“Here is your four-step plan to stay alive:
1. Accept the fact that you might consider suicide after a bad relapse. Do that now.
2. In the minutes and hours after a relapse, give yourself permission to ignore the consequences of your relapse. Don't think about the lost money, or the consequences for family, work, or your own self-worth.
3. Wait four days before taking any direct action to address your gambling issues. Do not gamble during this time. Do not chase your losses. Do not "confess" to a significant other during this time. Do not rob a bank to cover your losses. Wait four days to make plans for recovery. Wait until your brain both is willing and able to help you make good decisions.
4. After four days, start to restore hope. Call the state helpline, get a recommendation for a therapist. In most cases the state will pay for therapy. Then go see the therapist. Find a GA meeting and start attending. Make thoughtful, careful plans about how to go about discussing your addiction with loved ones and how to deal with your financial problems.
But most of all, understand that there is hope for you to live a life free of gambling. Thousands upon thousands have recovered. You can too.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“The first step in that preparation begins now, well ahead of the relapse. Get out a three by six index card and write these thoughts on it:
- 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Hotline)
- This will pass
- My brain can’t be trusted right now
- I won’t kill myself today (I can always do it tomorrow)
- For now, I will IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE
- 1-800-273-8255”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Put these steering wheel cards and things somewhere in your car. Put your radio station of choice on one of your preset buttons. Do this now. Don’t wait. Then, if you relapse and when you get to the casino before you go in, take them out and put them on your seat or steering wheel. Set your radio to the station you have chosen, so that all you need to do is turn it on. Please don’t avoid doing this because you might be embarrassed or think it’s stupid. So what if it’s stupid? You are at the casino. You are already being stupid. Not to mention, these simple stupid actions just might save your life.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Immediately after you step through the exit of the casino and find yourself outside, stop. Then look at your hands for ten seconds. Examine them, turn them over, look at the lines, the freckles, the dirt under your fingernails or your chipped nail polish. Really focus, really study them, for ten full seconds. This is a surprisingly powerful mindfulness technique. It forces you to jump back into the present, thereby interrupting your thoughts about what just happened.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Several years ago, I knew a man, a friend of a friend who I would occasionally run into at the casino. He was clearly a heavy-duty compulsive slot machine player – maximum bets, completely focused, playing fast. He was also a family man, hardworking, very organized, a successful businessman. One night after losing a great deal of money, he came home and immediately (and impulsively) blurted out a confession to his wife (who did not know that he had a gambling problem). He confessed that he had lost all their savings and maxed out their credit cards – they were now completely broke. His wife reacted as expected. She was upset in the extreme. She packed her bag and left him to go spend some time with a relative. So then…after she had abruptly left him, at that point he knew he had lost all their money and perhaps lost his wife as well, and that his children and his family would now find out his dirty little secret. He was alone with his darkest thoughts. It was simply too much to bear. When he didn’t show up for work the next day a business associate found him in the garage, in his truck, with a hose from the exhaust stuck in a window. He was dead. It is clear to me that he didn’t kill himself because of that day’s gambling experience – the bad beat, the big losses. After all that had happened to him many, many times before. He killed himself as a result of his completely impulsive decision to confess to his wife!”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Figuring out how you can face your gambling problem is a complex issue. There are many choices. Recovery is not something you can will yourself to do in a day or two.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Most literature about suicide proposes the encouraging idea that if you can survive the first five minutes (or the first few hours, or the first twenty-four hours) of that moment when suicide seems like the only solution to your situation, then you probably will not kill yourself (at least for a while).”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms and treatment are well understood, but very little is discussed about gambling withdrawal. Here is a commonly quoted list of the symptoms of drug and alcohol withdrawal: nervousness or anxiety, insomnia, nausea, body discomfort, mood swings, poor sleep, lethargy, difficulty concentrating. Do these symptoms look familiar to you? After sitting hunched-over, eyes glued to that screen only inches away, pushing that button every three seconds and watching those complex configurations of colorful images flashing rhythmically, hypnotically, continuously, as fast as your mind can process, for hour upon hour upon hour, do you experience any of those symptoms the next day and the next several days? I know I do.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“There are approximately twenty thousand detox facilities for drug and alcohol abusers nationwide. I understand that withdrawal from all forms of chemical dependency is a more dangerous and difficult process than gambling withdrawal and that it often requires medical assistance. But still – twenty thousand to zero? I believe this: The weeks following a major slot machine relapse episode are dangerous for the compulsive gambler. I'm certain that a significant number of suicides have happened to compulsive gamblers who faced this withdrawal period without any help, or without even any awareness of what was happening to them.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“The morning, after I wrote the above paragraphs on gambling withdrawal, I was on my walk when, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, Mr. Addiction suddenly wedged his foot in the door of my brain. A minute later he burst through, opened his arms, smiled, and in his best Jack Nicholson voice announced: I'm Back! Let's go! It had been many months since I had gambled and at that moment my defenses were dormant. The guards were asleep. Without even offering a show of resistance, I immediately got in the car and drove south to where my favorite slot machine lived. I played for over eight hours at my usual furious pace until my available money was all gone and my brain was fried. I'm writing about this relapse story now, six days after that episode, having just gone through all of the ugly phases of a serious relapse, immediately after writing about it! Ironic, I guess. Kind of circular. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not making this up. Though in retrospect, I've realized that I should have expected Mr. Addiction to show up and test me during this process.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Writing this book is an intense experience. I'm writing about an addiction that I suffer from, I'm doing the research, I'm reading about it for hours, writing about it for hours, I should have expected that that extreme daily exposure to my addiction would eventually lead to strong urges to gamble. I should have been prepared! But I wasn't.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“I've been in treatment with people who have robbed banks, who have stolen disability checks from vulnerable relatives, who have embezzled large amounts of money, who have taken valuable items from their parents to pawn. At some point in their recovery, most gambling addicts will finally have to pay the price for their destructive actions.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Once you stop gambling, you can start to feel and think like a normal person (assuming there is such a thing). Your immediate financial situation will improve because you will no longer be stuffing $100 bills into those evil machines.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“The recovery process will take time, it will take sacrifices, it will take determination, and it will take very hard work. You can do it. Know that you can rebuild your life – many have.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“But why?" you ask, "Why should I see a therapist? Do they have the secret to curing my gambling addiction?" No, they don't. There is no secret, no magic pill that will overcome your addiction. But let me ask you this: Who are you able to talk to about your gambling? I already know the answer for 99% of you. The answer is no one. Am I right? Of course I'm right; gambling addiction is without any doubt the most secretive mental disorder that exists. Gamblers have so much shame and guilt that they cannot discuss their fears, the consequences, or even their suicidal thoughts with anyone. They are certain that no one they know will ever understand it, because they don't understand it themselves.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Not only do [gambling addicts] avoid letting anyone know about their addiction, they can also easily get away with this extreme secrecy. They don't pass out, they don't smell bad, there are no urine tests that show they have recently gambled and for the most part they don't miss work. They gamble alone.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Slot machine addiction is a solitary undertaking. It is not a social event like drinking or drug use. Slot machine addicts can gamble compulsively for years without family or friends even suspecting.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“In their solitude, the gambling addict lives a life completely alone with their fears, consequences, dark thoughts, and often, depression. They have no one to help, no one who will listen, no support at all. They are alone in this secret place - unless they seek help. I know. I've lived there for many years. This is why gambling addicts need to get into therapy. They desperately need someone to talk to, someone who will not judge them, someone who is trained to listen to them share their pain and confusion. The fundamental benefit of therapy for a compulsive gambler is simply that - someone to talk to.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Most gambling addicts have other addictions, or suffer from depression, or are dealing with PTSD, or something else that is causing them difficulty. This, of course, is another important reason to seek treatment. You may well have other problems that you need to deal with.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Many insurance policies do not cover therapy for gambling addiction, but they might cover alcohol treatment or treatment for depression. So, seek help for those problems (if you think you have them), get a therapist, and then open the discussion about your concerns with your gambling.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“That's a 40 to 1 ratio of substance abuse sufferers seeking treatment vs. gamblers seeking treatment. In other words, substance abusers are 40 times more likely than problem gamblers to seek treatment - i.e., to find a therapist, or an inpatient program, or to attend an AA meeting. It's likely that this ratio is also accurate (if not higher) for GA attendance vs. AA attendance.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“When was the last time you went 30 days without gambling? I'm guessing years, right? A thirty-day inpatient program at a facility dedicated to gambling addiction is worth a try simply for that experience alone. Thirty full days without gambling (and thirty days of not drinking, or drug use) will allow your brain to return to the normal state that nature intended. You will get to know "clear thinking" for the first time in years.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Our governments are complicit in gambling addiction. They make millions of dollars by supporting gambling (unlike drugs, for example), so they owe it to you to help you recover from your addiction.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“There are just 59 beds for 5 million problem gamblers. In contrast, over 2 million people received inpatient treatment annually for substance abuse in over 15,000 facilities across the country.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“AA was created in 1935; GA was started in 1957. I think I'm safe in asserting that we know orders of magnitude more about addiction now than we did back in the thirties and fifties. The AA methods, the dogmatic culture, and the written materials (especially true of GA) are stuck in a time before most of today's addicts were even born.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“There is no reason that you cannot attend both GA and Smart Recovery meetings. It's not like going to a Catholic mass early in the morning and a Baptist revival in the afternoon. Do both! They can both help you recover.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“To change that negative behavior (going to the casino), CBT asks you to go back and examine your thoughts. Why did you think those things? What other thoughts could you have had that wouldn't have resulted in going to the casino?”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“When we addicts finally reach the point where we know we have a problem, and when we know we want to stop, from that point on we need to come up with a strong and reasonable excuse of some kind to go use, or go gamble. We become masters at generating these seemingly legitimate excuses for our addictive behavior. This is perhaps the most critical skill that our addiction employs - creative excuse making. Your addiction always is hiding in your brain waiting for an opening.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Do this. Right now, while you are thinking clearly and can prepare positively (sound familiar?) make a list of all the excuses that you use to justify your gambling. You know them all too well. Keep the list handy, memorize it. Tell yourself that when your addiction is cramming any one of those excuses into your brain, that this is the trigger to get you to pause, go back, and figure out why this is happening. What were the emotions? What were the thoughts that caused the emotions? What thoughts would your better-self have had instead?”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Mindfulness will play a prominent role in learning how to derail your urge to go to the casino.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“I want to address something here specifically about the intersection of mindfulness and slot machine addiction. Remember that mindfulness is a practice that helps you be in the present, that helps you shut off the guilt and shame of the past and shut out the thoughts of fear and anxiety about the future. Mindfulness asks us to live in the present because the present is the only thing we can control.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Compulsive slot machine playing, i.e., sitting on that ugly stool, pushing that stupid button for eight hours without a break, does the same thing as mindfulness! Mindfulness asks us to be acutely aware of our current surroundings, of the sights and sounds right in front of us. I can think of no activity, including mindful meditation, that has us slot machine addicts focused so intently on the sights and sounds in the present moment as when we compulsively play a slot machine. And while most people can meditate for several minutes (some even up to an hour or more), us slot machine addicts can push that button for many hours without a break, all the while very mindfully aware of the present sights and sounds. This is why the treatment professionals call slot machine addiction "escape gambling". This is why those evil machines have such a hold on us. When we sit down on that stool pushing that button, we know we will enter another world, a world outside of our day-to-day existence, outside of that day-to-day world that is too often full of confusing and painful thoughts. In the slot machine world, our focus becomes completely involved with the machine - the visuals, the sounds, the anticipation of a win. There is no room what-so-ever for any other thought to intrude into our consciousness. We are totally in the present (for however long it takes to lose all our money). Mindfulness by machine addiction.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“If you can eliminate the need for escaping from your negative thoughts, you can eliminate the need to gamble. Make that your quest.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Addicted gamblers carry a substantial burden of shame and guilt. Unlike most other addictions and disorders, gambling most often is done in secret; and in order to keep their addiction secret, gamblers will lie, deceive, and steal. Not only are they ashamed about gambling, and losing money, they are even more shamefully about all the lies and deceptions that they constantly need to employ with their family and friends.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Unlike most other addictions and disorders, gambling most often is done in secret.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“I would assert, and I know this personally from years of living with it, that the shame of not being able to quit, of being too weak to stop, of being unable to do the right thing, unable to do the thing that everyone else that I know could easily do - that weakness, that level of shame changes your life. You can deal with the financial losses, and you can even deal with the lies (they have a short half-life, either you get away with it, or you apologize and say you won't do it again). But the shame, guilt, and loss of respect for yourself when you can't make yourself stop, that awful sinkhole of personal failure, never goes away.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“At some point in the recovery process, the addicted gambler will learn that they have an addiction, that their brain has been compromised by their gambling behavior, and that it is now preventing them from stopping that behavior. That knowledge will help a little to reduce the shame. The problem that still exists is that your friends and family likely don't know you have an addiction, or they don't really understand what that means. You know that they are judging you, you still feel the helplessness of that judgment, and yet you still don't really understand why you can't stop. It gets even worse. In order to justify your new reality that you can't quit, that you have an addiction, the thing that will irrefutably prove your inability to quit, and that will show to others that you do, in fact, have an addiction, is to continue to gamble. You can then say with confidence to your therapist or family, I have an addiction! I went to the casino again, I can't stop. Because if I do simply stop, I wouldn't have this inability to stop. My addiction excuse would disappear, and I would have to go back to knowing that I'm stupid and weak and immoral for all the gambling I have done. So, in order to not feel weak, stupid and immoral, I'll run with that addiction idea and just keep on gambling! This is where Dr. Linehan's concept of Radical Acceptance can be very powerful for addicted gamblers. It is a way out of the negative spiral described in the previous paragraphs. Don't get stuck in the guilt and shame cycle. Accept that those things are in your past, cannot be changed, and need to be understood simply as what you've done, not who you are. Then you can move on to finding solutions for your goal of changing future behavior, for your goal of living a gambling free life.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Do not confuse acceptance (or forgiveness) with "acceptable". What we have done - the gambling, lies, deceptions, etc. - is not acceptable. Radical acceptance simply means that yes, you did all those things. You gambled and lied and deceived - all of that happened, and you now accept your prior behavior as fact. Beyond acceptance comes forgiveness.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Most of us are compassionate people. We are often compassionate to others, but seldom with ourselves. Do you think it might be time, as you work toward your recovery, to forgive yourself? What would that mean to you? Could that possibly free you up and give you strength to focus on your future in a more positive fashion?”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“In the 12-step program, the reason you are successful in recovery is because you stopped trying to impose your willpower on your addiction and have instead turned your recovery over to a higher power. But if our personal willpower is unable to conquer our addiction, then how do you explain all the people who are in long-term recovery who don’t believe in a higher power? How did they recover? Fortunately, there are many paths to dealing with addiction that don’t involve a higher power.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Your mission, if you chose to accept it, is to understand, fight and ultimately defeat your urge to go gamble. Here’s a bold statement: If you can win these battles, you will stop gambling. What would happen if every time you got that strong urge to go gamble you fought it, wrestled it to the ground, stomped on its throat till it croaked and then kicked it into the gutter? Seriously, how fun would that be? How good would that feel?”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Think of the 10,000 suicide victims last year who might still be alive today if they had won that battle with their urge on their fateful day. Believe this: This next urge might be your life-or-death battle. You need to win it. Prepare. Arm yourself. Fight as if your life depended on it. Because it does. What follows are your weapons in this fight.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“Urges are a normal part of your recovery. They will always be with you in one form or another. Just as what we are instructed to do during mindful meditation, when we have thoughts, and we accept them just as thoughts, and then we let them pass, simply accept the urge as an urge and as something that is normal during your recovery, and then mindfully allow it to slip away. Urges have a very short half-life — they will lose their power over you in less than a half-hour. Know that it will pass if you can just wait a while.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“You experience an urge (as I have been all week while writing this chapter), then you step back, both metaphorically and literally, and say to yourself, “I’m having an urge that makes me want to go gamble.” Then you pause. Then you again step away a few more paces and say to yourself, “Now I’m noticing that I’m having a thought that creates an urge and makes me want to go gamble.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“The more you can separate yourself from your addiction, the better you will be able to apply the many ideas in this book. CBT, mindfulness, DBT, acceptance, self-compassion. All these techniques require a degree of separation between you and your addiction. Work on that separation. It is important.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“There are a lot of tools out there that can make it possible for you to limit your ability to have cash. You can get a credit card that doesn't work in casinos, you can have a close friend handle your bank accounts, you can hire a trusted payee, you can buy a timed safe, and you can voluntarily exclude yourself from all the nearby casinos. If you have the strength and commitment, it is theoretically possible to make it so you can never have cash in your pocket. Theoretically possible, yes, but unlikely. We addicted gamblers, when we are in heat, seem always to be able to find a way to acquire cash. We will use pawn shops, steal, embezzle, and borrow (while lying) from friends. Please understand what financial controls can and can't do. They can help you to resist or postpone a trip to the casino, "Damn...my husband's wallet has only thirty-five dollars in it, not enough...". They can limit the amount of damage you incur when you do go to the casino, "Sorry sir, this credit card will not work here." But, if financial controls are your only plan, or the primary plan that you have for treating your addiction, not only will this probably not work, you might be setting yourself or your loved one up for even more serious trouble. If the addict feels the need to gamble strongly enough, and if the addict does not have any other tools to fight that powerful urge except a temporary lack of cash, guess what they will do? My guess is, they will "get cash" by whatever means they can.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“You should never rely on financial controls alone to stop you from gambling. Think of them as a secondary tool, like getting good exercise or meditation. They can help by putting up barriers that can cause you to pause, and then be able to work on your “urge warfare” skills, or they can simply give you more time and separation from your urge. But in the end, they are unlikely to stop an addicted gambler with an overwhelming urge to gamble and with no skills to fight that urge. The addiction will find a way.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“When the magnitude of these losses by the addict is discovered, the spouse, or partner, or parent, or whoever else is vulnerable to losing their own money because of the addicted loved one, needs to take actions immediately. The NCPG website has an excellent section on all the precautions a loved one needs to take to segregate and protect their assets from the gambler. If you are in that “significant other” category, do not be shy about doing this. Do not feel guilty about imposing financial controls and protection for yourself and family, you are doing the addict a favor, and maybe even saving their life.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“As we addicted gamblers plunge into our addiction, and as we see and know how much financial damage we are doing to our family and friends, our despair, shame, and guilt multiply. All too often this leads to suicidal thoughts and actions. Therefore, the sooner you can keep family assets safe from the gambler, the less likely you will have to deal with the horrifying aftermath of their death.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
“If you are the significant other, there is one more thing you should do - check carefully to see if the addict has taken out, or recently increased, a life insurance policy. If they have, then you know what that means. They are considering (or planning) a suicide. You must figure out an appropriate way to intervene. I can’t help you with that - just get help from a therapist, loved one, priest, and do whatever you can (quickly) in a thoughtful way that won’t make things worse.”
Source: Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.