13. Stress!

I apologize for the lack of posts over the last week or so.  Our office is moving before the end of the month and of course, I am coordinating everything :-).  The good news is that when you are working 12 hours a day you do not have time to think about gambling!  I am sure this post will have grammatical errors/typos since I will not be awake long enough to proof it before I post it so I apologize in advane!

In the past, stress and exhaustion were major triggers for me to go gambling.  It was my escape from reality and I loved every second of it while I was there.  I guess I had a feeling of entitlement.  It sounds stupid and selfish now that I can see things more clearly.  Honestly, I felt that because I had an extremely stressful job and made good money I deserved to go.  It was my way of taking time for me.  I justified it in my mind so easily.  There were so many excuses.  They ranged from "I do not spend any money on myself besides gambling" to "I work too hard to never take time for me," or "gambling keeps me from getting depressed - it makes me happy and is something I truly enjoy."  The important thing to note here is the overwhelming, excessive use of the word "I" in all of the logic above.  Everything revolved around me and at no time did I take into consideration my husband or children's feelings.  I felt that I always "found a way" to fix the money problems so I was not hurting anyone.  The reality was that I was not hurting them at that moment, but that was only because they did not know the extent to which I had ruined us financially.  I just kept obtaining loans to cover previous loans and ultimately spent more money on loan fees than I had at the casino.

Most of my losses actually occurred through the loans and not necessarily during my trips to the casino.  It was those nights where I would spend the money I had planned on spending for the evening and then go into this other reality where it did not matter if I spent more money, went to the cash machine one more time, or did whatever else I could do to access money because I would simply win it back and put it back in the bank.  Many times that did work, but when it did not work, I would go into panic mode and most times when I walked out of the casino I had no idea how much money I truly spent that evening.  Then, after I checked the bank account when I got home and tried to calculate in all of the "POS" debits I had taken after I hit my max daily withdrawal limit, or tried to figure out exactly how much money I received by writing checks, I would calculate how I was going to get a payday loan and get it in the bank before anyone found out.  After that, I would spend every day up to my next payday trying to figure out how I was going to make the minimum payment plus fees, which usually resulted in obtaining another smaller loan so money I paid on the first loan would not be missed.  (You can see where this is going - need I say that this was a very bad plan that did not work out so well!)

Living in a constant state of unhappiness and putting oneself through that amount of stress is insane.  I truly believe with every ounce of my soul that gambling truly leads to prison, insanity, or death.  This can take six months or twenty years, but no matter how long it takes, the end result is the same.  That is no way to live and how I could (and still do) use the word "fun" when I talk about the casino I do not know.  So, I can testify to the "insanity" part!

In many ways the statements I made above about my reasons for gambling are somewhat true, but not in the way you would think.  After evaluating those thoughts, I gained insight to how much control gambling had on my life.

1.  "I do not spend any money on myself besides gambling."  Yes, I did not spend money on myself - that is because I did not want to spend a single dollar of my "casino" money (which was essentially every dollar I had).

2.  "I work too hard to never take time for me."  This is true, I work very hard under extreme levels of stress in a difficult environment.  The reality is that I could have looked for a new job if I had not destroyed our financial situation as much as I had.  Essentially I backed myself into a corner and there was no way out.  I had to face up to this fact and deal with the fact that  I had to make it work until our finances get back under control.

3.  "Gambling keeps me from getting depressed - it makes me happy and is something I truly enjoy."  Now if that isn't an oxymoron I do not know what is.  My reasoning behind that thought process at the time was that I had tons of energy when I am gambling, I was not sitting around at home depressed.  It is true that I was happy at times while gambling.  The key word is "at times."  I was so convinced that I loved to gamble.  Most of the time that was true.  As things became progressively worse, my gambling started triggering my depression, it caused severe anxiety, lack of sleep, and financial devastation.  When I would try to reduce the number of trips I took to the casino, I would just spend more money when I did go.  If I stopped gambling, I would get deeply depressed because I had to face reality and could not hide from it.  My mind would go a million miles an hour - usually trying to figure out how to replace the money I had taken out of the account.  So, what may have started out as a great outlet turned out to be much worse than the original problems.

What really bothers me the most is that I probably gambled for at least eight years with no problems whatsoever.  I would walk in with $40, play till it was gone and walk out.  That was it.  The funny thing is I probably won around $11,000 the first year I gambled (that is after anything I lost was subtracted out).  The most I ever went to the casino was possibly five times a month.  I had great luck, had everything under control - I never had to control the "compulsive" side of my personality at that time, it was strictly entertainment and nothing more.  The next several years it was still a hobby, I would always come out ahead over the period of a year and I never used "bill" money to gamble.  Things continued on for several more years and this is probably where I slowly started to lose control.  I remarried, made more money at my job, and was no longer supporting three children on my own.  Essentially I had a greatly enhanced gambling budget.  Even though I had bumped up over time to spending around $200 in a night, it had no impact on our finances and was considered "fun" money.  At this time my husband would go with me and we had a lot of fun.  I was still fun to be around, did not turn into a crazy person, and could still enjoy conversation and spending time with my hubby.  The amount of money and time I spent at the casinos slowly increased over time and before I knew it I was thinking about it all of the time and it was starting to play way too big of a part in my life.

Inevitably, I would have hit rock bottom had I stayed on my slow steady path to destruction, but I think it could have taken another ten years to hit that point.  Rock bottom came much more quickly for me because they put in a casino less than 20 minutes from my house.  Previously I had to drive over an hour each way to go to the casino so it was always a planned outing, I could never "sneak" away and go gamble.  Talk about being excited!  A casino so close.  I was convinced that it would be great because I could just "run" in with $20 bucks and once that was gone I could just leave because I knew I could come back soon thereafter to play again.  It was a great idea, but not what happened.  Due to the easy access, I did go more often, ended up spending more, and let it become a disproportionate part of my life.  Also, I almost always lost at the new casino.  The previous casinos I would always win often enough to cover anything I may have lost and it would always even out.  This new casino was "evil."  The payouts were few and far between and when I did win it would be about a fourth of what I would win at the other casinos.  This is where it got ugly.  Since I was no longer winning back my losses I started spending more and betting higher with the hopes of winning a larger jackpot that I could use to pay off bills and to replace much of the money I had wasted away.  Problem is I went from winning a jackpot at least every month or two to never winning a single one.  Don't get me wrong, I did win here and there, but it was never enough to just "walk out."  By then, I had already lost so much money I figured I was destined to start winning.

Again, talk about insanity!  As my husband would say - put the shovel down and quit digging!

When thoughts of the casino cross my mind, I initially feel that rush and excitement that I always did.  The difference now is that I do not linger on those thoughts.  I immediately focus on the countless nights I walked out of the casino - penniless, disgusted with my self, stressed out, usually insanely late, and just plain miserable.  No longer do I hold onto that picture I had in my mind that drew me to the casino.  The picture that included the excitement, the lights, the sounds when someone hit a jackpot, etc.  It sounds so simple but I really feel that actively changing this picture in my mind and realizing the deception that occurred each time I danced with thoughts of the casino has drastically contributed to reducing the urges quickly and pretty painlessly.

PROGRESS

So, it has been over 120 days since I went to my first GA meeting.  There is no way I could have ever known how drastically different my life would be after I quite gambling.  I am still amazed by all of the emotional changes that have occurred already.  Things that I thought would take years are changing in just weeks and months.  My relationships with my kids are so much better.  I am actually emotionally involved again in their lives.  I was always present physically, but many times a million miles away mentally and emotionally.

When I decided to stop gambling, I strictly thought it was a financial problem.  I did have serious concerns about my health due to the substantial amount of stress I put myself through on a daily basis.  One of my main reasons for stopping gambling was that I was worried I would have a heart attack from stress before I turned 40.  I was aging myself so quickly and not taking care of myself.

Now, work is going better due to changes in me such as improved focus, less "sick" days, empathy for others, etc.  Where before I was always burning the candle at both ends with the end result always being lack of sleep, I am not able to pace myself and my health is getting better too.  It is by no means perfect nor is life, but I am mentally stronger to deal with life's challenges and am no longer creating my own problems.

CLOSING

I am happy to be back blogging.  Of course I am absolutely exhausted due to the office move, and I am up way past my bedtime, I needed this time to take inventory of my emotions, stress level, and overall mental well-being.  So many days it is easy to get caught up in life and just go through the motions, following the same patterns, and falling into a rut.  This blog is my outlet.  It keeps me grounded and helps me remember how much pain gambling caused me.  When the day comes that I get that urge to gamble and it does not pass as quickly as the other urges have, I plan on reading my posts so I can mentally go back to where I was when I hit rock bottom and keep on reading until the urge is gone.  If that does not stop me, I truly am INSANE!

Well, I have to be up for work in five hours so I have to run.  After the end of the month I will definitely post more often, but will do my best between now and then.  Thanks for reading this.