Hi Jdawgg and thanks for sharing your story. You are not a scum bag! you are someone who has an addiction. Like anyone who has an addiction you can rehabilitate yourself. Usually with a lot of help and a lot of measures. We are not addicted to the actually money itself (although we do fantasize about what we will do with it in the beginning) we are addicted to the high we get when we win. That part of our brain that lights up and releases feel good chemicals responds to the win. Not the wad of money or numbers on the screen that we are so quick to gamble back.
If you really want to stop there are measures you can take. Like maybe stop looking for bailouts. I told my one sister that I would always go to for a loan that I was a gambling addict and I didn’t want her to lend me any more money. Drastic but I didn’t want her to feed my addiction or enable me. I also asked someone to take care of my money for me for a while. I was given a daily or so allowance. Again, this helped to make sure I didn’t have the money to feed my addiction. I guess what I would say to you is look at what/ how you gamble and what measures you can put in place to stop yourself from gambling. Do you gamble online? What country are you from? Different places and ways of gambling have different ways to you can use to stop your access. I hope you seriously look at stopping this forever. Keep posting. Spending time with people in recovery can help. Take care,
Laura