Christmas at the Casino.

A gambler’s descent into hell and back … one day at a time.

Eons ago it seems that I penned that subhead for my blog’s title. Oh the days and nights and dollars that have passed away since that time.

I went back out. After some three years clean of gambling. The reason is pretty simple actually. The facilitator of my local GA group did something that was wrong, unfair, out of keeping with GA practice and the needs of recovery.

I had to quit going. And the longer I stayed “quitted,” well, the more vulnerable I became to returning to the slots. My sole poison in the universe of gambling options. That two casinos are but a 10-15 minute drive away … oh the temptations right in my face.

I could talk about triggers — but am not going to.

Could talk the rage I felt/feel toward that meeting facilitator for so fucking up that I no longer felt safe going to GA.

I could talk about the many things that have occurred since I stopped going (had to stop going) just over a year ago.

I could talk of the HUGE amount of money I’ve lost to the slots. The damage I’ve done to my finances and my self.

What I most need to talk about is my utter passion for gambling — precisely, only the slots.

That, combined with the lack of support via the facilitator that so turned things ’round for me (in a bad way): a perfect mockup for going back out.

I love to gamble. Love it. It is hand’s down the very best drug! Escape. Distraction. Salve for unbearable emotions and grief. Nothing but nothing, save for sleep, quiets the RAGE and anguish and LONELINESS that are my life like the slots.

Nothing.

No one is here. I am so alone. Isolated. Slots are my friend. Gambling is my comfort. I loved gambling even before I became an ardent addict.

Therein lies the problem. What the fuck do I replace gambling with?!?

There is nothing that CAN replace it. That’s the cruel joke, the knife in the side. Nothing substitutes for or replaces the thrills … excitement … risk … sheer visceral pleasure of gambling and slots.

Even when I’m losing, I’m happy … just to be in the game. Excited: just to be spinning the wheels one more time.

NOTHING else in my life replicates or comes close.

I could write that it’s time to commit to recovery — solo, unfortunately. Much harder to do it alone than with a GA group. Compared to a dysfunctional GA group, however, better to do it solo.

I wish I never had to stop gambling. Wish I push the SPIN buttons and enjoy the bonus rounds and bells and whistles and close calls but no cigars for the rest of my life.

However, gambling is my shovel into destitution, possibly an early grave.

So question becomes:

How much do I REALLY want to live.

Or perish – and at what cost.

What value is my life, really?

I do not know. I can’t say what value my life holds. And that is why gambling is so easy. So riveting. When my life holds no value, when I have no value, gambling is the most fun way to go hastily to my end.

My reflections this Christmas Day … celebrating these some 12 hours of not placing a bet.

 

 

 

 

 

My Birthday! {toot! toot!}

Today is my birthday!

My GA birthday. Two years without as much as a nickel into a slot machine!

I know this blog has little to zero readership. That makes me very sad. And in its way demotivates me from sharing here. Also sad.

As it happens, this day was quite stressful. Not for gambling reasons or urges but rather other reasons including community and work.

This is not the first time I’ve received my II coin; however, I certainly hope it’s the last!

My first 2-year coin was in 2011. The next year, right after hitting three years of gambling sobriety, my father passed.

I had zero support. Zero zero zero and zero. Zero and zero.

So I went back out. I gambled for loss. (My father is/was my significant parent, the first love of my life and I love him to death.) I always knew — feared — during years of committed GA that if ANYTHING could make me go back out, it’d be losing him.

It happened.

I never hold that relapse against myself though. And a ferocious relapse it was! Full tilt! It’s as they say. It’s worse when you go back out. You go from 0 to 90 mph in a split second.

Then it just keeps on escalating.

I broke 3 years of sobriety for lack of support, for loss, for grief. Was it “worth it?” Yes. It was. Because without that coping method, destructive as it was, I might not be alive. The absence of support and grief may very well have led to … a word I don’t want to write but begins with an “s” and you don’t live to tell about it.

At that time of my Emotional Wreckage, the slots, ironically, saved my life.

===

This time around, at the 2-year mark, I’m in a different place, literally. A different state and town and community. My entire world, geographically, is changed since then.

A positive move.

The thing about losing your significant parent is that you can only lose him or her once.

First you try to live through it. Just survive.

Then, with time and healing, you try to live with it.

I’m between the two.

There was no party, no celebration, no cake or such at the GA meeting tonight. Two members whom I’ve interacted with personally outside the meetings were kind enough to bring a gift (yet unopened) and a card. I was super touched. I’m not used to getting presents — ever! 🙂

That brightened my mood.

I’ve been through a LOT in the past two years. There’ve been 101 “reasons” to gamble. Incentives to gamble. Urges to head to the casino and numb myself at the pleasures of the slots.

But each time, every time, I chose to do something else. ANYTHING else. Even staring at a blank beige wall bored out of my mind is better than gambling. When I had to choose staring at that wall over getting in my car and driving the 10-15 minutes to the casinos in town, then that’s what I did.

I learned a LOT through my years at the slots. I learned A LOT through my GA meetings.

And, perhaps most of all, I learned things I can’t even put into words by my relapse.

So in short, what I really want to say is that no matter how many times you’ve fallen off the horse, no matter how many times you’ve gone back out and then back into GA over and over, it is worth every effort to regain sobriety. To regain sanity. To be clean through the work that GA and recovery entail and demand.

And, from my higher selves and divine beings above to me:

Happy Birthday! You made it, girl! Two years of very trying challenges and not a penny was put into a slot! One moment at a time. One day at a time.

 

 

2015. I’m still here. I’m still clean. One day at a time.

It only seems that I’ve “forgotten” this blog. No way. I’ve a lot on my plate. An overwhelming amount, in many ways.

Through this … through the holidays … the soul-sucking life-sucking stresses, I chose not to gamble. I am choosing at this moment not to gamble. Despite the undertows lurking and grabbing at my ankles to pull me into darkness and depression and isolation. The very reasons I gambled.

I stayed close to GA during the holidays, a time of great stress for me. I stayed closed by attending two meetings a week and sharing and sharing a group meal after one of those weekly meetings. It helped enormously.

Though the holidays are over — and thank God I say! — I am staying close to GA now too. The stress is no less. In ways, it is worse. I know from experience that if I isolate, I am in danger of gambling. Serious danger. Danger that I’m apt to brush aside for the immediate pleasures and relief that the slots provide.

It never ends, the process of recovery. Never. It’s not as if GA meetings are a shot, like an injection of penicillin, that makes you well. And once you’re well — “cured” — you can go back out and gamble like a normal person. I know well enough from having three years of recovery and going back out that there is no return to normal. Not ever.

A part of me remains, admittedly, in denial about that.  Refusing to believe. Not wanting to believe because the love of gambling remains and I sometimes miss it too. The part of me is still there, the part that loves the slots and the casino environment, the lights and the excitement and the sounds and the smells and the bonus games and the thrills.

The endorphins and the adrenalin and the thrills of the possibilities of: one more spin. Just one more spin. Just one more spin. Please God! Make it hit. One more spin. Okay, I’ll go home. After one more spin. Okay, just one more. Really, I’ll go after this spin. {small win} Okay, maybe not …

… ad infinitum.

One must truly embrace the inner gambler and not push it away in order to recover. What does that require? It requires first acceptance of that you are a compulsive gambler. I am a compulsive gambler. I like it too much. Like drug addiction. When I put that metaphorical needle into my vein, I’m hooked. That’s it. Good as gone. Back into the addiction. Overnight. Just like that.

Yeah, sure, the bets may start small. A hundred dollars a night. Up at the casino maybe once a week. But then it explodes. A hundred becomes two hundred becomes three hundred becomes max withdrawals from the bank. Every time I’m at the casino.

Suddenly I’m thinking about nothing but the casino. When can I go again? When can I go and win back my losses. Or win big. A vicious cycle is begun. There is no end point to the desires, the impetus, nee the NEED to go. To chase dollars lost. Desperately. To get lucky and strike it big. REALLY big if I’m super lucky. SO big that my financial worries are gone here on out.

The gambler’s mind is unique in that money lost, especially large sums, to a normal person is reason NOT to repeat that action. To us, it is reason to repeat that action. Over and over. Fueled by desperation. Inability to stop. Loss of control. Hunger for excitement. The thrill of the chase becoming our demise.

In about 2-1/2 months, it’ll be one year clean. It’s been a rough road. A haul. A hard road to hoe. Time’s gone slowly. A lot of times I’ve felt like I’m slogging through recovery. Battling off urges, pushing them away. Reminding myself of the consequences. Consciously recognizing the urges and CHOOSING, consciously, any other action that isn’t a bill into a slot machine. Staring blankly at a wall is a better action than a bet slid into a machine.

Sometimes it’s very tiring, I gotta admit. And no fun. I’m speaking of recovery now. Recovery isn’t half the fun that a night in the casino is. I’m not afraid to say or admit it. The thrill of gambling is exceptional. It’s a high. For sure. An enormous risk of incredible highs and horrible lows.

It is, however, not a life of balance. No fucking way is it a life of balance. Ultimately it is a life of plunge down into a sinkhole. Getting further and further away from reality. Deeper and deeper into the unique mindset of the gambler.

Of this I have to remind myself so that I do not gamble. It’s a thrill ride and a losing proposition, both. Yes, it sucks. But isn’t that the nature of addiction? We love what is killing us. We crave what is destroying us. We don’t want to let go of that which will put us into prison, insanity or death — or on the streets.

I don’t fully understand all the aspects of my psyche that turned me into a compulsive gambler. Unable to stop once I get going and not wanting to stop either no matter how dark and ugly things become. Stopping only because if I don’t, I will end up in one of those four places just listed — prison, insanity, death or on the streets.

It’s no way to live. It is a way to die though. And I’m well aware there’s a death wish that drove my gambling and urge to self-destruct. But that’s another angle and not for today. Just had to be said.

One day at a time is all we’ve got. Each of us, “no matter” how much clean / recovery time we each have under our belts. Ultimately, it’s right now that matters. This day. This hour. This second. This moment. When it is free of placing a bet — in my case slipping a bill into a slot machine — I have a chance for a better life than the one I knew as a gambler and have known in general.

One day at a time is all we have. All we need. For that better future to happen.

Denver, Death and Demise of Recovery

Denver was a dud in every sector save weather.

That this was so in GA meetings meant a personal downfall in my recovery. There’s truth in: “Keeping coming back.” But what if that support isn’t there? What if there’s just no resonance between you and the group?

Worse, what if there’s an underlying hostility, judgmentalness or insider/outsider mindset that excludes newcomers?

Tell me, why would you want to go back to that?

It was for those reasons primarily that Denver GA fell off my map, leaving me isolated and oh so vulnerable in going back out when the stars aligned. Or misaligned.

As grounded and mutually supportive as my recovery in Puget Sound (WA) was, at that time was the awareness and admission that if any thing could or might send me back out, it would be my dad’s death. God, even still those words are so hard to write.

I lost my dad rather suddenly when I was no longer actively involved in Denver’s GA for its failures to deliver. I was entirely and utterly on my own in my abstinence … and during the most profound loss that life would ever deliver me.

+ + +

You might think that two years or 20 years or 50 years in recovery can “make you normal.” “Fix you.” You may think that alllllll that recovery  and all those meetings and sharings will matter when you want to gamble again. Or drink or shoot up or  whatever.

They won’t.

+ + +

The gambler’s, nee addict’s, mind can talk itself into the very vice that destroys itself stunningly easily. This is a unique characteristic among addicts that differentiates us from non-addicts. That ability is part of the insanity, the addiction, the self-destruction and inability to stop it.

+ + +

I did not rush to a casino after I lost my dad. God, the very thought repels me. I was a non-functioning human being so deep in grief that I could not tell write my name.

It was only after some passage of time when a modicum of “coherency and functionality” returned that I turned my sight to Central City, with its casinos, 45 minutes away.

It really wasn’t all THAT hard to go there. Denver GA had let me down big time. I was utterly alone and alone outside the “fellowship” that wasn’t. My dad was gone — though at the time I was SOOOOO far from having processed that; that holds true even now.

WHY NOT GO TO THE CASINO?

Why not indeed.

Going back out is as bad as they say.

Fourteen days without gambling! Eight days clean in recovery!

I distinguish them thusly to mark both my last day of betting and the day that I re-entered Gamblers Anonymous, six days later.

Yes, re-entered. That’s both painful and celebratory to say and write.

I was in GA and stayed clean and sober — a phrase not limited to users of substances — for three years. I was a very active GA member in the fellowship. I led meetings very naturally and comfortably, embraced new members, supported members both irregular and regular, really got people communicating and sharing through various creative exercises.

Then I moved and shit happened and I moved again and more shit happened. One thing led to another … one “small” bet led to a bigger … one irregular visit to the casino led to regular visits …

In less than two years, I wasn’t right back where I’d started when I’d first entered GA in 2009. I was worse off, MILES  from that marker and on an even faster track to poverty and ultimate self-destruction than the first time.

Amongst addicts — be it gambling, alcohol, drugs and etc. — it’s been said that the time out after recovery is much worse than the first. That you not only pick up where you left off but plunge deeper and faster into the addiction. In essence, you fall harder in the second time around.

I’ve found this to be true.

And getting out and BACK into recovery is also that much harder the second (or more) time around than the first. Because of the additional shame of having gone back out. Because of the embarrassment. Because of the intensified self-hatred  and self-punishment and negative self-talk  that accompany having gone back out.

This tends to be true whether the addict’s stayed clean for 30 years or 3 years. Among addicts, shame and self-punishments seemingly know neither markers nor achievements.

I’m thinking just now of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who started drinking and put a needle — one that proved fatal — into his arm after decades clean. What was going on in his mind around breaking sobriety?

Was he like so many other addicts who “fall off the wagon” and think/decide: “I’ve ruined it now. I’ve blown it. I’m a loser. A piece of shit. I might as well go whole hog wild.”

And then you die. Or you don’t — by stopping.

I’d love to ask what was going on in his mind just after he first put that glass to his lips … were he still alive.

Self-destruction is a very active, and common, component in addictions. And if it’s not the “reason” we get into our addiction, it’s certainly a reason we stay in it.  The shame and self-hatred and feeling of being undeserving of life are relentless — for me; many others have spoken of this as well.

In my three solid years in recovery, I never thought I’d be that gambler who goes back out. Neither did I think I WOULDN’T be. Even in full sobriety, in the back of my mind I thought and feared that if anything were to send me back out, it would be the passing of my father.

And that is what happen.

And it just got really really bad.

I’m in a new town now, thousands of miles from where I first joined GA. I’m in a better place in all ways, shapes and forms. Not great. But definitely better and improving.

It’s a new chapter and I’m a changed person — in no small part BECAUSE of my three years in GA, not despite them.

So while on one hand I’m new to GA in my new chosen town, I’m not new to recovery … yet sharp pangs of regret, shame, fear and self-judgments accompany my re-entry.

Which begs the question: Is there anything positive I can do for myself that isn’t subject to self-criticism and harsh scrutiny?!

I mean, if a gambler in GA went back out, I’d not only encourage him or her to come back in but welcome him/her with open arms! I HAVE done that!

Yet when it comes to doing the same for myself,  I trash myself, I criticize my positive efforts, paint them with shame and unforgiving rehashing of all the money wasted, and I stone my good efforts as if I’m stoning a criminal on the plaza in days of yore.

Self-love is such the challenge for compulsive gamblers. And whatever the mind’s chatter and the inner turmoil, the conscious choice to bypass and ignore that and come back into recovery — even after going out, ESPECIALLY after going back out! — IS an act of self-love.

Even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.

That’s all I have for today. 14 days without placing a bet and 8 days clean back in recovery!