Gambling...my substitute for self-love

[shutterbug]

I thought I had a pretty bad addiction to gambling, until I stopped recently.

Almost immediately, I became obsessed with a guy i barely know.
I'm slowly learning to stop my obsessive thoughts about him...

But now I'm constantly starving, even though my stomach already hurts from being too full!!!

And before the gambling there was shopping (I have stuff i've bought, brought in the door and that never even made it out of the sacks! And a 3 bedroom rent house crammed full of all my flee market, yard sale and clearance rack finds!

And between the times of the over-board spending and the growing gambling issue, there was an addiction to recovery - for codependency and bipolar disorder/major depression.

It's a dang great thing I never have tried crank/meth because i'd surely be addicted from the first try on. And alchol depresses me more and makes me sleepy and i hate the taste (but mostly i think luck and/or my HP helped my side-step that one). And I have allergic reactions to smoking pot (something my ex-fiance wouldn't believe until he saw for himself).

So....somehow, someway I've just GOT TO FIGURE OUT HOW NOT TO HATE MYSELF more and more each day. None of my self-help books or weekly therapy sessons for the past 3 years have seemed to do much good for my self-esteem.

So what now?

[best]

A self help book I use keeps coming to mind as I read over your posts.
Have you ever read the bible?
I don't remember the last time I hit my steering wheel or punched a wall
I can be alone in a house and still feel surrounded in a good way like I am not alone. May be worth giving a try.

[shutterbug]

Hi Best, thanks for your response although i'm not exactly sure how to respond.

The "hitting the steering wheel" and "punching a wall" have nothing to do with my faith and everything to do with my bipolar disorder and depressive episodes (and that was only one day, most days I'm much the opposite). But still, it is the past time I needed to be back on a mood stabalizer, but i'm doing the whole insurance/medical system merry-go-round still.

Also, God didn't make us to be all the same or to reach the same levels in life at the same time. I have great emotional wounds from all forms of abuse as a child and when everyone abandons you/ignores you/ runs from you for the first 17 years of your life.....well, it's going to take some time and a lot of work to not feel "so alone" anymore or to truely believe that you are worth a darn even to yourself.

God can heal all and does for many. I also strongly believe he gives some of us the strength to not be healed right away for a greater purpose down the road. When he doesn't answer my prayers then I know there are still things for me to learn or that what i'm praying for is not what he has planned for my life (because above all...i pray for his will to be done in my life).

I just read your signiture quote....which is exactly what i'm talking of so I know you understand what I mean.

My favorite quote (which I had on my sig line here for a long time) is:

"I know God promises not to give me more than I can handle - I just wish he didn't trust me so much, " by Mother Teresa.

Hugs and God Bless,
Jenna

[SaTiT]

Hi shutter bug,

Recognizing....is good start. It was good for me.
The whole world can know...if i didn't know, it wouldn't mean
a jell of beans to me.

That crazy obessive, complusive stuff happening in me.
lol..I tried to stop gambling so I join and R/C flight club for an alternative,
the next thing i know, i have a fleet of air plane in my workshop
I spent $3000 on a R/C car always up grading it...
So i started writing music to make a change...next thing i know, i'm up till
4-a.m. writing songs everynight.
So i started reading books...next thing I know..I'm buying all kinds of books
and reading it till the 4 a.m.

balance....yikes !!!
I just work my 12 steps...to the best of my ablilty.
it didn't happen over night.

I cruve my gambling. habits ...i got a software for my pc. So i wouldn't
go to the casino and blow all my money. yes..subsitutions
i out grew it the PC game or it became boring and a waste of time to me.
my compusive and obession hasn't been tottally releaved, but it's
getting better.

hang in there shutter bug
When you know the time is right for you to take certain steps,
you will.

[PDX]

Hello,
I am having major problems with drinking and gambling. Much of what you have said makes sense, but on the other hand it seems kind of crazy. Kind of lost at the moment.

[shutterbug]

PDX, all of this sounds crazy to me even as i say it.

contrary to what i posted above, i do have a gambling problem...a real problem. i know this now and it is scaring me more and more each day. i crave it constantly...even after losing more than $100-200 in a few hours or less.

The following is what i just posted in my journal in the MH forum. I wanted to post it here also.

i don't know what to do with myself. i'm out of control. i'm super depressed and letting it get to me in a most disturbing way (of gambling my life away).

After ...going back to work....well, i've been crying off and on all day since. Boss holared at me to come into his office and i said, "if it's bad news, i can't handle it." He said, "Oh, ...." hell, i don't remember what he said, but something smart-elecky. He then told me about another free-lance gig he's landed us both. And i told him that was good b/c i need the money. Only $50, but i haven't had a freelance gig in a month or more now.

Then in casual conversation the tears just started rolling. i told him i was sorry and he said that i need to get over my constant worrying about whether everyone likes me b/c "we all love you. we tell u that all the time. you're great. you have nothing to worry about. if you need something tho you have to tell us so we can help you. we can't help if we don't know. like the needing money....i could have called you saturday to let you babysit again for us instead of giving $50 to someone we barely know. if you're drowing,"....then some kind of swimming analogy about asking someone to go swimming with me instead of trying to do it all on my own.

i told him I'll try to let them know if i think of things they might be able to help me with, but that i didn't feel comfortable yet "telling all" because that's what caused all the difficulties at my last job.

i wish i had more people like him in my life that WERE'NT my boss. i feel like i can talk to him most of the time, but i don't b/c of that fact.

here i was crying in his office and talking about needing to make some extra money...and what do i do? i (leave early and) go to the ONLY casino within a 40 mile radius of my new place and a pull out and blow $140 of the $300 or less i have in my account to last me for the next 2 weeks. i have a $45 cell pymt or else my phone gets cut off and out of that, mom just paid my car insurance for $63 today that will go thru my account in a couple days...and i'm behind on a car payment with the bank lady calling me at work today...and a forwarded gas bill for over $200 that i have to pay all of somehow or else that goes bye-bye. And i'm already -$250 in my other checking account from paying this months rent. Out of meds. And the sad part is that I was $50+ ahead in that casino tonight right of the bat before spending even a DIME of my own money and i played it ALL back and then stuck the $140 all in the same stupid machine.

i don't understand myself.
i can't handle being this out of control.
it was all i could do to get myself out of there before going to the ATM again and pulling more out that i don't even have.
i'm scared. i'm sick at myself and embarrassed, ashamed and hating my life to the fullest. Disguested with myself is closer to how i feel, but 100 times worse that even that sounds.

i'm going to hell in a hand-basket. There's such a black cloud over my life and i don't i'm truely starting to question if i can make it thru this one (major depressive episode). i don't want to. it's too damn hard and lonely. Hell, i almost called the Boston Boy in an effort to search out SOME kind of temporary comfort. i don't know what to do with myself. i don't know how not to keep doing this to myself.

This is what self-hate is. why have i been cursed with such an addictive personality??? Isn't it enough that i'm already killing myself extremely quickly by not being able to stop smoking and by already being diagnosed with emphazima at 31 and can actually FEEL my lungs dying more each day by their lack of functioning as the weeks and months go by.

i haven't been this bad in a long time and I hadn't prepared myself for this (depression and stress and addiction). i didn't see THIS coming. I thought my depression would have corrected itself by now and i'd be doing much better and handling life better and moving upward.

Talk about sliding backward! I get my own place finally and before even moved out of mom's rent house completely....i ponder the thought that since my landlord doesn't seem to think it a priority for me to have a working shower that that would probably get me out of my year-lease if i pressed it and moved out.

i don't want to go thru this again. i don't want to always be wishing i weren't here and feeling like a burden and that the only way may be social security and to stop working and live with family (or in one of their run-down properties for the rest of my life).

im so lonely. i don't want to do this again...not now...i need more time before going thru this again.

Anyway....that is what is going on with me right now....not that i matter to anything or anyone. but that's just life anyway right.
__________________

[best]

Originally Posted by shutterbug

Anyway....that is what is going on with me right now....not that i matter to anything or anyone. but that's just life anyway right.
__________________

A lot going on and just from what you write about people at work...It seems you matter to a lot of people. I know it is hard trusting others when we have been hurt in our past but there comes a point when we need give it another try. You do matter.

[shutterbug]

thanks Best...for both your loving responses tonight.
After posting the above, I decided i needed to give one more try to a new person in my life (as I had decided last week he couldn't be trusted....but not based on any real reasons...only rather on my own unrealistic expectations). So wrote a fairly brief message to him and opened up to him. I don't think anything will come out of it other than a sense of "closure" when he doesn't respond, but i know that i at least gave a new person one more chance than i'd planned before writing him off.

I wish i could believe for real that i do matter....but i've been shown the opposite for so much of my life that it's just a more un-realistic thing to me than most of my self-acknowledged "un-realistic thinking." Why is it that I see everything in terms of happy fairy-tales except for my own life and self when i know better (on both sides of that coin)?

[liveweyerd]

Somewhere or somehow I have lost a post of put it on another thread and don't know where it is.

I am deeply concerned about you. I most strongly suggest finding and attending a gamblers anonymous group. It would get you out instead of into casinos. You would meet others who understand. You will have face to face friends in real life.
And you will get real hugs.
You are digging yourself into a deep hole with this that is going to impact nearly every aspect of your life. Your self-esteem, your depression, your ability to be independent and take care of yourself. After a binge you have self-loathing. Further you are in a financial bind, which makes you more depressed and more self-loathing because you know it was the addiction, your choice to stop at the casino that brought these problems upon you.A downward spiral into depression, serious financial problems, isolating, fantasizing, your work will become affected and a dark place in your mind and emotions will have you very sick very quick. You will not be able to take care of yourself or care for others because you will become paralyzed with the fear and grief and hopelessness of depression.
So, please, step out of your comfort zone and go to some meetings. It will help you get a handle on this and, just as important, you will find some real friends. Friends who will care, who will help you and will support you in your struggle to stay on your own two feet with balance in your life and more of your real needs met.