Hi Don,
to be honest, i don’t remember, but that period is captured here in this forum under the subject “Forex addiction” my first journal here.
but in general, the first week will be very tough then it will start to fade and by the end of the 3rd week, the withdrawal symptoms will fade completely, from the 4th week onwards what I will experience is some bad mood days, a depression from time to time that last one to two days, and the feeling of regret from time to time about the wasted time and money, but I can’t really label them as withdrawal symptoms, based on my experience a 3 weeks is more than enough to get rid of the withdrawal symptoms.
there is something called a post-acute disorder, this will occur from time to time and will stop after 1 to 2 years. but I never reached that long period to speak from experience about that but you can google it and learn more about it.
finally what you need is to have a period of 2 to 3 months of staying free of gambling to kick start your real recovery, and to give your brain a break to think clearly on how to overcome this addiction. the easiest way is to not have extra money. so you will not have anything to gamble with. today I received my salary and the urges start to pop up in my mind but once I paid all the bills and get rid of the extra money the urges went away.
Don, you seem like someone who is depending on his willpower to overcome this addiction, from experiance and from reading books about this addiction and posts here in this forum you can see that willpower alone will let you down. so plan ahead how to prevent yourself from gambling using something more than willpower.
Remember the analogy from Ulissios’s myth that I posted in previous posts. it really helps me to visualize our fight against this addiction and I hope it will help you as well.
wish you all the best man, we deserve to live a better life. I am not sure what I will achieve in the future, but if all that I will achieve is living a life without the stress of the gambling, without wasting an additional minute on this addiction. a life without wasting an additional penny on this addiction, I guess I will be happy to just achieve that.