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[ap appleman91 WANTED $42 Outlaw]

Hi Everyone, new to the website been watching bandits videos since January.

I’ve been gambling on football for a few years and started playing slots last year. Currently in a sticky situation with payday loans, stupid I know. I’m sure i’m not the only person here that is going through it or has been through it.

What did you do and what helped you?

[1p 1pstaker WANTED $25 Outlaw]

Im sure many people are in/have been in the same boat.

With regards to the payday loans, there are companies out there (Cleverlaw is one as I am with them) who will go through your debt, work out an affordable payment, and get the interest frozen. If you set this up though, be sure to put other things in place that limit your gambling to affordable amounts as depending on your current liabilty to these loans and the amounts involved, it can take quite a while to pay. I have 5 ‘debts’ currently being paid off at an average of £11 a month each. It can take years to clear them.

To control gambling? Only you can do that, but you can never do it alone. I earn a decent enough wage, although not huge. I give my wife 2k ‘housekeeping’ per month straight away. I also transfer to her money for days/nights out, any breaks or holidays we may be planning etc etc. I am usually left with somewhere between £300 and £1000 to do as I please. Now while I appreciate I give her a lot of money, I also know I have a roof over my head, I eat every day, I can go out, and my kids are never in need of anything. Not the biggest sacrifice in the world. I been doing this for a long long time, and im lucky my wiffe is understanding. I have limits on the 3 accounts I use for gaming/betting, which helps me spread out my monthly budget. Even so, it can go quite quickly and sometimes find myself scratching my arse waiting for payday to come again. But if I do hit something and get a withdrawal, again I make sure I give some to my wife as I know I would only gamble it anyway.

Good luck with whatever you do, hope things work out for you

 

[ap appleman91 WANTED $42 Outlaw]

Thanks for your feedback I appreciate it. I’m certainly going to have a look at that cleverlaw. I’m not in huge amounts of dept, got a credit card, a loan and took out 5 payday loans recently, it’s not sustainable with the amount of interest.

I’ve not gambled for a few week, mainly from not being able to. I can’t see myself stopping altogether, but I’m going to look at setting limits. I’m stubborn with it when games don’t bonus, 1500 spins later on bonanza for example. Setting limits should stop that

[1p 1pstaker WANTED $25 Outlaw]

Stopping altogether is almost impossible. I tried, and the downfall is the ‘splurge’ and big loss when you are tempted back. In my mind, control is the best option. I actually went to Gamblers Anonymous for 4 weeks. Obviously they are preaching that you will never gamble again. Whilst I appreciated what they were trying to do, I found myself fantasising when people were telling their stories about gambling. Instead of feeling sorry for them, I was like “wow, thats a good strategy im gonna try that” lol. I did get up and tell them all on my last night, that it wasnt for me, and the reason why. But it did make me realise about controlling it. So not a total waste of time

[ar argyl53 WANTED $419 Outlaw]

GA had a very weird, almost cult-like feel to it I found. There may be good intentions there but for me, the way it seemed in practice is like all these miserable people want you to still be a hopeless gambling addict – just one who doesn’t gamble. I can’t imagine anything more shit than keeping yourself addicted to gambling, telling yourself repeatedly that you’re hopelessly addicted and don’t have the power to break free of it, while not even getting the small pleasure of actually doing it. It’d be like being hooked on cigarettes that had all the tar and formaldehyde but no nicotine.

If you don’t want to be an addict anymore, you need to retrain how your brain thinks, not constantly pine for something you know you don’t even want and wouldn’t take if it was offered to you. When I quit smoking, I didn’t do it by thinking “oh god I really want a cigarette but I’ll try and make it through the next 5 minutes and the next 5 and the next, in pain and wishing I could be smoking” – instead every time that little itch for a smoke triggered in my brain, I’d think “oh no wait, it’s okay, I don’t do that anymore” and I’d feel better immediately. I realised exactly where I’d been going wrong before was that I was trying to tell myself I was missing something when the truth was I wouldn’t have taken a cigarette off someone when they’d offered it to me because I didn’t want to do it any more.

[Thirstypotato WANTED $28 Outlaw]

My advice is this:

1)Get rid of some of your casinos. If you have multiple casino accounts, shut them down by either self-exluding for the maximum timeframe or closing your account completely. I’d recommend the latter option as you may have problems playing at your ‘chosen’ casino if owned by the same parent company. Once you’ve shut a few of them down, stick to one or two and set stringent deposit limits on them – preferably casinos where you have to wait a week to increase your deposit limits (Videoslots), rather than just a day at some (Sky). This way, you cannot just set deposit limits at multiple casinos but still end up losing what you’d normally lose at just one. My advise is to do weekly deposit limits. I’m somewhat of an advocate for ‘controlled gambling’ when you have a bit of a problem, so rather than stopping completely, train yourself to be sensible in order to get the excitement factor and control back — It’s an important psychological adjustment. Of course, if you feel that the only way to get out of debt is to stop completely, there’s resources on ‘backinamo’ that you can use. Setting stringent limits and self-discipline really worked for me as I learned how to control my playing. I am now able to gamble a little, but fairly often and no longer have that compulsion to carry on, even if I cannot. I found that I actually made more withdrawals and at sensible times, rather than spaffing it all just to get that ‘little bit more’.

I like Argy’s analogy of smoking cessation. I used to be a smoker, but used nicotine replacement therapy for a long time (the sublingual lozenges) to help me quit. Stopping altogether isn’t always the best strategy. You need an aid and to operate will power/control.

2) Debt – as 1pstaker suggested, tackle the payday loans fast. Contact them indivdually if need be and get that interest frozen. Pay them back and never get one again. It’s a vicious circle, and if you continue getting them things will only get worse. If most of your debt is because of gambling, then the deposit limits will really help here. Set a target, and be frugal.

3) Don’t beat yourself up about it. Treat it as becoming wiser and more educated. We all make mistakes and lack judgement at times, and you won’t be the last by a long shot. You’ll have to bury the losses, accept them, deal with the situation you’re in and move on. Persevere and you’ll get there.

To give you some insight into my position – a couple of years ago I was £4000 in debt. I got my gambling in control (I didn’t stop, although I did have a month off). One day my girlfriend found out and I was terrified. She didn’t hit the roof and was actually really supportive. I woke up the next day and decided to reall sort my life out. I created a spreadsheet of all my out-goings and worked out how much I’d have left. I worked out what I could cut out to save money and actually really enjoyed saving money for a few months. A few months later I had a savings account with MY OWN money in it and an overdraft that I subsequently cancelled — debt free.

You can do it mate

Mark

 

[ca casinoang WANTED $7 Outlaw]

Go to stepchange it’s free I have /had v bad habit for years went bankrupt through gambling ,then did it again  / just paid 9k through stepchange thy get all interest frozen I had 7 creditors loans,cards ,just make sure you have only a little left when you do your income and expenditure ,I’m now with Gamstop . Miss it but can now live on my retirement pension, stepchange is charity run and Barclays is sponsor.

good luck

my friend got in the payday loan trap had 12 at one time. She’s also on a debt plan now.

[Ke Kelvin WANTED $31 Outlaw]

My situation isn’t too far from your own love the slots but get tilted and chase very easily had some great wins but lost lots inbetween and the 1 that would solve the problem never arrived. I’m currently paying off 3 payday loans and a loan my partner got to help out I did the counselling through gamcare wasn’t my choice but had some time off work and had to prove I was trying to help myself the counselling just wasn’t for me as I have no intention of never gambling again and that is all they want to hear.

What i have done is used gamstop and took a 12 month break to recover I know I will go back to slotting after but I will use my experience to ensure I have measures like deposit limits in place.

My only concern now is that I’m due to remortgage in October and I know my credit rating is now fucked so looks like my spare tokens will go towards interest

[ap aps31 WANTED $15 Spectator]

Thai will be short but sweet. Lost a lot and not just money, lots of payday loans, if you only take one bit of advice it is get yourself joined up to gamestop. Gambian will only stop you playing from that device so nothing stopping you from logging on from another. GameStop is the way to go , I have tried to by pass it by searching the web for casinos that don’t use it but as of yet I have not been able to log into anycasino.

[ap appleman91 WANTED $42 Outlaw]

Thanks for your story’s and feedback guys, its much appreciated.

I’ve considered looking into stepchange, wasn’t sure if it will impact my future borrowing, i.e a mortgage. Hoping to get on the ladder next year when I’ve sorted myself out, think the payday loans might have killed that one though. If I don’t manage to freeze any of the payday loans I’ve got a couple week to find 2k. If I can survive August I should be on a recovery, getting a good bonus from work end of August and selling my car which is worth about 4k. Short term I’m going to have to get help from family which I didn’t want to do, banks won’t touch me with a barge pole.

I’ve not been able to gamble over that last couple of weeks, which is probably helping me. I’ve only got a couple of accounts with gambling sites, but going to set some limits.

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