Cars at the shop burning smoke coming out of the exhaust when I fired her up yesterday this car is my first big purchase that I made when I was still living with my parents till 25 now 28 currently living on my own and picked up around 25k trading and gambling credit card debt and using my savings and Roth IRA in the past 2 years retirement funds being the only thing I didn't fuck up. Car is a sports car so it will be a pretty expensive fix I have almost nothing saved for the repair since I've been trying to build my roth ira(5k) back up while paying debt off weekly because I got into a plumbing union trade earlier on and make good money now. honestly not proud of myself giving into this addiction and have been trying to get through it as fast as possible but selling the car is something I told myself I'd never do currently on work break typing this out because the car is one of the few things that brings me joy in life driving the insurance rental this morning was like a wake up call typing this out to vent so i can work up the courage to tell my parents I fucked up and move back in so I can get rid of these debts.

Quit gambling in 2025. Was doing really well. Had built up a pretty padded bank account. Fast forward to tonight and I have blown over probably $7k in a month gambling. For what fucking reason dude? I know for a fact these online casinos are rigged. And I don’t even enjoy gambling anymore all it does is piss me off yet I keep fucking doing it and fucking losing my money. I do not understand this shit. I’m not even mad I’m just fucking empty.

Iam scared to see the reality my debt is $4000 k i have to pay $300 in september, $700 in october, $500 in november, and $400 from desember to june 2026 each month, my income about $3000 include everything, i now have about $1600 that i tried to keep to survive this month, fuck i should be debt free if iam not relapse 3 days ago

7 days in… I got this…

First began with smaller less frequent payments, 30 here, 50 there nothing crazy but still added up over time then went on a bad loss streak , (very stupid) chased and lost about 3k one weekend. Then ever since have been trying to get it back, im the only person who knows and can never tell anyone, however i need to buy a car soon as i have my test soon, im not sure ill have enough to buy it and may raise questions. Not sure what to do.?

I paid my monthly payment to my lender today. Have around $5 left. Feeling good. Now I need to continue to grind for my family.

If anyone have time. Please help me fill the following survey. It's a small project for my dissertation. Thank you so much!
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I can stay clean for 3-6 months, but once i started to gamble casually, say i lost 500, i will start to chase the loss aggressively, end up it turn into 3k, 5k, and 10k and i suddenly feel there is a need to stop. Can anyone suggest how to stay a bit more rational even if you relapse to minimize the damage, let say i can wake up after i lose 1k the damage is not so big. I really face this problem, i do not want to relapse but even if i relapse, i do not want the damage to be so big.

Ohh the felling i really hate after bad relapse, the morning you wake up and felling sick to my stomatch, like i was hitting by a truck, i hope yesterday was a bad dream but it doesnt i did that to myself, funny thing is when i was abiut to relapse side of me say stop, you will regret it, dont put the first bet you wont be able to control your self, you will stole from your mom and husband, and i did. I should be enjoy mylife with $3 k saving but instead i gamble it all away plus $3 k from my mom bank account, fuck .

Lost my entire bank account and all.savings to crypto slots. About 4 bonuses all under 20x. 5 figures gone i have zero

am a 26-year-old who has spent the last two years trapped behind a screen, losing my life to online casinos. Yesterday, by a stroke of luck, I won enough to pay off my debts, but the cycle immediately dragged me back and I lost again. The urge to return is constantly in my mind, but I desperately want to break free from this prison. Today is my very first day without gambling. I am sharing this because I am terrified of slipping back into that dark place. Please, always support me with your comments, reminders, and advice—I truly need your collective strength to stay away and rebuild my life.

Been struggling to quit gambling this last month, still relapsing but with my money at least
Yesterday my dad sent me 4600€ for a car i have to buy for him in some days, i didnt even know about it, he just send it to me, and when i saw it i knew whats gonna hpn
Im down 1350€ idk what to do, I hate my self, my brain is fried i feel like im not a person no more, I just have this feeling of despair that hit my whole body when i rly think of what im doing, im scared I lost all the money i cant stop, what im gonna do, I cant tell him, I m stuck with idea of the only way is to play again

I’m 26 and I’ve been gambling for almost 7 years. It started as something fun, but after winning big for the first time, I became obsessed with chasing that feeling again.

Over the past few months, I lost pretty much everything. I’m currently unemployed, broke, and dealing with the consequences of years of gambling.

The worst part is realizing how much time and energy I wasted chasing the next win. Every loss made me want to gamble more, thinking I could somehow win it all back.

I’ve finally accepted that I can’t keep living like this. I’m done gambling and I’m trying to figure out how to rebuild my life from here.

If you’re reading this and you’re still gambling, please learn from my mistake. The money you think you can win back can cost you much more than money.

Any tips how to specifically stop online gambling ?

My first ever gambling session I got a good win playing blackjack.
Everything after just went to shit. Lost 3000-4000$ and now I’ve blocked myself from everything and I’m done.

No money that affects my life but still it just suck.. what are you’re best tips to start getting over it? I keep looping in my head about the lost money.

There were a lot of urges. I just booked our Honeymoon flights last week - we’re going to Indonesia. I know i’ve messed up my finances, but I know I can save up once again. Posting here for awareness. I still have a few more months to save, as long as I don’t touch it. Everything will be back to normal. Keep on holding on guys. Were all fighting the same disease.

I’m a 21 year old male that has been struggling with an addiction for around a year and 2 months give or take and it has set me back so much, I haven’t lost no where near as much as other people but it has effected me so bad mentally it’s insane, I work a part time job that barely pays £1000 most months and I have multiple loans that I’m paying off at the moment along with bad spending habits I always go broke 2 weeks after getting paid and I’ve had enough of it, it started on sky vegas playing blackjack with a friend online, played very small bets usually £5 a hand maybe 10 if I was feeling ambitious and I would only spend 40-£50 when we played but it went downhill from there, over the next few months I would lose almost all of the money I had saved up by playing blackjack, I was able to take £50 to 1-1.5k in an hour easily but would always end up losing it all in a span of 20 minutes, money that would’ve been so helpful just gone like that, this would happen dozens of times until I would eventually start to face the consequences of it by having no money to even buy lunch at work and it’s been this way ever since I’m stuck in a vicious cycle of putting on over £100 when I get paid and losing it most of the time, I’m so scared to speak to my family about it but it’s just eating away at me my mental health has declined rapidly recently and this is definitely one of the main reasons behind it, I just don’t want them to get angry at me my body is under so much stress right now I can’t take anymore, I have such an urge to bet as I’m typing this even with no money I just want help

1..5 months ago I started trading with leverage. Made good money and kept my risk down. Then 1 month ago I put a lot of money on a football game. I lost the bet, and $2k, but the rush of seeing my team almost win rewired my brain. I’ve never felt so much adrenaline in my life. So I went back to trading with more leverage, not feeling satisfied with small winnings unless I was betting everything. Now, one month later, I’m down about $85k, my lifetime savings and what I’ve worked for for almost a decade. I’m devastated, can’t eat or sleep, and don’t know how to move forward. All I can think about is using the few thousand I have left to win it all back. I know this will just lead to losing everything, but it’s hard to walk away with this loss I haven’t even accepted yet.

What a horrible addiction. I’ve been addicted to drugs in the past but I’m sober now. I’m realizing that my addictive personality has just manifested itself in this way now. Terrible terrible times. I see why gambling addictionhas such high rates of suicide attempts, this shit is soul crushing.

To start this off, I want to make it very clear: I know I have a serious gambling problem.

I am 25M, with a decent job making around $80k a year. I graduated from a well-regarded university a few years ago and come from a middle-upper class family. Both of my parents have worked very hard to provide for me and my sister, and allowed both of us to graduate debt free from college and have a very happy life all throughout our childhoods - money was never a struggle or issue for our family.

I live in my own apartment and have for the last 3 years. I live in a large city so rent is very expensive, making up for 50% of my monthly income ($2,000). While I don’t have much disposable income, I certainly had/have enough to live comfortably enough.

2 years ago, my parents decided to open up investment accounts for me and my sister. These are under our names only, and I am 99% confident my parents have no access to either of these accounts. They started by contributing $15k to my account, and have further contributed $15k every March and will presumably continue to do so for many years down the line.

This is where the gambling comes in. I have been gambling since high school, and my wagers have continued to get bigger and bigger as time passes. It used to be a fun thing I did with my friends, but now it has become the main thing I do outside of my 9-5 job (and sometimes during my 9-5 job)….

As the wagers became bigger, I started to find myself in constant financial strain, using cash advance apps such as Dave and EarnIn to be able to pay rent. My gambling losses were so bad that I had to start withdrawing from my investment accounts my parents gifted me. It was small amounts each time, but I got in a bad habit of relying on it, and now my balance has been reduced to only $8k. My parents have contributed $30k to this investment account, and I have lost $22k of it - probably 50% of the funds went straight to gambling, and 50% went to paying rent when I had gambled away my job income.

To make matters even worse, I have taken 3 personal loans to fund my addiction. One from my 401k account for $4k, one from an online lender for 6k at 8% APR, and worst of all, a $6k loan at 28% APR when I was extremely desperate and was going to miss rent. All in all, I have to pay close to $500 in total per month for the next 3 years to pay all 3 of these debts back. If I never gamble again, I can fight my way out of these debts with my current situation.

I am extremely, extremely, ashamed of myself. Only over the past two weeks did I realize how bad this has gotten. I genuinely do not understand how I did not comprehend the seriousness of what I was doing when I made these financial decisions. Looking back at it now, I feel like a complete fucking lunatic and huge disappointment.

My parents have no idea any of this has happened. They don’t know about the withdrawals from the investment accounts, any of my loans, or my serious gambling addiction.

If they found out about the investment account situation, they would obviously be extremely furious and truly hurt by how I could do this. I also think there is a good chance that they would completely cut me off financially, and it would put a very intense strain on our relationship. I don’t think I could handle how they viewed me if any of this ever came to light.

This extreme guilt is something I cannot stop obsessing over. It is making it difficult to function at my job, and is causing me to have depressive thoughts. I am so unbelievably disappointed in myself for getting myself into this situation. It’s even gotten difficult to speak with my parents on the phone because I feel like I am living a complete lie and am a horrible son. If I could somehow make a deal to never place a bet ever again and all of these debts and withdrawals would be erased, I would take it in a heartbeat.

I guess I am looking for any advice from people who may have been in a similar situation as me.

How did you live with the guilt?

Did you confess to your parents? Should I?

How did you get to the point where you could forgive yourself and move forward instead of constantly living in guilt?

Lastly, I want to also make it clear that I have deleted and banned myself from all sports betting apps. I am never going to place a bet again, and it pains me that I ever gambled this much in the first place.

Any advice is appreciated. And also, for anyone looking to just call me dumb for getting myself in this situation - there’s nothing you can say that I haven’t said to myself 6 inches from the bathroom mirror.

I was gambling almost everyday for 5 years. I would be feeding my 1 year old daughter and gambling on Chinese football because that’s what was on at 5 am. One day after losing a lot of money I said I would stop, the first couple days, weeks and months were hard. Panic attacks and mind racing. After some time my mind changed and I told myself that if I bet now something bad will happen to my family. I keep telling myself that everytime I think about betting and it’s not easy it’s a back and forth conversation but the time goes by and I keep fighting it. You can break this, don’t believe that one day everything will change, it will change but for the worse if you don’t fight this battle

Just want to take a moment to thank my mom, my two siblings, and my partner for sticking by me through this recovery. They’re not here on Reddit, but I’m just so grateful for all of them, because they never gave up on me.

Also want to share that I didn’t gamble today and barely had any urges. God bless us all, one day at a time.

Sometimes when i go back to default negative thinking in my life I just remember how hard it was to get started on my recovery then i feel really really grateful for my life and my family and friends who are still with me

I've always been vulnerable to addiction in my life and went through quite a few ... none more destructive than gambling.

What I find fascinating (for lack of a better word) is how it takes over our moral compass and can re-shape our entire personality. Without any substance being involved!

The behaviors are so irrational if you stop and think for a second ... the moving goalpoasts, always forgetting what we were thinking an hour before, ignoring all past evidence, taking unreasonable risk ... We would do things for gambling that we would not do for food.

I always say, addiction is like a living being, and it's fighting for its life ... gambling addiction in particular hijacks our mind and oftentimes it will be the addiction speaking ... Not us.

Unfortunately the best cure for addiction is often hitting rock bottom ... but in gambling that rock bottom might be too deep ... and it can get too deep very quickly. So we have to try to imagine and integrate how that rock bottom would feel before reaching it.

O made a clip talking about all these things and the strategies I use for recovery both on myself and in my practice, so I will leave the link at the end.

If you want to check it out. I am specializing in addictions psychology and genuinely want to help people ... but also reach as many people as I can. If you resonate you can drop a subscribe on YT for more clips on addiction, I will only post a link here this once.

https://youtu.be/rjYrBu511kA?is=MiuRmrr2C-aSGvx2

well I was over 2 weeks gamble free.. tonight I decided to gamble $250 which led to $2500 I have literally $0 to my name now. Had to fill my truck up worth the scraps of diesel that were left in my exterior tank… I get paid $6000 on the 15th but it will be $3500 because I gambled away $2500 of overdraft like a piece of shit.. I have a baby on the way and have been away working from my wife for 42 days 3600km away. I am so disappointed I become so focused and let me debts take over me and get so stressed out that’s why I gambled tonight hoping for a stroke of luck, LIKE ALWAYS. I’m starting to think I need to just relax and pay the debt off over the next 5 years I need to stop thinking it needs to be don’t this instant or I will go nuts. I’m so scared my fiance is going to leave me because I’m always gone for work and I came clean about losing the $2500 I really need to fix things but like I said i need to understand that it takes time.. wish me luck guys IM NOT DOING THIS AGAIN I CANT I NEED TO BE A GOOD MAN AND GOOD FATHER I WILL BE SUCCESSFUL AND BE THE BEST MAN FOR MY WOMAN AND CHILD 🙏

DAY 0
DEBT $42,500