24 hours after Biggest Bender — and breathing

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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!