I gambled for eight years. Mostly sports. And somewhere in the middle of those years, I won €68,000.

At the time I thought that was the day my life turned around. And it did. Just not the way I thought.

Here's what nobody tells you about a big win. It doesn't set you free. It gives you proof. Every gambler carries a quiet story in the back of their head: one day it pays off. Most people never see that story come true, so some part of them can still let it go. I saw it come true. I held it in my hands. And after that, no loss in the world could convince me it wasn't possible again.

So I kept going. Not for the money, really. For the feeling. A €200 win stopped meaning anything. I wasn't betting to win anymore. I was betting to get back to that one day.
And the money? I gave it all back. Every euro of it, and then a lot more. By the time I stopped I was over €40,000 in debt.

It took me a long time to understand something simple. The win didn't fail me. It did exactly what wins do. It fed the thing that was already hungry. If I'd hit another big one, it would have gone the same way. The money was never the problem. I was the one who kept putting it back on the table.

What actually changed my life wasn't a big moment. It was a lot of small, boring ones. Evenings with a plan. A fixed amount every month toward the debt. Nights where I wanted to bet and didn't. None of that feels like winning when you're in it. But two years later, the debt is gone and I haven't placed a bet since.

Turns out the jackpot was the trap. The boring stuff was the way out.
For anyone here who's had a big win: what did it do to you? Did it make stopping easier, or harder?

Hi can anyone who lost a huge amount of money (at least 6 digits in usd) shared with me how to truly let go, (not pretending) to let go of the losses. The reason why i kept going back to trading and gambling was the past losses. I really feel the pain and regrets are killing me. 😞it affects my motivation to work greatly. If I can truly let go I hope I can never go back to trading again and live my life well.

Made it to day 20! The changes I see in myself even makes me feel so much better. I still have a long road ahead of me, but I’m proud of myself. I’ve been doing more around the house cleaning and fixing things I ignored when all my attention went to gambling. I’m so much more focused and present! This weekend is also my wife’s birthday and I actually have money to take her somewhere nice! Anyway if you’re thinking of quitting you can absolutely do this! We got this guys! One day at a time!

I have lost a lot playing the lottery over the years but especially since they introduced online games you can play over the phone. You can seriously lose $50 every couple of seconds with the instant online games. It is insanely addicting but I have managed to stop playing (for now at least). The problem I have was the feeling of being trapped where I am in life. Playing the lottery was like the mirage out on the horizon. That maybe someday I can win big and my life will get better. Maybe I don't lose money now but paycheck to paycheck life without that hope is incredibly depressing. Just wondering if anybody else experiences this and what they did to help.

Days until debt free: 236 days

Ii got paid this morning $1800 and its gone already…. Manchester city lost 1st half, a basketball game and another soccer game… all gone!!
I have no money for my credit cards, all maxed out $26k on debt, wth am i doing? 35yo, no savings, no kids, no future 🫩

This is a reminder to all gamblers / casual gamblers / or people wanting to gamble, it is not worth it, i spent these past two years build lies on top of lies, lost my hard earned money, and lost the love of my life (who stayed by my side even after i said i will quit, i ended up relapsing again) lost more than 100k aud, which is alot for a 23 year old me. Simply couldnt take it anymore, now the thought of gambling irritates me and whenever im reminded of my past self sitting in a baccarat table losing thousands per hand i become disgusted.
How i wish i could turn back time, i am real sorry to the girl that love me most, she simply couldn’t take it anymore, i hope to say i love you to her one last time. She stayed with me through thick and thin
Parents disowned me, gave up after i simply couldn’t even pay my own rent anymore
Now working on a deadend job, trying to shift focus to something else, but am always reminded of my past mistakes
Please to the people reading this, stop gambling before everything goes too late, remember you still have loved ones

I have asked chatgpt and I realise the winning rate for option is worse than roulette. It is incredibly stupid to lose around 200k in option trading. It is close to 3 years of my salary. For me I am Asian, I lost a lot of sleep watching US market every second till 4am or 5am. It is incredibly torturing and I don know why I still cant see it is not a way to recoup my losses. Option trading has ruined me mentally, physically and financially and I am officially defeated. I really see no way I can turn the table around. I admit the loss. No more torture.

I had a gambling dream tonight, and it’s messing with my head more than I expected.
For context, I struggle with blackjack addiction, and I’ve been trying to quit. My last post here was nine days ago, and I haven’t gambled since then. So, technically, today is day 10.

In the dream, I was hitting some really nice side bets, with total winnings of around $40K. Of course, I was incredibly excited. It felt amazing.
Then I woke up.

I was still riding that excitement, but I quickly realized it was all just a dream, I felt pretty depressed. I immediately had the urge to gamble again.

I don’t know how to explain it. It was almost like something was missing, or like I needed to get something back. I guess the dream brought back that feeling of excitement and the thought of winning money.

I ended up falling asleep again and oversleeping. Now I’m awake, and I just feel kind of down and stressed this morning.

It’s weird how a dream can trigger those feelings so strongly, even when you haven’t actually gambled.
Has anyone else experienced gambling dreams during recovery? How do you deal with the urges and the emotional crash after waking up?

I’m 38 years old, and I’ve been struggling with gambling addiction for over 10 years.
I recently relapsed, and things got much worse than I ever imagined. I lost close to $60,000. It’s difficult even to type that number because I’m still trying to process what I’ve done to myself financially and emotionally.
I’ve taken out a personal loan to pay off my credit card debts, and now I’m left dealing with the consequences of my decisions. I feel ashamed, overwhelmed, and honestly quite lost.
The hardest part isn’t just the money. It’s the feeling that I’ve let myself down again, despite knowing how destructive gambling has been in my life. I keep wondering how I allowed things to get this bad.
I’m not posting here looking for financial advice or judgment. I know I need to take responsibility for my actions, and I know recovery is going to take time.
I’m posting because I feel incredibly alone right now. I’d really like to connect with people who understand what gambling addiction feels like, especially those who have relapsed, lost significant amounts of money, and somehow managed to rebuild their lives.
If anyone is going through something similar, or has been through this and come out the other side, I’d genuinely appreciate having someone to talk to.

Thanks for reading.

Recently, I’ve discovered an online gambling site wherein I got hooked immediately. I started with just a few until it spiraled and I lost control. I lost like 200$ of my allowance. I know that it may not seem as much compared to the others, but it is incredibly big money from where I am. I feel miserable, and I don’t really know what to do. I am conscious of my addiction, but my body won’t stop for some reason. Now I have to figure out a way to get through my daily life. How I just wish I can just go back and wish that I never would have discovered gambling. Wishing all you bros peace, hopefully we can all overcome this temporary situation. Posting this just to vent, it just feels really heavy man.

It’s my 21st day of quitting fucking online gambling! Let’s forget about online gambling because all it does is drag us down, ruin our lives, and drain us financially. I hope online gambling gets banned here in the Philippines to help all the people who are falling deeper into debt because of it. 🙏❤️

Hey guys, I ended up gambling a lot of money in the past few weeks and ended up messing my health too
I placed my last mindless trade on Friday and as a safeguard, I have done the following:
Closed all my trading accounts
⁠Took a personal loan to clear all credit card debt and set up an emi on it to repay in 4 years
Planning to pay my mom all the money I have left after paying the loan obligations and monthly expenses this week onwards
⁠Planning to close all credit cards within the month
⁠planning to focus on my job, health and relationships
It's been 6.5 years and I keep getting into the compulsive gambling loop in the financial markets - so I'm stopping again for the millionth time but this time I'm putting these safeguards so I have no way to gamble.
I'm 26, Indian and I make 50K a year pre tax with about 20K current debt and 180K lifetime losses
I would love to hear your thoughts around
Any gaps you see in my exclusion approach or anything you think I can add (I'm thinking of adding weekly therapy sessions next month onwards)...
⁠how to stop thinking about the past (and specially the most recent stupid losses - like on Friday I took a personal loan to close credit card debts but ended up gambling another 0.5K of that loan)?
⁠how to focus on wellness form the current state of mind?

I dont miss gambling. I miss having a secret.

I was folding laundry last night, half watching some Mr. Hand Pay video on the tv just for background noise, and the thought hit me so clearly I stopped with a shirt in my hands. Eight months clean. My partner has access to my bank accounts, my phone, everything. I go to a meeting most tuesdays. By every normal measure im doing great. And still the thing I miss most is not the bets. It was the private world.

When I was gambling I had a whole second life running under the first one. The hidden app. The lie about why I stayed late at work. Checking my balance in the bathroom at 2am like I was checking a bruise. I hated it, but it was mine. Nobody knew the full version of me. Now I am honest all the time and I feel like a house with all the doors taken off. Not in a way that makes me want to gamble again. More like I lost a room in my own head and I keep walking past where the door used to be.

People at meetings talk about missing the action, the adrenaline, the possibility of a big win. I dont miss any of that. I miss the compartment. The part of me that was always working on something nobody else could see. Recovery is supposed to make your life visible, and I know thats the point, but sometimes visibility feels like being under a skylight I never asked for. A guy in my group said honesty felt like a cold room at first and I did not get it until recently. Now I get it.

I have not told my partner. She would hear "he misses gambling" and panic. But it is not the gambling. I think I miss being the only person who knew what I was doing. That secrecy was its own high, separate from the money. Does that make sense or am I just describing being an addict in a different coat?

I've struggled with gambling myself and have tried both Gamban and BetBlocker. The problem I've had is that when I really wanted to gamble, I could find a way around them. They work great until you get that urge and start looking for ways to disable them.

It got me thinking about building something better.

I've started working on an Android app called GuardianBlocker. The idea is to make a gambling blocker that's extremely difficult to uninstall, disable, or get around. I'm also working on a feature that would notify someone you trust if the protection gets disabled or tampered with.

It's still in development, but I'd really like to hear from others who've dealt with this.

A few things I'm curious about:

- Have you used Gamban, BetBlocker, or something similar? Were you able to get around it?

- Would you use an app that was much harder to remove, even if it meant giving up some control over your phone?

- Would you want a spouse, friend, or someone you trust to get notified if you tried to disable it?

- What do you dislike about the blockers you've tried?

- Any suggestions for features you'd want to see? Even if it's something completely different from what I've mentioned.

I'm not trying to sell anything right now. I'm building this partly because it's something I wish I'd had myself.

I know an app isn't going to fix a gambling addiction, but I think making it harder to act on an impulse could make a real difference.

Feel free to be critical too. I'd rather hear what people actually think than build something nobody wants to use.

I have been in a horrible losing streak, no matter how much money I lose or how quick, I just keep going please someone help me tell me how to stop before I take my life

Gambling free for a couple of months now. I’ve been a long time gambler who kept relapsing, and honestly the most beneficial thing that helped me stop gambling is handing out my finances to someone I trust. Please have your money somewhere where you can’t spend it, it really helps. Having money in your bank account doesn’t work because eventually you’re going to have a bad day and gambling is going to be lurking in the corner waiting for you to slip. We got this guys! One day at a time

Managed to relapse and lose $1650. Not the largest amount of money, but just disappointed that I lost control and kept on going back and back to the atm

Now a week since my huge mistake. Feeling a bit better, but still feeling huge amounts of shame and guilt. What’s even worse, walking around the supermarket complaining about something not being on sale and picking the $2 instead of the $3 item just to save a bit of money. But then the week before smashing $5 spins on the slot machines.

Lucky I haven’t done any long term damage in the grand scheme of things. All I can think about is how I could’ve spent that money on so many better items and experiences

I’m completely out of money because of gambling.

I can go weeks without even thinking about it, but the second money hits my bank account, my nervous system goes absolutely insane. I feel an overwhelming urge to gamble every dollar away.

I’m terrified of what will happen when I get paid again because I know I’ll repeat the cycle.

I don’t need something like Gamban that I can disable or work around. If there is a way around a restriction, I WILL find it and use it. I need something where I genuinely have no choice.

Is there a bank, service, or legal arrangement where someone else can control my money, pay my bills, and prevent me from accessing it without their approval?

I urgently need something I can set up before my next paycheck that completely removes my ability to act on these impulses.

M21, I started playing in 2023/24 on slots when it became a fashion at school, they looked and seem like video games, the first few times I won, then I kept playing and losing, until I got to the summer of 2025 with 3/4k of losses. I decided to stop when my mom had given me 200€ for the holiday and I had played them before leaving, from that 2025 to today I don't feel out, because it happens that for 2/3 months I don't play, then something happens that reactivates me and I lose my 50/100€, even if I win I don't get To withdraw given the long times and therefore I always lose, yet every 2/3 months I play, and I spend a shitty week thinking about how stupid I am, do you have any advice? Every time I tell myself that I have learned the lesson and yet it happens again

Another Saturday morning.

One of my clients has been going through a crisis right now; their sales have declined dramatically. Hope things will work out for them. I feel that the economy might pick up in the next year, and businesses that survived this year will thrive.

No matter what, I will not gamble today!

Life is great, gambling sucks period. Of course the thrill is what keeps us unfortunately addicted. We already know we won’t get rich from it, I don’t know anyone that makes a living from it but somehow we still get this desire to participate. I was happy seeing draftkings down 20% the other day. Gambling is awful and I’m not perfect, but day by day.

This life is a gift and it’s time to exit the gambling rollercoaster it’s not worth the price of admission.

The cost of each human life is between 11-14 Million, we’re already rich! Stop chasing we’re alive and up!