Gambling Problem

Bonanza15 · ‎10-11-2016

Hey guys, I am a 20 year old university student. Over the past 12 months I have found myself struggling with a gambling problem of which I have not really thought of as a problem until recently. Regularly over the past 12 months I have found myself to gamble all my money away until I have $0 in my account. I have found myself hiding my gambling from everyone and locking myself away in a room just to gamble. I find myself gambling just for the sake of gambling now, once I open up a gambling app I am stuck on it for the rest of the day. I am yet to tell anyone about this problem until now after I have once again gambled all my money away. I am not sure whether there is a term for this problem I have as it seems us such a easy thing to overcome however I cant seem to. I also find myself trying to act happy and putting on a happy frontier amongst my peers however I feel recently many of them have started to pick up on my lowness. I find myself not entering into deep conversations ever, often resorting to humour and sarcasm as a way to put of talking about emotions and problems.

Thankyou everyone for listening and reading.

james1 · ‎11-11-2016

Hey Bonanza,

I'm 24 about to hit 25 and I had a bit of a gambling issue from the middle of last year to mid this year. Like you, I didn't think of it as an issue to start. I was probably putting $5 on sports games that I knew - NRL, AFL, Rugby, Tennis - and mostly for fun. Then it sucked me in and soon that $5 became $50, $500 and at my worst, $5000. So I even managed to lose $10000 in the space of two days which brought my balance, including my saved house money for a mortage, to $0.

The way I stopped was simply I deleted all the apps and put targets for other things to save towards, and set up separate accounts for them. I also forbade myself from watching sports games for a while. So now I have automatic deposits that take my salary and drop them into separate savings accounts for my house, motorcycle and holiday.

Have you got a budget? That can help you too to see just where the money needs to go.

But I think the gambling sounds like a symptom of something else.

You talked about your lowness - was this caused by gambling or is there something else there which you are trying to figure out and work on? Sorry if I'm prying.

Don't forget, you can also see a counsellor. My university used to have a counselling and psychologist service which was free for university students. Would you consider seeing them?

James

Bonanza15 · ‎11-11-2016

Thankyou for responding James, it means a lot. I believe your comments about setting goals towards things is something that I will look to get into. Similarly, I will also start budgeting my money. I am not sure if my gambling is a result of some underlying theme. I have been meditating for the past year to try and combat some feelings of overthinking and sadness which I think has been beneficial and enjoyable although it has yet to cure my gambling problem which seems to suck me in every time. The gambling only becomes an issue when I am by myself, when I am with my friends I seem to be able to have full control over my gambling. I have many friends studying psychology who I will look at talking to.

james1 · ‎11-11-2016

Can I ask what it is which sucks you in about gambling? Perhaps you can think about your thought processes. What are you thinking when you log on to the app to gamble? What are you thinking just before it?

Bonanza15 · ‎11-11-2016

I think it may be loneliness, I perhaps see it as a boredom thing also as the reason why I choose to log in. I always enter the gambling apps wanting to stop after an early win however I find myself not being able to stop. It also doesn't seem like I'm losing my money as it is done through the phone and I can not see my money disappearing.

james1 · ‎11-11-2016

Hey Bonanza,

Perhaps then it's the loneliness that it'd be good to address. I think I have a similar thing, but it's more tied to I don't feel like I'm worthwhile so then I tricked myself into thinking I could make lots of money through gambling, and hence be more attractive to friends and romantic possibilities, and to myself for that matter.

The inability to stop is probably just the way gambling works - it's addictive. So we can't really help that, but we can try to stop it at the cause which is why you log in in the first place.

Perhaps another thing you could look at doing is restricting the money flow. I use to fund the account via paypal because credit card was too expensive. And my PayPal was tied to my transaction account. So what I did was I left $200 in my transaction account, and everything else went to a savings account. So I had to actually log in and move the money myself. That worked to an extent so I knew the money was actually moving out of my account.

I know you mentioned you have friends studying psychology but I think it's worthwhile looking at a proper counsellor. Your friends will be biased and won't be able to look past that friendship barrier. You need someone completely objective to help you look at this, particularly the loneliness if that is indeed a large cause of your low mood.

Bonanza15 · ‎11-11-2016

Thankyou so much James. I am very appreciative of your responses. Just being able to talk to someone has been very beneficial and a great help, I will look at speaking to a counsellor at university now to try and help further.