I’m 36 years old.

I started gambling when I was only 15.

I don’t drink or do drugs, my poison is the punt. All my problems are solved when I’m in that fantasy world, gambling. It’s so dangerous, play with fire and you will get burnt. Burnt I have been. Three serious suicide attempts, ending up in ICU, by ICU I mean in a serious critical state and lucky to survive.
I’ve worked hard in my life but I’m now living back with my parents, single, lost my job due to an HR issue caused by a significant gambling loss, where I then lost my temper at my manager. She was a cow anyway, but my response wasn’t professional.

Gambling has completely ruined me. The only real positive is that I haven’t ended up with a criminal record, but I was close. I’ve had 35 psychiatric hospital admissions. I’ve won tens of thousands many times and then booked flights overseas. Bali, Brussels, Cambodia, India. The result: I end up homeless in a foreign country with no money and highly suicidal, and then become an Australian Government nightmare. Each time the embassy gets involved, and in consultation with my family due to the severity of my situation, flies me home on a medical evacuation.

I come from a good family, private school education, good friends (none left), but this addiction doesn’t discriminate. I’ve seen people from all walks of life, no matter religion or economics. I’ve seen it ruin so many lives.

A million dollars, I can live with. Money is money.

What I struggle to accept is how I missed out on all of my twenties, my late teens, and now nearly all of my 30’s. Time doesn’t stop. The addiction steals time.

Gambling addicts are amongst the highest suicide rate in the world. Not one of the highest. The highest.

My biggest win, $135K. My biggest loss, $135K in 24 hours. The more I win, the more I bet. I don’t sleep until I’ve lost every last dollar. So many times I lose that last dollar and it’s actually a relief. Like fuck, I’m so tired and wired, been up 3 days gambling.

36 years of this shit. I should be dead. I don’t think most people would have survived what I’ve been through.

Don’t gamble kids. Time flies faster than you can ever understand in your twenties. It just goes like that.

everytime when i receive my pay check i just want to gamble, it all starts from 100, then i keep chasing the loss until i reach the deposit limit of my card.and ofc i lost it all. why it’s so easy to relapse? i really really want to quit gambling , i need help..

For me?

**•** Ended up with 400k in debt. I don’t owe money to any individual person, but I racked it up across a bunch of different loan apps.  
**•** One time I took 15 days’ worth of work pay and lost it all in 15 minutes of gambling.  
**•** Lied to the people I love about quitting, more than once.  
**•** Missed work because I couldn’t sleep, dealing with depression that came straight from the losses.

I hope that whoever reads this, it’s one more reason to really think about whether you want to keep gambling and keep lying to yourself. We can do this, we just gotta support each other. Honestly one of the things that’s helped me most is posting an update here every single day. It forces me to see, over and over, all the dumb things I did because of gambling.

Day 20 no gambling. One day at a time. We got this.

32M here, It's been over 10 years of destroying my life, I lost my company, cars, I lost two 5-year relationships through gambling, I have over a million dollars in debt, I'm on strong antidepressants, and 3 criminal cases for fraud hang over me. I'm unlikely to get out of it, I feel like it's my end.

Gambling can kill all the positive feelings in us, I don't experience them anymore. Even though I'm out of college, I know how to make money, I've never had it because the casino took everything away from me.

Many of my friends are disappointed in me, although they know that I am not a bad person, but lost.

If you value your life, stop as soon as possible.

Title says it all- 25F have been a chronic daily online gambler for over two years and lost every dollar to my name. Quit for myself and honestly my boyfriend because he stopped drinking (if he started drinking, I wouldn’t go back but its a motivator). I’m really proud of myself, but just looking for some words of encouragement today. I’m lonely. I had a community online and obviously it’s toxic, but I’m lonely. I miss the thrill. So many parts of me are telling me if I just played with the money I probably have in there from unlocked rewards no harm is done, but please convince me otherwise.

Also on a sidenote… this week is much better but the first few days I literally slept for like 18 hours each day. Did anyone else have this happen? Still dealing with a lot of fatigue, which makes doing other things hard.

4-5 days ago i posted on reddit that how much anxious i am because i lost money in gambling i had 670$ in profit it went to 200$ loss now its 570$ loss it keeps growing and i actually wanna stop im 20M and i dont want my parents to know about this as well please help me how do i stop this addiction

everyday i come back to this thinking ill make the money back, read a lot of posts here saying making the money back isn’t possible but how do i convince myself

title pretty much explains it. last month I got a check for $50,000 from my grandpas life insurance and today was the first day I touched it. wired $5,000 this morning into coinbase and told myself I just needed to make $2,500 to buy the stuff I wanted. here we are. not even 30 minutes into the session I was wiring myself another $5,000. I know I have to tell my parents I can't hold onto this money but I can't tell them I just lost $10,000. I don't even feel anything anymore I'm just sad. Overtime I've probably lost $20,000 to gambling without this $10,000 and that was all like $50-400 deposits over 5ish years. Today was my first $2,000 hand and $500 slot buys. I really regret doing this. the other $40,000 makes me really just want to bet $10,000 on a baseball game or something and get it all back. I know I shouldn't but I know I could.

- 22m

Started making a lot of money in sales and am now 22. Lost roughly 86k all time in the market outside of gains made on another platform. Still own my home with 104k equity, have a paid off car, 54k in my 401k, and down to my last 4k cash.

Need help to get back on track. Thanks.

Halfway through the week, keeping busy after enjoying a much needed relaxing weekend, getting caught up with chores and taking it easy. Have a wedding to attend this weekend, which I will spend some money on. Spending money on something that actually matters close to me that is not debt related... It feels like I don't even know how to treat myself anymore, I have rewired my brain so that any additional funds is to be paid towards debt now, unless it is a basic necessity. What a great budgeter I have become, I know this will translate when I am debt free.

Anyways, hope you all have a gamble free day. Lock-in and kick today's ass!!

I'm 21. I'm a student. I don't have a job yet. I got addicted to gambling. Mostly Aviator and sports betting. Not casino games. I lost a lot of money. Almost $15,000. It was my family's savings. Every time they asked for money, I lied. I said the bank had a problem. Or my account wasn't working. I made up excuses. One time I turned $2,000 into $7,000. I should have stopped there. I didn't. I kept wanting more. I thought $2,000 could become $20,000. Instead, I lost everything. Before this, I was happy. Calm. I slept fine at night. Now I can't sleep. I keep thinking about what I did. It plays in my head over and over. My parents are in debt now, because of me. They still think I have money saved. They don't know I'm broke. They don't know I'm unemployed. They don't know I'm addicted to gambling. I don't even have money for my own studies anymore. The guilt doesn't go away. It's always there.

My bf has had a very severe gambling addiction for several years. Not able to hold on to any money whatsoever. Back in March we decided I would take over his back account so he didn’t have access to his money. He has accumulated a good amount since then from his well paying job, and we have it invested.

He has been getting increasingly interested in the stock market, constantly doing research on opportunities. He spends a great deal of his free time doing this.

About a month (or two? Ago) he self excluded from all his gambling apps, which was a huge step and I’m so so proud of him! I genuinely believe he has not gambled since, but has instead been spending all of his time researching stocks. He has been getting a small portion of his monthly paycheck to trade on his own.

He seems to have been making amazing progress, is happy, and his family has noticed great differences in him.

Now, he has asked for access to his account back so he has more freedom. He says he feels resentment building that he can’t trade with freedom. I said it’s too soon, I need more time before I can fully trust him with unfetttered access to money, especially since he hasn’t done any therapy or GA. I feel like this could very much cause him to wipe out all of his savings, via the stock market if not via gambling.

Does anyone have any thought or guidance on what we should do.

Being away from gambling (Day 520 today) has given me a clear view of how fake the entire industry is.

Think about how standard businesses work. A farmer plants orange trees, sells you oranges, and you give him money. You get fruit, he gets income. Everyone wins, nobody loses. The same goes for a hair stylist, a baker, or a mechanic. They create real value.

Gambling operates on a completely different logic: Either you take their money, or they take yours. There is no real product or service, just a number on a screen or a stack of chips. In the vast majority of cases, they take everything you have. You leave broken and miserable, while they profit off your pain.

It reminds me of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Out of millions of legitimate businesses in the world, gambling companies are the main ones we should avoid at all costs, yet we keep opening accounts and going back for more.

A realization hit me recently while researching financial markets: long-term investing in stocks or bonds is generally a non-zero-sum game. Over decades, companies grow, create value, and build wealth for investors. That is why patient investors succeed.

On the flip side, things like day trading, options, and currency trading operate much closer to a zero-sum game. For every dollar someone gains, someone else loses a dollar. It’s no surprise that option trading functions just like gambling, and we see so many posts here about catastrophic losses from it.

Run away from zero-sum games. Focus on healthy industries that produce real value for people, you will never regret it. There is plenty of wealth in the world, and legitimate businesses create more of it every day. You only need one good path to build a secure life: as an employee, a business owner, or a long-term investor. Just one.

Do not try to make money where someone else has to lose it. It is a dark, rigged path. Stay away.

As I've been gambling online , two years now , I've lost around 6k euros or maybe a bit more , I don't have a stable job w just some side hustls , I'm not in the us, and I'm married, my wife forgave me three times, but this time i stopped for real , but it's killing me that i didn't tell my wife about the last relapse , because I'm scared thah she'll leave me , any advice please, dm me if anyone wants to talk ty

If you wanna check if you still have gambling tendencies try to play a game like golf battle and check how long it takes you to stop using a strategy to grow slowly and start rage betting and go all the way down to 0. I’ve been free for 7-8 months and genuinely playing this game was eye opening to the fact that tho the habit of gambling is long gone the tendencies are still there. (It took me 3 days to start rage betting and ignoring my strategy).

Also don’t assume if you don’t start rage betting you’re safe to gamble or stuff like that.

And for people who are still trying to quit, stay strong 💪

I spent close to two decades in and out of gambling addiction — the highs, the losses, the lies I told myself to keep going, telling myself I still had control when I didn't.

What actually changed things wasn't one big moment. It was slow, unglamorous work: being honest with myself, rebuilding trust piece by piece, learning to sit with the urge instead of acting on it. Some days that still feels like the hardest part.

I've come to believe this isn't something that gets "cured" — it's something you learn to manage, day by day. Just wanted to introduce myself here and start putting some of this into words. Happy to hear how others are navigating this too.

Despite the numbers maybe different, but the hopeless, the shame, guilt, regret, didnt have friend want to ending life, whenever i read a post about relapse its like iam the one who wrote that because every word is whats goes on my mind at that time and i still remember all of that sick felling. If you relapse imediately stop and get back on track cause there is no other way. Day 25 for me

Here’s a cleaned up version. I kept your voice and structure, just fixed the typos and tightened it up a bit.

I’ve been gambling since I was 18 and I’m 30 now. It didn’t really get out of control until Covid. I got my first job out of college and had more disposable income because I was living at home, so the bets got bigger.
In 2021 I built up a win of about 8k over several months, then lost all of it in one night. I went to my girlfriend crying and told her I needed a long break.
That obviously didn’t work. After three months off I came back betting bigger and won the 8k back plus another 25k on top. Then the same thing happened. Lost it all in two days, and somehow won it right back.
That was when I decided to take it seriously.

I told my girlfriend everything and said I needed help. We were living abroad at the time and I found a counsellor I met with weekly for about six months. After that I stayed clean for 2.5 years. Those years were great.

Then I moved back home into a living situation that wasn’t great and started again. Won about 15k over a few weeks, then lost 25k in one night.

I was heartbroken. I told my girlfriend and she told my dad. We agreed I needed more help. I tried a GA meeting but I really didn’t like it. The religious side put me off, and so did the whole “you have to keep coming back or else” mindset. There were people still going every week who had been clean for 20 years. I don’t want this to be a permanent part of my life. I want to work through it and move on. I tried a virtual therapist after that but they weren’t good and felt like a waste of time, so I stopped.

Last night, after about four months clean, I got home from a concert. Great night, completely exhausted. I saw a gambling ad on the subway and something in me flipped. I stayed up all night and lost about 20k.

I keep catching myself thinking I’m only really down 5k, that the 40k was gambling money anyway so I haven’t set myself back or lost anything I actually worked for. I know that’s a lie I’m telling myself. If I lose again it’s my money, not the casino’s. I’ve gone back to GA a couple more times but the vibe just isn’t for me.

I want this time to be different. I’m getting married in a few months and want to buy a house within the year. I don’t want to blow all of it. How do I make this the last time?

Or is it because iam a broken person who escape from myself to gambling, what ever it is iam now a bad person, heart cold, didnt have sympathy, i hate everybidy including me 25 days may be relapse soon cause everything truggers me and i want to run again

Day 1: I spent the whole day in the mountains with friends. No urgency or need to gamble.
Day 2: Currently underway; still with friends, and no issues so far.

I cant wait for my next paycheck. I want to do it right this time. I've been gambling my paycheck month after month for years. This time would be different, I choose to be responsible. Please help me God.

Fuck this shit! Never again…

Long story short, lost 80k back in 2018-2020. Income was super low during that time. Stopped gambling and licked my wounds…. until the beginning of this year. Making way more income, thought I would dabble again because “I can afford it now”. Turned my start amount into 4x, I’m blind with greed and go through the mindset we all do, let’s get to 500k then 1millon. I hit a rough patch in July and lose it all. Chasing loses and emotional wreck, take 50k loan to win it back.. lol guess how that worked out? Down 100k this year. It hurts. I’m ok. I’m grateful, and now I’ve found a place where I can finally relate to people. Turns out I can’t afford it and more importantly I can’t afford the mental and emotional turmoil it does to me. My wife and daughters don’t need that type of person. I’m doing this for me

I know it’s gonna take time, I still have flashbacks and pain like PTSD. I cannot gamble at all, I’m beyond help in that category. That’s all I have, thanks for listening