Just for Today .......

This is a subsection of statements of intent in the GA handbook that are pertinent and relativly simple. I will quote them every now and again to to to reflect reality.

"Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not try to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do something for 12 hours that would appal me if I felt that I had to keep it up for a lifetime"

Yesterday was pretty relevant to the above intention, Mrs Dickhead and I attended MABS (money advice) and the first thing I was instructed to do by the councillor was to stop thinking of every possible scenario in the future. I firmly believe that many gamblers have over active minds (washing machine analogy in previous posts) and this is reinforced by the people I listen to in the GA meetings every week. I really do realise that I am capable of starting again and the damage I can do in a 12 hour period is really appalling.


There is something cathartic about having shared my addiction with family, and now outsiders via the MABS route. I can think clearer, I can focus for minutes at a time rather than seconds, and the other thing I am beginning to notice about myself is that I am less critical of others, I am discovering a sense of empathy that I thought had been eradicated many bets ago. This is a paradigm shift for me in the space of 12 days, and if I can continue to reduce the abhorrent aspects of my personality by staying away from gambling there may be an upside for those I have hurt. I am not naive enough to believe all will be roses or I am cured, this is a condition that will remain with me forever, but, when I hear guys talk at meetings, after multiple years without gambling, and I fell their enthusiasm and lust for life it helps to keep this idiot focussed. There are many like me at the genesis of their recovery, and the darkness an despair that envelops us is sadly universal.

On a side note, I tried to cancel my Paddy Power account on line, not an option. I am now about to ring them but surprise, surprise, it's very difficult wonder if I was a winner would it be so difficult ?

I have self excluded from Betfair (6 months is the max) and Betdaq (5 Years is the max) and am in the process of shutting them down. It's largely irrelevant as I have handed control of all finances to my wife, had to be done if I'm serious about this.

My name is Paddy, I'm a compulsive gambler, I have not had a bet today or since my last post.

ps. As a Liverpool fan, I'm delighted Fergie is gone, hard to dispute his legacy as one of the greatest.

See, told ya I was getting soft!

Night of the long addition.

3:07 am : OK, lets add it up again.

Credit Card 1 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 2 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 3 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 4 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 5 : ***** Euro
Mortgage : **** Euro
Car Tax : **** Euro
Overdraft : ***** Euro
Personal subs from brother and sister : ***** Euro.

OK that's what I have to pay or owe. Now here's my income :

**** Euro.

Sweet Jesus, I'm fucked, the only way we can get out of this is if something happens to me and the family get the insurance. What are the options ?

STOP THIS THINKING. GO TO SLEEP.



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4:03 am : OK, lets add it up again.

Credit Card 1 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 2 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 3 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 4 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 5 : ***** Euro
Mortgage : **** Euro
Car Tax : **** Euro
Overdraft : ***** Euro
Personal subs from brother and sister : ***** Euro.

OK that's what I have to pay or owe. Now here's my income :

**** Euro.

Sweet Jesus, I'm fucked, the only way we can get out of this is if something happens to me and the family get the insurance. What are the options ?

STOP THIS THINKING. GO TO SLEEP.



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5:17 am : OK, lets add it up again.

Credit Card 1 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 2 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 3 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 4 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 5 : ***** Euro
Mortgage : **** Euro
Car Tax : **** Euro
Overdraft : ***** Euro
Personal subs from brother and sister : ***** Euro.

OK that's what I have to pay or owe. Now here's my income :

**** Euro.

Sweet Jesus, I'm fucked, the only way we can get out of this is if something happens to me and the family get the insurance. What are the options ?

STOP THIS THINKING. GO TO SLEEP.



========================================================================

6:11 am : OK, lets add it up again.

Credit Card 1 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 2 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 3 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 4 : ***** Euro
Credit Card 5 : ***** Euro
Mortgage : **** Euro
Car Tax : **** Euro
Overdraft : ***** Euro
Personal subs from brother and sister : ***** Euro.

OK that's what I have to pay or owe. Now here's my income :

**** Euro.

Sweet Jesus, I'm fucked, the only way we can get out of this is if something happens to me and the family get the insurance. What are the options ?

STOP THIS THINKING. GO TO SLEEP.



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This is how it goes, all the above problems are of my making, and familiar to all gambling addicts. I have an appointment (with the wife) tomorrow with a money advisory group (MABS in Ireland) to try to come to some arrangement with my creditors. When they see my income (very good by modern standards) they are going to wonder how I can be in financial trouble, and I'm going to tell them.

My name is Paddy, I'm a compulsive gambler, I have not had a bet today or since my last post, please help my family to have a life again, please.

1200 Spin or 1400 ?

Hi, my name is Paddy, I'm a compulsive gambler, I have not had a bet today or since my last post.

I went to another meeting Saturday morning as I felt twitchy, very twitchy. I tried to describe the ball of angst  that was bouncing around inside my head and chest and the other gamblers described it to me as "the washing machine". Your brain just keeps spinning like a nuclear powered washing machine, you can't remain in the now, you can't focus on anything.

It's really mental for me at the moment, but in hindsight I've always had it , since I was a kid. I often read 2 books at the same time (not simultaneously as I'm not Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds) but it never dawned on me that it's not quite normal. I really had fun when I was reading the 5 Hitchhiker's guides as by finishing a chapter in one and then moving onto another chapter in another without realising it wasn't quite normal. I should have copped it when my chemistry teacher named me "entropy", as in disorder in a system.

Anyone who has read any posts here, or elsewhere will immediately notice the completely unstructured rambling collection of incoherent thoughts that reflect my thought process. Combine this with my obvious deficiencies and some mad shit goes on between my two brain cells. I cannot accept praise, not that it's often warranted, in fact whenever somebody pays me a compliment I still have a strong belief that I am a highly functioning but heavily retarded person that knows that I am such, but believes that others don't realise that I know I'm heavily retarded and hence wish me well as I fight to overcome my challenges. If you can follow that, you know what I mean about my thought process.

There is also the fact that I cannot accept that others may love me. Yet again I have fucked up, and gone back to family to confess my sins, and they have not abandoned me, they have demonstrated a kind of support that I, had not believed could be forthcoming. My wife has been exposed to what I do, again, that on a daily basis I lie, I deceive and steal from those closest to me and her response was "We have to stop it, together". I simply cannot understand that she can accept what I am, who I am, to have that kind of love for someone who is obviously devoid of virtue is beyond whatever part of my brain that allowed compassion for others.

When I read back on these posts I can see how self serving and snivellous (new adverb , go on me!) they can be, I am aware of it but I'm trying to demonstrate the thought process of an addict as he tries to rationalise, blame others and abdicate responsibility. I want to put it in writing so, when I read back I will spot the warning signs as I start to try to find excuses to gamble again, as demonstrated in previous posts. Bear with me, it's going to be a long night.

Never again ?

Almost a year since this BLOG has started and been abandoned by me. I abandoned it because I had been cured and stopped the journey to self destruction. Not a word of it, I started again and the big hole I found myself in got bigger and bigger, and now I think it's a black hole.

To say "I found myself in" is inaccurate, I put myself in it. 

My name is Paddy, I'm a compulsive gambler, I have not had a bet today, but I have had thousands since my last post.

I went back to the Gamblers anonymous (GA) rooms his week. I turned up, not sure if I was ashamed or feeling sorry for myself, but I went, and tried to start the process again. Many spoke, an eclectic cross section of our society, just first names, all so very different, all so very alike. It started round the table, anti clockwise, but that didn't surprise me as gamblers tend to eschew convention. 

Eventually, it was my turn, I spoke, I confessed, I listened to my words, I shocked myself a what I have become, my behaviour, my recklessness, my complete disregard for those that love me, and those I purport to love. I am Gollum, only worried about my precious, but I am not the only Gollum, I am at a festival of Gollums.

One is like me, back to the well, full of remorse and possibly seeking succour, it's not available in this room, but, neither is malice, merely an understanding that we cannot understand ourselves, and why we do what we do ? If we continue to try, there are others there to try to help, but we must try help ourselves before we can dream of helping others.

Gollum enters the fellowship, Mr Jackson never included that in the final cut.

I have lifted this article from a brilliant blog but am not posting a link as it seems a little contradictory to link to a gambling related BLOG. You may ask why am I reading it ? I wish I could answer honestly.

Notice how the layout is green all over.

From today's Observer, a well written article by playwright Ranjit Bolt on the topic of gambling addiction. I liked this quote:

I even managed to convince myself that I was earning a living from the game. It took many weeks of steady, daily losses before a nagging suspicion was born that something might be amiss. A subsequent check of bank and credit card statements revealed a £4,000 net loss in a matter of weeks. How?

Here's the article in full:

What began as fun evenings of poker led to a serious gambling addiction for playwright Ranjit Bolt. Here, he describes the lure of the game – and the devastating effects on his life

It is nine o'clock on a Saturday night and I should be at an old friend's party. There are likely to be nice people there, artistic, talented; and the hostess is a wizard cook. It was seven for seven thirty, dress smart but "not too smart"...

I am not at the party however. Nor is my dress remotely smart, consisting as it does of a fisherman's sweater, more holes than wool, and a pair of frayed tracksuit pants smelling faintly of urine. This is my usual garb – my uniform, if you will – when I visit my betting shop of choice in north London.

There is one other punter in the place – a nicotine-stained old guy in a raincoat who is operating a strange roulette system consisting of a plethora of tiny stakes that more or less cancel each another out.

I used to watch small-scale punters like this with contempt. I've always been a big-bet man myself, usually staking the maximum allowable sum in all the major chains (£100) on my preferred game – blackjack. Then one day I found myself in a Ladbrokes shop on a Saturday afternoon with every station occupied. I waited a quarter of an hour for a seat to come vacant. It was then that I realised that the size of the bet didn't count for anything: I was just as desperate and sleazy as the rest of them.

That convinced me of the true nature of my predicament, though sadly it didn't do anything to curtail it. So I would find myself, at 9.50am, hovering on the threshold of William Hill in South End Green, waiting for the joint to open. Hard to retain much self-respect after that. No less pitiful, you might say, than an alcoholic outside the off licence at 9.50am on a winter morning, slapping his cirrhotic sides against the cold.

After wishing my confrere an unacknowledged "Good luck", I make my way to a terminal and park my backside on the sticky black leather seat.

I've gambled online, and in live casinos, but neither has the same, uniquely sordid appeal as the betting shop. It's the tackiness of the betting shop that, for me, puts it without peer as a means of wrecking your life. And among the charms of the betting shop, blackjack has the greatest appeal.

This has something to do, I assume, with the structure of the game: the ability to stand or take another card creates an irresistible illusion of control. With roulette, you spin the wheel, and that's it; horses: once they're off, ditto. Whereas with blackjack, few things can match the adrenaline rush you get when that third card takes you to 20 or, incredibly, to 21.

If you're not familiar with gaming machines, they are, in appearance and construction, not unlike the automatic ticket vendors at railway stations. Though, in this case, in return for the money you feed in, you mostly get nothing back.

The soulless strip lighting of the shop creates a curiously appealing, dismal ambience – a kind of physical equivalent to my own spiritual landscape. I'm starting to think the north London artistes I ought to be rubbing shoulders with at this moment don't know what they're missing as they chew on their boeuf bourguignon and mashed potato canapés and sip Rioja. So, why am I here? Well, clearly because I'm a schmuck, but that's not what I mean; I mean biographically speaking …

For many years an old friend of mine and I have been devotees of poker. It began with evenings of spontaneous, anarchic, life-enhancing mayhem at his flat, escalating from there, by insidious steps, into a serious fortnightly home game complete with league table and annual trophy. Now, if all poker – all gambling games, in fact – are potentially addictive and obsessional, Texas Holdem is both of those things to the power of 10.

Being endowed with just the right, catastrophic psychic make-up, I was pretty soon hooked. One day in February 2005 I asked the old pal in question if there was anywhere you could play Holdem online. He chortled and gave me the name of a "reputable" site. That night I opened an account and began to play.

I started in a restrained way – five or six hours a day – maybe a bit more if I had no work on. Soon I was convinced I'd struck gold. Here, at last, was the steady, reliable source of income I'd been dreaming of ever since giving up a well-paid job in the City to concentrate on, of all things, translating 17th-century French verse comedies.

I couldn't keep this goldmine I'd hit on to myself. I announced arrogantly at dinner parties that I had discovered a new string to my bow, a sure-fire revenue stream. The "fish" (poker speak for bad players) out there had to be seen to be believed. I even managed to convince myself that I was earning a living from the game. It took many weeks of steady, daily losses before a nagging suspicion was born that something might be amiss. A subsequent check of bank and credit card statements revealed a £4,000 net loss in a matter of weeks. How?

I was an addict by now, of course, and that kind of self-delusion is standard addict practice. Worse still, because of the peculiar nature of gambling addiction – many experts reckon it's the hardest of all addictions to cure – once it dawned on me that I was in fact losing, I figured the only way to recoup the money was to play more and then yet more.

One time, after playing non-stop for three days, so that the index finger of my right hand had started to tingle from repeatedly clicking the mouse to bet on or fold a hand, I woke to find that somebody had broken into my flat during the night and festooned it with playing cards. They were all over the walls, they were dangling from the curtains. Wherever I went – bathroom to wash, kitchen to make breakfast – they kept popping up.

I dismissed this (despite having once suffered from a bout of manic depression that included delusions) as some sort of short-term optical glitch that was only to be expected in the circumstances, and soon hurried back to my laptop to resume playing.

Then, around lunchtime, I was in the loo, when I looked down and saw that there was a playing card lying in the bottom of the bowl. This was no vague optical effect, either, but a perfectly formed, shiny new king of hearts.

I called my GP, fixed an emergency appointment and got myself straight down there. "You're mad," she said, perhaps more accurately than she'd intended, when I had described the situation. "You have a history of mental problems. You should not be doing this. Go home, switch off your computer, or better still, chuck it in the bin and take this pill and get some sleep."

She placed a large white tablet in my hand. Feeling a whole lot better, I reckoned I would just get a couple more hours' play in, take the tablet and turn in.

Unfortunately, I drifted off in the middle of a hand, without having taken the pill, and when I woke up a couple of hours later I was dying...

Well, perhaps not quite. In the ambulance they informed me that I was having a massive atrial fibrillation, brought on by four days and nights without sleep, sprayed something on the roof of my mouth, and asked for my next of kin. On reaching A&E I was attended to with worrying promptness and a drip was inserted in my neck. I was in there all the next day, my pulse returning to normal just 20 minutes before I was scheduled to be medically "rebooted".

All this makes gambling seem a dark and destructive business, and, of course, it can be. But that's pretty obviously not the whole story. Like all addictive activities, it offers astonishing highs – highs as high as the lows are low. If it didn't, who on earth would take it up in the first place? During a lucky streak, for instance, I get a sense of quite astonishing and implausibly sustained wellbeing. There was the time, to cite one of many, when I turned my last £2,000 in the world into £82,000 over a spell of about three weeks. (The fact that I went on to blow the lot in 10 minutes and was suicidal for a fortnight thereafter is another matter.) Regaining a recent loss brings a special pleasure of its own, as any gambler will tell you: a weird, warped sense of redemption.

Equally true, on the other hand, is an observation by Casanova, who had a sideline in gambling and noted that inside every serious gambler lurks a miser. Or, to put it another way, a greedy klutz wanting something for nothing.

But, yes, the highs. Perhaps even more exhilarating than that 80 grand streak was the day when I had gambled everything away except a £5,000 overdraft facility. By this stage I had had to remortgage my flat to the tune of £20,000. I spent the day debating with myself whether or not I should try my luck and see what I could do with that 5k.

What had I got to lose? It wasn't even my money, but the bank's.

As usual, the inner demons (the shrinks, the addiction experts, call it this "permission thought") won the argument, and at midnight, came the start of a new 24-hour period, which meant that I was allowed to deposit fresh funds. I transferred the overdraft money to my William Hill account and sat down to a hand of blackjack, staking the maximum allowable amount on one hand of £5,000.

I hit 20 with that hand, won, 20 with the next, won again, won again with the third bet. In the space of two minutes I had not merely quadrupled my 5k overdraft, but could now pay off my mortgage and be, once more, to some degree at least, a free man.

I collapsed on the sofa, numb with joy, sandbagged by bliss. But the demons were of the opinion that I shouldn't stop there. In their judgment this was clearly a streak, and there was at least one more win out there – possibly even blackjack, which pays 150%. I went back to my laptop, put another 5k on and hit blackjack. In 10 minutes, from four consecutive hands, I had made £22,500, and changed my life. I remember sitting in the dark for half an hour with such joy and relief washing over me.

But, for the MOST PART, the order of the day has, inevitably, been self-destruction. I have lost, at a conservative estimate, a quarter of a million pounds over the past seven years. And I am once again remortgaged, for 30k this time.

I do not complain about any of this – not the debt, the near-death experience, not even the huge and horribly dark spells of despair and self-loathing. Nor am I especially plagued when I remember that, but for gambling, I would now be living on a comfortable income from royalties scrimped and saved over 15 years of hard showbiz slog.

There is nothing worse in this world than a sore loser, and nowhere is that more true than in gambling. The tax revenues from the big gaming companies help build schools and hospitals, pay for teachers, doctors and nurses. This is something, I tell myself.

I do sometimes wonder quietly why walking down any major street in London has to be, for me and my fellow gambling addicts, rather like negotiating Scylla and Charybdis – Paddy Power or Betfred here, William Hill or Ladbrokes there. But the resentment doesn't last. I have swallowed my pride, sought professional help, attended GA meetings. At the time of writing I haven't gambled, in any shape or form, for several months.

The other day, for instance, as I approached Finchley Road, near where I live – a thoroughfare positively festooned with betting shops – I conceived a strong urge to have a flutter on the betting machines. What harm could it do, now that I was cured?

I found myself walking, like a zombie, towards the nearest of the outlets. I must have forgotten the time I once lost £6,000 trying to win £2 to cover the cost of a piece of broccoli I'd deemed overpriced.

Suddenly, like young Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as he walks down Lott's Lane in search of stimulus, then suddenly spins round and heads for home, I turned. The pull on me as I headed back toward the bus stop, and home, was astonishingly powerful. The feeling of triumph as I boarded a bus and headed for Hampstead (where any betting shop manager worth his salt will, at my own request, eject me from the premises on sight) was one that, to anybody who hasn't been there, might seem pathetic.

The gambler in me is still looking to recoup, needless to say. But now he does it in different ways. It's a truism to say that no very disastrous experience is without its compensatory positives – its winnings, in other words. What I have gained from gambling is twofold. Firstly, there is a much-needed sense of one's own fallibility that I suspect was lacking in me before the debacle began. Secondly, and perhaps more usefully, I have acquired a measure of immunity to disaster.

Misfortune of sundry kinds, and especially financial, can easily be put into perspective by the mere recollection of the mayhem one has been through. That is a perhaps not inconsiderable boon in these days of, for many of us, unwonted austerity and ongoing financial uncertainty. I am, if you like, a mini Greece, only a stop or two ahead, with a viable reconstruction package already in place, and working. Whether this is all bunkum, and I turn out to be another De Quincy – bragging about how he'd beaten his addiction to opium when he was taking the stuff till the day he died – only time will tell.

Is today the day?

Still dormant, no bets, took out my agitation on the garden yesterday and then went to see Ted last night with the wife.

Stupid adolescent puerile and not very clever, I loved it, best laugh I had in a while.

Just got SKY sports in for the 'pool match today, keep me out of the pub and all the "What price are Liverpool", "What price the first goalscorer ?".

The great thing is I haven't a clue of either, but, if I were to go to pub it wouldn't be long before I'd be spouting wisdom and displaying the superior knowledge that has lost me tens of thousands.

I might go over at half time, especially if we are winning 'cos there are some buddies of mine that LOVE Arsenal so I want to be able to rub their noses deep, really deep.

For any Paddies out there, All Ireland football semi today would normally be another challenge for me but, hey ho, fuck it.Love to see Mayo win but I feel the Dubs are nailed on (once again I don't know the price) AND I feel the Dubs will beat Donegal.

I still have every intention of resuming trading and getting all my money back, when I hit the Premium charge stage (about 100K in profit, I will stop). Just not today,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7DbpaHgxPI

Sweet fuck, I'm itchy today.

Another update

Strange times, I have not gambled since May 16th, but I will today.

Why ?

I will be trading today because I feel my failings in the past are not due to an addiction, merely incompetence. I embraced the addiction tale to ignore my inadequacies. This is how I feel, I am pretty sure it's Gollum creeping up on me again, but, I have rationalized this to myself and have decided to do it.


I have not attended a GA meeting in 4/5 weeks and feel no need.


I am finding them repetitive and predictable. Same people, same self criticism, same self hatred, accepting the bad things in ourselves yet the only way of beating it is to attend meetings of like minded people and repeat our sins and create a cycle of self loathing that perpetuates the misery.

I have decided to beat gambling today by actually trading my way out of this crap, I'm fed up of misery, I'm fed up of other's misery and I will succeed.

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The above post is exactly how I feel after 3 1/2 months without gambling, I hope I'm not posting more misery here this afternoon after returning to the "monster". For all I know this is the Gambling Addiction twisting my logic, but this is how it is.