After the Biggest Bender of my (gambling) lifetime, I want this one thing: Time to march ahead quickly.
Getting far, far away from the damage — is what I want.
I am: breathing. That is good enough for now.
Putting distance between me and that devastating night of overspending, financial recklessness and futile efforts at fun and some winnings.
It’s like a terrible car crash. Thinking about it brings anguish, pain, deep suffering and the glaring knowledge that I cannot undo ANY of it.
There’s no time machine that’ll take me back to that night where at any select moment I can choose differently.
Two beers at the bar then leave the casino rather than head to the cashier window.
One withdrawal rather than multiples.
Pull myself off a COLD machine rather than playplayplayplayplayplay and pourpourpourpourpour in big bills.
See the clear reality of it as COLD rather than through the clouded lens of warm favoritism and conviction that it’s gonna turn around any second — it must! it’s due! it will!– and pay off big.
I am delusional: when I’m in a casino.
Even if I’m calm, reasoning clearheaded when I enter, I’ll turn delusional in short order.
What differentiates me from a heroin user is methodology. A needle in a vein for him … a room vibrating with songs of bonus rounds and bells, bright colored lights, cigarette smoke.
Casinos are an ultimate seduction.
And an ultimate escape. An ultimate playground. An ultimate respite from life. An ultimate amnesia for a heart heavy or broken.
An ultimate dealbreaker and game-changer, depending on wins, losses and how deep the hole that we, the gambling addicts, dig for ourselves.
It can become so deep that we cannot get out. We know the horror stories. We live them.
The first 24 hours after a gambling binge (or Bender, in my case) is always of sharp mixed emotions.
The agony is still fresh on the tongue. The hatred of self. The shock, the cold hard slap of reality across the face of (a) what you did and (b) could not STOP from doing. The irrevocable actions.
Where IS that time machine when you truly want it?!
Mixed in with the agony fresh off a binge/bender is relief. That you didn’t gamble in that day.
Relief in surfacing from swirling watery madness back onto dry land of reason, rationality and reality.
I am my own shipwreck. Shipwrecked at the slots.
I am also my own savior.
bad bets 