Drinking and other vices
 

Hi all

I'm still struggling. Drinking and losing money online gambling. Another wasted weekend. So why did I start drinking? The answer is because I felt deppressed. Did the drinking make me feel better? Yes initially but now I feel not good.

What a miserable existence human life is.

Life doesn't have to be miserable. Abraham Lincoln said that people were about as happy as they made up their minds to be, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

I'm sorry you started drinking again. :( I hope you can get sober for good.

I never knew anyone who came out ahead gambling online while drinking.

It’s a surefire way to compound your losses.

Have you considered giving up booze & online gambling for 3 months?

If human existence is still miserable, the gambling and the booze will still be there.

I've felt the rush of dopamine to my brain a few times when doing a little gambling. Nothing too hardcore... a few days in Vegas... a few hours in a casino on the nearby, Indian rez, but I understand to a tiny degree what you're experiencing. But I never got into gambling. Mostly because I don't get the dopamine rush you do from gambling, which is a very physical issue. However, there are two things that run through my mind when I think of gambling that keep me from going down the gambling road:

1) The House always wins. If the House didn't, there'd be no House.

2) I once spent several hours in a casino in Indio, CA. I looked across the casino, and my mind snap-shot a most horrid picture. It was of an entire row of people sitting at slot-machines. They were all half-bent over and connected to their machines with those cards on tethers around their necks. I saw that and all I could think was "Matrix."

Other than that, I can tell you I only half-agree with the folks who tell you "Life is what you make it." As my therapist says, there are things you can control and things you cannot control. All you can do is work like hell on the stuff you can control and hope the stuff you can't
control works out.

As for the subsequent alcohol issues, it may be a matter of you "chasing the dragon" of stimulation the alcohol used to provide before you started to lose so much money. Either way, I'd see a general counselor to get a handle on the original reasons why you started your addiction to gambling.

Good luck, and we're all here for you because...

:You_Rock_