambling has never left my life like a shadow for over a decade.
I lost 300,000 dollars in college, and my parents helped me fill the hole.
Then it died down for a while, but I couldn't resist betting on it again.
He himself is still in debt to this day.
I always think about quitting gambling, but I give up halfway every time.
Online gambling, playing cards, gambling back and forth, the longest time to quit more than a year, the result was a friend to get caught up again, and now lose all the numbness.
Every time I quit gambling for a while, there's an excuse for me to go back to gambling and lose a ton of money, followed by regret, but it doesn't take long for it to repeat itself. The day before yesterday, I lost another 30,000 or so, and my total debt is almost 200,000 lately.
Instead, it was a bit of a relief after the last loss, a numbness that I can't quite put my finger on.
The last two times, I lost over $20,000 that time in April and again the day before yesterday.
I understand all the reasoning, but when I think of huge debts, I always want to take shortcuts, and when my friends show me a gambling news, my addiction will go to my head, and I can't stop it at all.
It's so scary, I'm really afraid of gambling again in the future, how do I kick the addiction for good and get my life back on track?
Hello, friend.
You have been involved in gambling since your second year of junior high school, and it has been more than ten years since then. Over the years, you have tried to quit gambling, but you have always fallen into the pit again and again. Gambling doesn't just make you lose money, what's worse is that it wears away your energy and makes you farther and farther away from a normal life. It's a real ordeal to stay in gambling.
➡️ I don t know how you got into gambling in your second year, this thing is like a dog paste when you touch it, you can t shake it off.
When you taste the sweetness of gambling, your brain will be strongly stimulated, and a large amount of dopamine will be secreted in a short period of time, which will make you so excited that you will go to your head. This kind of pleasure makes you lose your mind, slowly feel that the hard work is not worth it, will think: if you concentrate on the study of gambling, earn more money than working for decades. So the mind drifts further and further away.
Although you lose most of the time, but once in a while you win, this uncertainty makes you lucky. You think it's a zero-cost high return. By zero-cost, I don't mean no principal, but rather, no labor is required, and you can earn a high return on your principal alone.
There's a gambler's fallacy here, meaning that each bet is supposed to be independent, but you mistakenly think that the outcome is related to the previous one, and think that if you didn't win before, you have a higher probability of winning next time.
People are naturally pleasure-seeking and subconsciously always want to win, covering off the shadow of losing and replacing it with the thrill of winning; in addition, the probability of winning does not seem to be low, so that you easily forget the risk of losing.
I say this to tell you - these thoughts are all a big mistake ！！！！！
When these thoughts pop into your head, you have to deny it over and over again, even curse yourself awake and beat yourself up!!!!
➡️ want to quit gambling, you have to come down hard or you'll be halfway there like you were before.
There is a method for quitting gambling called aversion therapy. The principle is that through avoidance learning, disgusting and frightening stimuli, such as electric shocks, vomiting, being scolded, and imagining bad scenarios, are linked to the act of gambling, creating a new conditioned reflex that gives you an aversion to gambling so that you can quit.
If you are determined enough, you can find something you particularly hate or fear, and use it to stimulate yourself as soon as you have a gambling thought, stick to it, and form a conditioned reflex that will eventually make you nauseous and scared at the thought of gambling.
➡️ In addition to aversion therapy, you can try these common methods:
Leave the gambling environment completely, don't contact your gambling buddies, delete gambling websites and apps to make gambling less accessible, and give yourself space to calmly reflect on the dangers of gambling.
Fill up your day with work life and reduce your free time so that you don't have time to think about gambling;
Do a little part-time work in your spare time to pay off your debts and be too tired to gamble.
Give important documents such as ID cards and bank cards to your family members for safekeeping to prevent you from borrowing money to gamble again and avoid greater losses.
According to the previous experience of failure to quit gambling, find out the scenarios that are easy to return to gambling, such as quarreling with family members, being forced to pay debts, boredom, etc., think of ways to cope with it, and practice in simulation if you have the conditions.
Whatever method you use, it will take a lot of determination on your part. As you know, it's hard to change an addiction that's been around for more than a decade. But people will win, you have to believe in yourself, as long as you persist, you will be able to return to normal life!
May you have all peace of mind.
