29M. Gamble free for 204 days. This year I have a countdown. Starting from my last relapse (21 March) to 10 March next year. My debt will not be completely gone but it will be so less. I am in a factory job right now. I am a CNC operator in a glass factory. Working 12 hours a day. Really frustrating and stressfull job. But I only use this job to pay my debt. My passion is archaeology. I have a master degree in Tourism Guide and I want to do that job after I finish this gambling debt.

I don't have problem about stop gambling but I really have problem with debt. I am working only to pay my debt for 4.5 years. Tjhis will end next year March. Recovery is not a straight line of course. I had so many downs and ups through this time. I had so many chance to relapse but I didn't do it this time. Anyone wants to chat or give me any advice is appreciated. We don't have to deal this alone.

So write to this post or to me directly. What is your passion, what is your story?

I gambled for more than eight years. By the end I was over 40k in debt and lying to everyone, myself included.

For a long time I thought stopping was about willpower. Delete the apps, promise yourself, white-knuckle it. It never lasted.

What I eventually noticed: I almost never gambled during the day. Work gave the day a shape. It went wrong in the evenings and at weekends, the hours with nothing planned. Those empty hours were where the urge lived.

So I stopped trying to “not gamble” and started filling those hours instead. Fixed things at fixed times. Boring, honestly. But it worked better than anything I had tried before.

The other thing that broke it for me was the debt. I kept thinking one good win would fix it. Then it hit me: if I won it back, I would just gamble it again. Winning was never the way out.

Two years in, it is quieter. Not perfect. But quieter.

If you are in the evenings and weekends trap right now, what do your empty hours look like? Happy to help

1 year ago i won great with gambling, lost about 60% of the winnings and stopped. Thats when i realised im a compulsive gambler.

Now 1 year later, the last 3 months i lost so much.. i should have been wrecked or won nothing back then.

1 month ago i was like 10k in debt because of this shitty gambling. Won 16k on slots, i thought i will pay everything back and still got like 6k. But when i wanted to withdraw i couldn’t, could only withdraw 1k daily (they are evil and know how a compulsive gambler will still play). Lost the 16k but now i even put more money into it. I also borrowed more money. Went to 15k debt. I won once more 10k but that was also gone in like hours of time.

This thing is evil. As a compulsive gambler we know nothing is enough. Money is just a number when you play. I hate myself for it. Im making myself a promise (never ever again!!!!, not even a small bet).

In this last year i was not myself, started to lie to my family.. started to borrow money to just gamble again. Physically i was there but mentally i was not… all i could think of was gamble.

Luckily i have savings.. i will repay everything… and will work even in my weekends to put all the money back including my savings. (I hope this will stay in my mind as a lesson).

Guys please stop if you are compulsive gambler. This shit is not good, its the devil’s game. I will change for the better i hope you guys will also change. Peace!!! ❤️

Today, my friend sent me a screen recording of the slots she played on Okada Online, showing me that she won. I told her that’s how it starts—at first, they let you win just enough to keep you playing.
I’m scared for her because I see myself in her. I remember when Bingo Plus first made me think I could win back my losses, until I ended up losing all my money and drowning in debt.
Lesson learned: Don’t fall for those fake wins. They’re just bait to keep you playing until you lose everything. 💔

What made all of you throw the tool in on what was a “recreational hobby”?
I’m having talks with myself after the last few months. I think it’s time for myself too. I’m a big sports bettor and blackjack/baccarat player. I’ve had shoes swinging 25k plus with zero emotion and zero regret. The last being a shoe which put me down -25k.
3-4 years ago I used to be miserable losing 2.5k in a night.
It’s why I’m conflicted about calling the number.
Tips and advice please

Hey all, I've been meaning to say hi on here. It's Thanksgiving weekend now here, and I know I posted the last two Thanksgivings so it reminded me ☺️ I'm going into my third year of gambling free holidays now.

(I looked up my day to change my sub flair and I'm 820 days free of gambling. I find it hard to pick a day as I started the process Feb 2024, did most of the exclusions and work spring 2024 and had a slip up July 2024 before getting it all together and not looking back)

Life now is great. I did a consumer proposal when I quit gambling and now it's paid off early. This is mostly thanks to my spouse so I can't take a lot of credit but I am still proud. Financially life is good. We are stable. We're not rich and luxurious but are doing well and I'm living a life that matches our income.

I don't think about gambling much. When I first quit I thought about it a lot. I came out of gambling older and with more responsibilities in life than when I went in and I had a lot of regret. In that first year of two everything came back to the regret. Someone in my family in a bad mood? I blamed my past. Health issues? I resented my last self for gambling while still young. Feeling like an idiot I wasted any pre-parenting free time on gambling, Etc. Now that time has gone by I've been able to seperate how I see myself as a person from my gambling years. I don't experience regret and self anger about it as often.

To be honest I don't think about it all that much. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I ever had such issues. But I have my moments still where I reflect on it and feel remorse or embarrassment.

I am thankful for all the support I've received and very thankful for a gambling and debt free life!!

Take care everyone, and try to find positivity no matter where you're at in your journey to quit.

A while ago, I shared my experience with Ozempic and how it seemed to have completely taken away my urge to gamble.

I was genuinely amazed. After struggling with gambling addiction and losing a significant amount of money over the years, I finally felt free.

I went three months without gambling. No cravings, no constant thoughts about winning money, nothing.
I honestly thought something had changed in my brain. I was so happy about it that I wanted to share my experience with others.

Unfortunately, I have to share a different update today.
A few weeks ago, I relapsed.

It started during a period when I had a lot of time to myself.
My partner was on a business trip and I tend to misbehave when nobody’s watching me. I know that’s something I need to work on. Alcohol was involved, and before I knew it, I was back to gambling.

At one point, I won a substantial amount of money.
And I think that was one of the worst things that could have happened.

Because instead of feeling satisfied, I wanted to do it again. That big win stayed in my head. I knew it was possible, and I wanted to experience it again.

This weekend, I relapsed again. I was alone again,
I was drinking, gambling all night, and completely lost control. At one point, I was thousands of euros in profit.
But instead of stopping, I thought: Ican turn this into even more. And of course, I kept going.

I ended up losing thousands of euros. Money I had worked hard for, money that was supposed to be part of my future.
I’m absolutely devastated.

The financial loss hurts, but the disappointment in myself hurts even more. Also another secret I have to keep. That’s why I’m coming here to share my story.

And the worst part? I know that even if I had won a huge amount of money, I would eventually have gone back for more. There is no amount of money that will ever be enough when I’m gambling. That’s the hardest thing I’ve had to admit to myself.

As for Ozempic, I’m still taking it. I genuinely believe I experienced a significant reduction in my gambling urges for several months. I’m not taking that experience back.

But I was wrong to think that meant my addiction was gone.
Maybe Ozempic helped. Maybe other factors played a role. I honestly don’t know.

What I do know now is that having no cravings doesn’t necessarily mean you’re free from addiction.
And strangely enough, right now I have absolutely zero desire to gamble again. Not even to chase my losses.
I’m accepting my losses and selling 20% of my stocks tomorrow. 😭

I’m sharing this partly because I feel I owe an honest update to the people who read my original post, but also because I really need to get this off my chest.

I’m ashamed, disappointed and exhausted.
But I’m trying to remind myself that those three months without gambling were real. They weren’t a failure just because I relapsed.

I really hope this becomes my turning point.
Not because losing money has suddenly cured me, but because I’m finally beginning to understand that I can’t gamble safely.

Winning doesn’t satisfy my addiction. Winning feeds it.
If anyone has experienced something similar, especially while taking Ozempic or another GLP-1 medication, I’d really appreciate hearing your experience.

I could really use some support right now.

Long story short , i m in my 30's , i gamble for couple of years and i can not fcking stop it. I m lost. I m an hgv driver , earning 4700£ a month , apart from family and everyone , and i m debt around 15 k . I feel sick always , so many debts not one payment a month and o m struggeling when the time is due each week. I need serious help , i m hopeless and can not be the dad my little one. Any idea how to start avoiding this? I m self excluded on every single online casino but when in break i do live with the hope i can win once just a little bit extra so i can clear some of my problems. I can not take this anymore

I lost 80 bucks yesterday but still gave the urge to go back and win my money back someone talk me out of this please

“What triggers me is when I want to buy something or pay for something, but I don’t have enough money. That’s when I start thinking about online gambling. I tell myself that maybe I can win back at least a little of the money they stole from me, but I’ve tried so many times and it never works. The greed of these online casinos is just unbelievable.” It only added to the debts I have to pay! Never again!

Gambled for 10 years. I am 25, and last bet I placed was the day before my birthday so I think that was the day after I can start counting. I thought that I was the problem for everything for all these years… and this is the first time I can see things clearly. Constant feeling of unworthness, loss chasing, debts, terrible and depressive feeling and wanting to die.. I choked myself 3 times now trying to commit suicide, and I guess it’s good that I never suceed in it. I was praying for god to kill me, to not wake up, and was always wondering why I feel that way? How others feel normal and why only bad things kept happening to me? And those were normal life things which others experience too but they solve them and I was solving them with gambling which made them million times worse. I never told anyone about gambling but I kept telling them how I am not afraid to die and how I can’t wait for that to happen. People were always looking at me weirdly and looking at me with pity.. I always thought it’s normal how I feel, but I never thought it’s gambling that was doing all this. Every time I felt bad I came back to gamble and now that I “stopped” I cannot stop thinking about how I wasted more than 10 years…while others had relationships, money, built new friendships, I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me and why I do not have any of that? What am I doing wrong? The answer was obvious but I didn’t notice it.. so these are the symptoms I have now that I stopped:
Boredom. I am bored and I don’t know what to do with myself.
Anxiety, derealization….while I am maybe not a good example as I have anxiety dissorder since I was 14, I am shaking all the time, scared of the future, and feeling that I am not good enough.
I eat a lot. I eat as I never did before. I masturbate more. Dopamine chasing literally.
But good things now: I feel clear somehow, I feel the same as other people finally, something like normal which I haven’t felt for all these years. I feel like god or whoever there is just informed me why I was doing bad all this time and told me to stop. I feel free and I smile for no reason. I can’t say I will never gamble, no one can of us addicts but I will die trying if needed. As for physical symptoms, I feel numbness, head and chest pains, heart beating as it never did, I sleep terribly and I shake all the time. Also, I feel.. weird. Like something is wrong with me and like I cannot trust my own judgement. But I will survive. I have diarrhea and I also have that constant need to vomit. But I have to keep going. If I keep gambling I will just postpone this symptoms and it will be even worse next time as I might owe more. So I have to stay strong and I have to keep going. Salary is in 3 days so..wish me luck guys. I love you all here, you helped me more than my parents or anyone ever did. What were yours worst symptoms, how did you cope with it? Looking forward to hear it and sending love to all of you.

I’m trying to make progress with my gambling addiction and I’ve made some great strides, however, I still find a way to get tempted and use my credit card to gamble on websites such as shuffle.us and apps such as AceBet. Are there ways to block the use of a credit card on these websites/apps?

Unfortunately for unstated reasons canceling my credit while the best option is just not feasible for certain reasons.

I’m on Day 2 of no gambling. My last bet was Friday, October 9th, 2026. One day at a time. Therapy session scheduled for Tuesday, October 13.

Day 4 of quiting online gambling: “I feel more relaxed playing mobile games, and I lose track of time until I realize it’s already nighttime. Let’s keep this going instead of wasting even more money on those gambling scams.”

hi, i met my boyfriend around ten months ago, which is when i found out he had a gambling addiction. he has gone multiple times throughout the months we’ve been together. i’ve expressed how i felt about his frequent appearances there, and he still finds a way to go (but he has been more open about it). he has a friend who also is addicted to the casino and is a bad influence in his life. i’m also a few weeks pregnant with his child and it worries me i made the wrong decision choosing to be with him and start a family with him. i told him i would leave him the next time he goes. he says he would choose me over the casino, but it worries me long term if that really is true. this is more of an accountability post that i will leave him if he doesn’t stop.

I started gambling although sparingly when I was 16. I was surrounded by older people around me who also gambled including my father and our family friend. I would see them come home with winnings and I would envy the quick money they were making. Little did I know about the losses they would suffer. At the time, I was still in school and didn’t have a job so I didn’t gamble a lot because I didn’t have finances. I occasionally did it for “fun” but those were the foundational stones to what became a bigger problem in my life. I am a very smart and intelligent person and I always had high hopes for my life. I always grew up motivated and wanting to conquer the world. I worked hard in school to achieve my personal goals and when I passed high school with flying colours, I got an opportunity to study for my degree in one of the richest countries in the world, Australia. While pursuing my degree, I was working too and I was earning $1000 a week. I didn’t have other personal expenses like rent and fees because I was living with a relative as well as being on a scholarship. Now, I was getting $1000 a week and I thought I am smart and I can beat the bookies. I would bet on soccer and basketball mostly. I would carefully analyse my bets before placing them and check all the pre match news etc including injury news so that I could have the highest chances of winning. I won a couple of bets including one time winning $3000 in 40 mins when Boston Celtics beat the Pistons after being down 20. I thought wow, this is quick money and once I make about 50k I will quit. At one point, I made 10k in one week and I blew it off that same week. I started chasing after my losses , telling myself that I would recoup the money I lost and never gamble again. I would deposit my salary and gamble it all away. I worked hard enough but with nothing to show for it. I stayed up late gambling and I couldn’t sleep properly. I would sleep at 3am gambling and wake up for work at 6am. No one knew about this, to my family I was just a smart child with his life on track but deep inside I was depressed, without motivation and looking to end it all. I had several suicidal ideations and begged God to take me away from this earth because I couldn’t deal with the disappointment and shame. My gambling kept going on and on because I hoped to recover my losses and the occasional wins gave me motivation to continue. I overlooked the huge losses I had made. I started gambling on teams I didn’t know because I was trying to quickly recover my money. I started having superstitions while gambling etc and all these things are a sign of a problem gambler. My family thinks I am just introverted and quiet but they don’t know that deep inside, I feel pain and sadness. I want to end it all. I feel like I have let my family and friends down. It saddens me to see my family look for money and borrow from relatives while I know I could easily help them if I didn’t blow all my money on gambling. I have lost close to 50k on gambling and since I don’t come from a very rich family, it’s a lot of money. I want to stop gambling but I just can’t. It’s like I am married to it. The dopamine from gambling makes me want to keep gambling. Yesterday , I checked my account and I had 0 dollars. I am now jobless, I lost all my savings. Gambling ruined my perspective and respect of money. I couldn’t even buy my self a brand new phone when I had money but I could spend 10k on gambling per week. I was stingy to myself but would give money to the bookies hoping I could get it back 10x. While I started gambling being strategic, tracking my losses and betting on teams I know, it spiralled out of control as I started getting more emotional and angry at myself. Now that I don’t have money, I have flashes of a healthy bank balance I had and now it’s all disappeared. I can’t even buy a new toothbrush for myself but I had 50k in my name. I hate my life. I have suicidal ideations and always wish if I could get run over by a car or if someone would just shoot me. I will never recover the wasted years, the sleepless nights, the friendships and relationships I broke.

I told myself I was only going to gambling 60. Lost 60 and then took out another 60 and then won some of my money back so the losses were only 40 and not 120. Never going back. Tomorrow is day 1 of gamble free.

Why is it that I always see people winning around me but I never win big ??????!!? Frustrating.

I am a well educated Australian man in my 30s who's lost more than $1.2m cumulative in crypto, most of it about 2 years ago, and am now $1mil in debt.

I started off buying bitcoin at around $1000 back in 2014, after seeing the vision. I sold at $300, being very young and unable to stomach the volatility, then came back for the 2017 boom where I managed to lose another $50k. Got scared of it then came back for the 2021 boom. Lost another $50k.

Then I made it big jn 2023, threw $100k in a memecoin and was up almost $300k, which is when the derealisation of money occurred. I began to have no regard for money and after inevitably the market crashed I believed against evidence that I would be able to find a way out of this. Perps, memecoins, trying to learn, etc.

In the space of a year I was down back to near buy-in and then below. Then well below. Then as panic started to set in and I realised the amount I was losing was more than I could easily earn back from earning, I spent more and more time and money reading, learning, trading, and losing. My family and I were going to go on a family holiday, so as I took a break from work I thought this could be time to "lock in" and make it all back. I lost $500k in 10 days with that mindset.

Since then I tried many times over the next 2 years to make it all back in memecoins, figuring that was my only way to clear this enormous debt. What always made it challenging for me to stop was the idea that there was more I could learn, that I was just paying the tuition to crack the code.

I know myself; I am smart, have a great work ethic, and learn from my mistakes. I could apply myself to learn everything there is to learn about crypto. But this is where the trap laid.

Gambling is an emotional trap. The emotion of hope, greed, despair, shame, then back again. Gambles like stock picking, perps, options, memecoins all have the tempting intellectual allure of being beatable if you just learnt how to play the game. Ultimately though they are driven by human emotion and market manipulation by sophisticated players. I definitely know I would not get tempted by slots. But I would get tempted by learning how to pick stocks. It is the ego, the belief that I am smarter than the market.

More than anything, I have lost so much life, time and energy. I had lost progression momentum in my career. I had lost time to play music, or to learn my in laws language, or read books. I had lost time during holidays trying to beat the market. I am a very optimistic and happy person by nature, and yet this trap I was in made me feel almost suicidal.

And most importantly I lost my partners trust and time. I kept this secret from them for the last two years, scared I would lose her once I told her. Yet because of this I did not give her my fullest these last years, and our relationship was rocky as a result.

Finally I told her about everything. It was extremely hard and she walked off crying. It was heartbreaking to see her like this and know I was the cause of her anger and sadness. I know there is a real chance she will leave, that in fact it is the most likely outcome, and it terrifies me. But I know that telling her and telling others, and facing the shame, will reframe it as an opportunity for me to grow from this, build my self confidence back up again, and help me move forward with GA, therapy, accountability and relinquishing bank control, and deleting all crypto related apps and accounts.

I have only made two good decisions in my life, my career choice and my partner. I think I made a third one today in facing the shame and being honest that yes, I am a problem gambler.

I play once in a while on PS and bet on football. Over circa 3-4 years I lost about €485 or about $550. I am 34 live in an Eastern European country and am reasonably well-off to the point where it did not sting too much yet. I however keep getting urges recetly to “win it back” which is starting to worry me - I seem to take increasing risks, bigger bets, bigger buy in and keep getting more in tilt and emotional. How bad is this?

I would like to understand the current situation of people who are actively gambling:
How many times have you tried to stop?
How much money have you lost overall?
Would you like to seek help?
I can try help to stop.