Even mock gambling is its madness for the addict

I didn’t gamble — but, rather, feel like I did.

I have a job that doesn’t ask a whole lot — or enough — of me. I love my work; if and when opportunity to take on more  learning, skills and knowledge presents itself, I’ll grab the bull by the horns!

In the meantime, I have a lot of downtime as I work (akin to being a nighttime security guard, which I’m not). Since I work in the presence of no one except a cat, the quiet alone time is significant.

How does this relate to gambling– or mock gambling, in this case? Oh, it very much does.

To pass the time, I browse the Net and play the occasional game (free apps). Along that course I discovered free gambling apps.

I must preface by saying that I am a casinos gambler. Online gambling has never interested me. In fact, the idea bores me silly.

I’m all about the casinos and their slots. The lights, the smells, the sounds. The womb-like environment where it’s perpetually night. (As a deep nocturnal creature, I especially love that.) The pulse of a casino cannot be replicated on a computer at home.

For the record, any forms of gambling other than slots, for example sports betting, horse races, tables, lotto tickets, again, no appeal. I’m fortunate in the sense that it’s casinos and slots or nothing. In a weird twisted way, that somehow mitigated the damage — even if only by a yardstick.

It’s important that that be said. Online gambling with real money holds no lure.

As I mentioned, the long alone quiet hours and boredom “inspired” me to try out gambling apps. I’ve never paid for any app, neither have I succumbed to invitations to pay for more game time, extra moves, candy-crush blasters or — in this case — slots coinage.

Once the freebies run out, I’m out. Done. Sometimes I delete the app. Sometimes I return the next day for a refreshed batch of freebie coins, usually after four hours.

I made a poignant and pointed discovery last night in the throes of sampling various gaming apps. They give you a mountain of free credits (and they really are free) and usually big winnings. At the beginning. Whopper wins even!

And even though there’s no actual money involved (for me), I’m right back at it. Pushing the max bet on the mock slots button like I used to. There is no small potatoes for me in gambling. Not any more.

Worse than that, my mindset slid right back into the old and (all too familiar) ways. EVEN THOUGH NO ACTUAL MONEY WAS AT STAKE!

The same anxiety. The same “points getting low. need a bonus round! need a bonus round!” The same thrill and pleasure on a win or free spins. The same desperation. The same inability to stop. Or rather, not WANTING to stop.

Again, NO ACTUAL MONEY INVOLVED! No risk whatsoever to my wallet or bank account. And yet, I found myself right back where I used to be when I was gambling for real.

I found myself riding the highs and suffering through the lows. Equally badly, I also found myself staying up into the wee hours just to keep playing. I was up ’til 5:30 in the freakin’ morning! For me, about 2 to 2-1/2 hours past my bedtime so not as late as it’d be for most people. Still. Not good for me.

When I exhausted one app, I’d find another. For hours that went on! I dared not look out the window to see whether dawn was breaking yet!

It is, I discovered, the true meaning and nature of compulsion and obsession —–> addiction, ultimately. You want to stop. But you can’t. You lose sleep. So what.

I didn’t lose a single cent last night — rather, this morning. Neither did my hours of “entertainment” trigger an urge to go to a casino and gamble for real. I’m sure there are reasons for that that will come clearer once I’ve regained sleep.

What last night did do was reveal things about myself — and within a safe and sane environment, my residence, free of all the enticements and enchantments of casinos. I have the mind of a gambler. I cannot gamble small potatoes just for fun and entertainment even when those potatoes are freebie credits in an app.

I have to risk big. I have to play big. I have to gamble big. I have to go for the gold. And if I fail, I’ll keep wanting, keep trying, keep pushing in this case a mock spin button in the hope that fortunes will turn my direction.

And if I do win big — in one case, my freebie bonus credits tapped a million or more! — I’ll STILL play! And I’ll keep playing, going for more and more.

But there is no more that is enough.

Whether they be pretend or real wins, the winnings are NEVER enough!. Any gambling addict will tell you so. When I was gambling for real, if I’d won a mega-jackpot, do you think that would’ve stopped me from playing again? No.

I might’ve TOLD myself that. I might’ve thought: “Great! My money worries are over for the rest of my life. I never again have to do a job I detest for slave labor wages (father-childhood issues). I can give to causes I care about. I can give good to people I love and people in need.” And I would have — some portion of the winnings.

All that said, I guarantee that eventually, one way or another, one day or another, those jackpot millions would’ve found their way back into the casinos. I’d be playing in the big boys’ club and max bets — all the time.

Am I proud of what I did last night? Well, I don’t know that proud is relevant. It isn’t. It was a profoundly illuminating experience. I have a gambler’s mindset and response even when it’s all pretend!

In the light of my newfound understanding and self-recognition, I’ve deleted all those apps on my iPad and iPhone. Not because I feel at risk of heading to a casino. I don’t. I simply don’t need to spend hours and hours in gambling apps. I don’t need to nurture, stimulate or entice my gambler’s mind and responses. Even if it’s for free and “just for fun” and brings zero harm to my wallet.

I needed to be reminded that gambling is my addiction. My intense addiction. And it DOESN’T go away just because I’m not gambling at the casino. It’s something I have to live with — and really LEARN to live with — for the rest of my years.

It was an illuminating night, all right. And tonight, when I go to work, I make this commitment to myself: I will not download any free gambling-type app. I will do ANYTHING else — read, color, stare at the sleeping cat or the wall if I have to! The same stuff I’d do and do do in my life/world outside the workplace in recovery. One moment at a time. One day at a time.

 

When lack of trust impedes GA recovery

What to do when someone in a GA group rubs you the wrong way? Or you dislike the person and/or the feeling is mutual?

And, to complicate matters, what to do when that person is not “merely” a member but a facilitator of meetings?

That is the predicament in which I find myself.

I do not like C. She conducts the meetings poorly (illustrations unnecessary). And I do not trust her. I would not trust her in settings unrelated to GA (i.e., social circles, workplace). I would not and do not trust her to be kind. I would not trust her with an innocuous piece of information, never mind a confidence.

She is a hypocrite and two-faced and deeply judgmental. She is one to gossip behind people’s backs. (Welcome to the worst of womanhood!) She is, in the simplest of four words: Not to be trusted.

And yet she runs the meetings and not well, as I mentioned. I do not feel safe in her presence. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t tell her even my date of birth, weight, place of birth or the number of people in my immediate family.

I was about to write “because I dislike her that much.” But that’s actually not correct (though I am less fond of her than others). I don’t trust her. And I don’t want her knowing anything about me.

Which defeats the healing purposes of GA.

I’ve not attended meetings recently specifically because she is there and leading them. However, I cannot continue in this vein — avoiding meetings, that is. I totally get the “principles before personalities.” After nearly four years in the program, I truly do get it. I truly get that there are people I don’t and won’t like. I’m actually to bothered by that.

Trusting someone … that introduces an entirely new and different level of challenge.

I wish C. would go away, go back to her home state from which she came. However, that is a foolish hope and unlikely scenario. It leaves me with a hypocritical two-faced judgmental woman I truly do not trust.

What to do.

I don’t know. If I knew, I might not be writing about this. If I knew, I might be offering sage suggestions or advice.

What are my options?

Go to a meeting and say nothing, thereby sparing me the tremendous unease and discomfort of sharing my heart with a person who as I said I’d otherwise not even reveal banal information?

Not gonna happen, me saying nothing meeting after meeting after meeting. A VERY dangerous path indeed. It puts me SMACK DAB back into Isolation and Isolation is both the death of me and the start of gambling.

Truly, if C. didn’t facilitate the meetings, the equation would be shifted toward my favor. I’d still wish that my shadings didn’t have to include a woman I deeply distrust. Guess I’d just have to focus on the people whom I do trust to motivate myself into shares.

My relationship with God / Higher Power is at best iffy. Sporadic. Riddled with doubt and  uncertainties. Faith definitely is not my middle name!

However, I am trying to learn and I work extremely hard in that learning, probably harder than about any human! That said, if there is a God and if He really does listen and if he really does care — and wow is that an ENORMOUS VAST If! — I would like to pray for C. to step aside from leading meetings. She’s really not that good at it; moreover, her doing so has been to disadvantages of GA members.

It is time for another to gain the experience and skills. It is time for C. to return to a seat in the house and let others who would like to lead or serve to have that opportunity. It would be for the good of all.

That is my prayer to the God that I hope exists.

In the meantime, staying clean one day at a time, even without the meetings (a situation that I hope will correct itself imminently).

My inner gambler is the Loch Ness monster

I wish I could become an alcoholic. I just don’t have it in me. Not in my wiring.

I’ve said that many times tongue-in-cheek. And out of the misery of a gambling addiction that has defeated me and will always defeat me if I allow it back into my life.

I do not make light of the disease of alcoholism. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, heard with with my own ears what it is. He gave me a great great gift, sharing the horrors and the truths, intimately and unabashedly. I am forever deeply and truly grateful to him. He’s been sober for some 22 years. AA saved his life just as GA saved mine.

No one outside the GA rooms knows of my gambling addiction except him. I shared it with him because we were two peas in a pod in our separate addictions. Alcohol will always be his demon and certain death just as gambling is mine.

We won’t “switch sides.” He won’t become a compulsive deranged gambler any more than I will become a compulsive deranged drinker.

When I say that I wish I could develop a drinking problem, tongue in cheek, it’s only because there is NO addiction more painful and severe for me than gambling. It is my demon and certain death. Any other addiction seems easier in comparison.

Gambling is the beast from the dark waters. The Loch Ness monster unseen but lurking deep in the psyche’s waters. It moves silently, casting no shadow because light does not reach those depths. It glides like a submarine. Sometimes it tracks me with its sonic sensors honed to precision because at those inky depths, eyesight is not useful. It tracks me like an ankle bracelet tracks a criminal for law enforcement.

Sometimes the Loch Ness seems uninterested in me. Is it because he’s not hungry? Sleeping? Resting? Hibernating? Bored and tracking others? I’ve no clue. I don’t really care to know of the habits of that creature lurking. Not yet. Not now.

I need only be aware of his presence and mindful of his expert ways of sneaking up on me. Without warning. Without precedent except in his unpredictability. Without signals or hints of any sort.

Sometimes I feel his motion. The water slightly shifting around my legs. Is it the natural flow of water in the lake? The current? Or is it the Loch Ness monster on the move? Am I on his radar screen again? Or is he simply stirring and surfing the lake’s black bottom for plants or fish or whatever else comprises his diet that isn’t me.

He’s a beastly creature, the Loch Ness monster, that gambler. He is bigger than in size, weight and volume. I am puny to him. A petite fish vs. a creature the size of 15 whales! Or more!

I feel defeated in his presence. I feel tiny. Powerless. Unable to swim fast enough to escape him or outrace him. And I’m a good swimmer! Yet no human can outrace the Loch Ness! Not even a speedboater! The Loch Ness monster’s power lies not in his SPEED but his size and weight. His girth. And for a monster, he moves very fast because he has so much girth at his disposal.

Defeated and depressed and hopeless. That’s how my gambling Loch Ness monster makes me feel. What he makes me become.

Through the power of group and fellowship in GA, I’m learning and teaching myself new skills. New skills on how to live life and experience life without going to a casino. Those skills include coping skills. Skills just to survive life when it gets me down and beats me to a pulp. I don’t wanna be mincemeat to the Loch Ness monster any longer.

I wanna be a beautiful tropical fish. With gorgeous rainbow colors and joyful and safe and swimming in turquoise island waters where there is no Loch Ness monster at all.

Recovery is work. A learning process. Sometimes hard. Sometimes smooth. Whatever the water’s current, however rough or quiet those waters, they’re best experienced without placing a bet. Without inserting a bill into the slots. The Loch Ness monster can smell that bill! And just like that make toast of me!

I mut remind myself of that when the urges strike. When I feel the water shifting ever so slightly around my legs. The Loch Ness monster is no friend of mine (or any gambler). He is trouble with a capital T. Cold. Careless. Self-preserving at any cost, including the cost of others’ lives.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

This day. One day at a time.