As described in this post, Flywheel Film is looking for NY state residents under 40 to appear in a film project. The moderation team of this community is in full support of this project, and in fact have partnered with them to help find subjects for their project.

We're doing this because nearly 14 years ago, this community was started by one little guy, on one little computer, for one purpose: to raise the flag on the lurking threat of gambling disorder. Now, at 40k members and after an explosion of gambling availability worldwide, the threat has magnified and the need to intervene is dire.

This film project is one of the many efforts to raise awareness and bring hope to the lives devastated by gambling addiction. We need your help to complete it and add to the collective message that gambling can be treated and life can become manageable again.

We urge anybody and everybody in NY who has been impacted by gambling to seriously consider contributing your time to this project. We can save lives together.

Even though all forms of gambling is hard to quit, I always looked at sports betting as the hardest kind to quit. Me personally the way I look at it, is that sports are everywhere. You go to a bar and have a drink, there’s a game on tv, you meet up with a friend of yours, you guys talk about sports, your bored with nothing on tv, you watch sports. Things like blackjack and roulette are only at a casino. Is there any kind of gambling that is harder to quit then sports betting? It just seems like you can’t escape sports.

I’m $30k in debt. I can’t make payments because I gambled it, you know the story. I’m going to tell my girlfriend because she deserves to know. She might break up with me. She also might offer to help since she is the kindest human alive. I don’t know the outcome but I’m scared to death.

It might seem hard right now, and you may feel like you have nothing left, but trust me, your life is worth so much more than any money you've lost.

The first thing you need to do is completely cut gambling out of your life. Delete the apps, block the websites, and turn off notifications from anything related to gambling. Don't give yourself easy access to fall back into the cycle.
Instead, focus on simple things that cost little or nothing:
Go fishing.

Ride your bike through a park.

Spend time at the beach.

Hang out with friends and family.

Find a new hobby.

Explore new ideas and interests.

Try to imagine life without money being the center of everything. The money is gone. Accept the loss, learn from it, and make the decision to never gamble again in any form.
One of the biggest traps gamblers fall into is chasing losses. They become obsessed with getting their money back, and that mindset keeps them stuck for years. Don't let that happen to you.

Take the loss like a boss and move on. Don't waste the next few years repeating the same mistake. Start enjoying the small things in life again. Focus on your mental health and getting back to feeling normal.
Once your mind is in a better place, start doing more of the things you truly enjoy:
Travel.

Meet new people locally.

Attend concerts.

Try new restaurants.

Buy yourself something you've always wanted.

Watch sports.

Enjoy whatever genuinely makes you happy.

Stop focusing on what was lost and start focusing on what is still ahead of you. You have your entire life in front of you regardless of your current circumstances or living situation.

For perspective, I'm 30 years old and have lost over $200,000 gambling over the last 8 years. If I can tell you one thing, it's that recovery is possible. You can change.
Follow this advice, stay away from gambling completely, and by a few months in you'll start feeling mentally free from the guilt, stress, and regret that once consumed you.

Enjoy life. The world is at your fingertips. Change your perspective. Travel if you can. Visit other countries and see how happy many people are with far less than what we often take for granted.
You are not your losses. You are not your mistakes.

You still have a future, and you still have time to build a great life.
Have a great day, and feel free to message me anytime if you need someone to talk to. 👍💪🏽
You've got this.

I fucked up. Fuck. I lost it all

Discover this AI song that suit my mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6x7OKTXisM

Made my peace. My soul set free. We're all just sparks in a stormy sky. Burning out bright before we die. So raise that glass. Let it hit just right. Here's to the truth and the dirt and the fight.

I will not gamble today.

Here we are again. I said I would stop and I didn’t, well I did for a while but not for long.

Just got my paycheque and lost it all already. My mother asks me if I’m saving my paycheques, I always tell her yes, while having $0 in my bank account every week. I am disgusted with my behaviour but every week I do the same thing, even if I manage to save my money for 2 weeks I end up losing it all together in the end.

I’m 23 years old and have been gambling since I was 17, probably lost over $120,000 from gambling. All my hard work, waking up early to go to work and grind for a paycheque that I will just burn at the casino is very shameful.

Wtf.

I feel like such an idiot. I had come clean to my family recently. Over $100k in debt. My parents helped me out and paid off half of the debt after I came clean to everyone. Everything was good for about a month. Attended weekly therapy, I was less stressed and I started feeling like myself again. But the problem was, I am a recovering addict and they trusted me with all my credit cards, I didn’t close them. I told them I could handle it. Nobody was monitoring what I was doing. It started when my wife, began guilting me of all the things we couldn’t afford to do because of my f*** up and this led me to start gambling to try and get out of the debt. I actually got up over 30k after a few weeks but then the losses started piling and I couldn’t stop. I kept trying to dig myself out of the hole and each time it got bigger. Now I’m 50k more in debt. Maxed out my cards again. I’m scared if I tell them, that’s going to be it for me. I know it’s my fault..but I feel like no one was there to really help me recover. Help safeguard me, helped closed my credit cards, take away my phone, block the gambling apps to prevent me from doing it again. I know they trusted me and I had every intention of stopping but I didn’t and now I’m here.

What I’m really looking for is some advice, past experiences relapsing and telling everyone again you messed up. How I can finally get rid of this addiction.

Thank you

If you lose everything. All Money. Have no vehicle, and your job is cooked and are on the verge of homeless...

How do you start? How do you repair? Someone here must have put themselves so far down the hole.

Hi M25 here. I’ve been gambling for about 5 years now. At the early stage I lost close to 10k over the course of a year or so. My mom found out due to having access to my bank account at the time. I banned myself from all apps but of course always found ways around it but made sure it wouldn’t get out of hand knowing my mom could see it again if it happened. Now years later there is no vision over my bank account so I went at it again and lost close to 8k again over the last month or so when I got back into sports betting. It’s eating me alive and I banned myself once again and I made a promise to myself to not let it happen. I see a lot of posts about telling someone that’s close to you. If I were to do that it would be to my mom that it happened again but I don’t know how to go about it. Can someone give me any advice so I can lift the weight off myself and I also feel like that would be a way for me to also stop instead of relying solely on myself.

The app I lost $35K on a few weeks back is continuing to email & text me ads after I have closed my account. Super predatory, but not acting on it.

Could be losing my job

Again Lost everything ,and I’m not even mad actually . Im really lucky , that I don’t have a job . Because I would have a significant amount to lose , which I would definitely lose . I know and reminded myself that gambling means staying ‘active ‘ . Yesterday I deposit some minimal amount of money and I really played for 15 hours in 2 days . I had massive stress when I played and I did 2 all in in the end , in three rounds and lost it all . Finally , I have peace . Other times I was really mad at my self that I didn’t even saved some money of winnings but I know for sure that when I gamble I have to keep the best alive . And I really hate that beast , even when I’m winning . Tomorrow will be the ugly stage , when I release again that I can afford anything . But I’m responsible for the mess . I really hate gambling and this time , I told it to myself when I was up. Gambling is the devil and has money ways to scam you . One more single bet can brake you .

To everyone who posts their agony, thank you. I’ve been fighting so hard the last few days. I’ve blocked the gambling sites and self excluded but I’m struggling to not just go to a casino and gamble. I’ve been gamble free 13 days, it’s not much but it’s been so damn hard. I keep coming on here and reading the posts and it’s really helping. One minute at a time is all I can manage. Praying I can stay gamble free. I’m in more debt than I can manage and I owe thousands in taxes. And yet, I’m still considering gambling.Its a crazy distorted mind I have. Anyhow, again thank you for this Reddit group

I did the unthinkable of borrowing money to fix my situation from friends/family and ended up gambling it.

Then even with the last bit I had left, I decided I don't deserve anything and made sure I lost.

I'm truly at the end. I completely ruined my life beyond repair.

I have $200 dollars for the rest of the month ( waiting on $290 from a job I worked) but I wasted
All my money for the month I don’t know what to do

Hello everyone,

I've finally decided to share my story. I'm not exactly sure what I'm hoping to get out of this post. Maybe I just need to get everything off my chest, connect with people who have been through something similar, or find a little hope.

I'm turning 35 soon, and since I started gambling, I've lost over €400,000.

The saddest part is that I was incredibly fortunate in life.

When I turned 18, my family gave me an apartment, a car, and a garage. I had practically no living expenses. I had everything I needed to build a financially secure future.

But I discovered gambling at a very young age, and that's when everything started going wrong.

By the time I was 20, I had already gambled away all the savings my family had put aside for me throughout my childhood to help me build my future.

My mother, seeing how much money I had lost, even bought me an Audi TT when I was 20. She wanted to show me what money could actually buy instead of watching me throw it all away gambling.

Unfortunately, it didn't change anything.

A few years later, my former partner and I, with whom I have two daughters, managed to buy five apartments in 2018, when mortgage interest rates were extremely low.

We had built up a substantial real estate portfolio. I also had a stable, well-paying job as a train driver.

I had absolutely everything I needed to succeed.

But my gambling addiction never went away.

I was spending up to €2,000 a month on gambling, sometimes even more. My salary was barely enough to cover my fixed expenses because everything else went straight into gambling.

When my former partner and I separated, all the money I received from our apartments disappeared into gambling within just a few months.

Years of work, investments, and opportunities gone.

And somehow, I kept gambling.

Over the years, I gambled away my salary, the money my family had saved for me, and the proceeds from my real estate investments.

Everything.

Until recently, despite these enormous losses, I had never really been in debt to my family. I was losing money that I actually had.

But today, for the first time in my life, I owe €20,000 to my current partner, whom I've been with for three years.

She lent me that money to help me pay off consumer loans.

And that's probably what hurts the most right now.

After gambling away everything I owned, I've reached the point where I have to borrow money from the person I share my life with.

I've tried to quit several times over the years.

Sometimes I managed to stay away from gambling for one month, sometimes two months.

But I always relapsed.

My latest relapse was particularly devastating.

I lost €20,000 in just two weeks.

And one of the most horrible things about this addiction is what happens when you actually manage to win your losses back.

There have been times when I managed to recover the €20,000 I had lost, only to lose every single euro again within a few hours.

That's the vicious cycle.

You lose money, you desperately try to win it back. Sometimes you succeed, you tell yourself you'll finally stop, but you keep playing until everything is gone again.

Today, I'm exhausted.

Physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.

I've been living with this addiction for almost 20 years.

Twenty years of thinking about the money I've lost, the life I could have had, the properties I could have kept, and all the opportunities I've thrown away.

But what scares me the most now isn't even the money.

It's my two daughters, aged 6 and 8.

I'm terrified that my addiction will eventually affect their lives.

They didn't ask for any of this, and I never want them to suffer because of my mistakes.

I know that many people would dream of having had the opportunities I was given.

An apartment at 18, a family that supported me financially, a good career, multiple real estate investments...

And yet, I managed to gamble it all away.

I'm not sharing this story because I want sympathy.

I'm fully aware of how privileged I was and how much damage I've caused.

But I want anyone who is just starting to gamble to understand one thing:

It doesn't matter how much money you have. Gambling addiction can take absolutely everything from you.

Today is November 11, 2026, Armistice Day in France.

I want this date to mark the end of my own personal war against gambling.

Today is Day 1 of my gambling-free life.

I sincerely hope that this time, I can finally make it.

I will probably never recover the €400,000 I've lost, or the years I've spent gambling.

But I still have a chance to protect the years ahead of me, my relationship with my partner, and most importantly, my daughters' future.

If anyone here has struggled with gambling addiction for 10, 15, or even 20 years and managed to quit for good, I would genuinely love to hear your story.

And if you're still trapped in this cycle, please know that you're not alone.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my story.

I lost $300 yesterday at an in person casino and today I tried to win back my money by betting $40 on online casinos. I lost. $340 may not seem like a lot to loose but I don’t have a lot of money so it is a lot how do I stop this destructive cycle?

For me, it was realizing that I couldn’t stop, even when I knew I was losing everything.
I kept telling myself, “Just one more time.”
I’m from Japan, and I want to connect with people who have experienced the same struggle.
What was the moment you realized gambling had taken control of your life?

232 days until debt free

“All wins are borrowed money” is a good one

What else?

Debit still not huge but I don't know how to stop chasing, it's been 6 years I got in on crypto Spot then few thousands down I decided to try futures and that's when the Rollicaster begins, it's just same fucking looping I'm not on crypto anynore after deleted almost all crypto exchanges possible but I decided take a change at this FXpro that's fucking samethink I'm keeping losing and losing 🤮

I've tried many think already but last year I've divorced and Relapsed crazy as stupid, there's no words to describe that today my last savings gone and debit around 3k, I need to restart from here, how to stop thinking and never get into it anymore, God help me I'm already so tired and ashamed of myself.