This is episode 48 of the After Gambling Podcast. In this episode, I talk a little bit about relapse and how it plays into the recovery process.
Hey there and welcome to the After Gambling Podcast. My name is Jamie. I’m a compulsive gambler, and I’m also the host of this show. The last time I gambled was July 15th of 2010.
Now, for whatever reason, I’ve seen a lot of people in the last couple of weeks on Reddit and on Twitter, but I’ve seen a lot that deals with relapse. And so, I wanted to create this podcast. Just a lot of times, like I say, it comes off of what I’m seeing, and I want to share my thoughts. And with relapse, I think this is a very important thing to discuss because, as I mentioned before, recovery isn’t a straight line. It’s not this thing where we just start and have this perfect road all the way.
And I say that because I think it’s very important to say this, not even mentioning, like, the days. And I know a lot of people count the days, the weeks, the months, etc., and I think that’s a great way to track and just to kind of keep track of our progress. I think that’s a very positive thing. But I also think it’s important to realize that even if the days keep going, recovery isn’t always that straight line. You’re going to have days where you feel real close to the bottom and real close to gambling again. And unfortunately, sometimes that feeling takes over.
We don’t have the barriers put into place. And so, unfortunately, relapse does sometimes become a part of recovery. It’s just a reality of it. And so, the one thing I wanted to stress today is just the fact that what does relapse sort of mean? And I kind of have my own little thoughts on this, but then also just kind of give you some thoughts so that you understand going forward, whether you just relapse and you keep fighting that same cycle over and over, or if you’re a month, a year, 10 years, 30 years—whatever the case may be—into your recovery. I think we can all take a little bit away from this.
So first, let’s start off with what I view relapse to mean. And it’s really quite simple. I don’t think relapse is something where you just can’t beat it. I don’t think it’s something where you are physically or emotionally or whatever the case may be, unable to stop gambling. In fact, I don’t think that’s the case at all. What I think is that it’s just showing a gap—a gap in either knowledge or actions.
And what I mean by that is just that you either haven’t explored something, some little part that is going to help you to get past the relapses. And so, that’s why I say it’s a knowledge thing. And that’s why I go to GA. That’s why I read people’s stories on Twitter, and I listen to YouTube channels and all sorts of these things because I pull something from each person’s story, and I’m able to relate that to my own life. And so, there’s so much value to be had in studying the addiction and studying other people, and especially people that have been successful with it.
And hopefully, I can share a little bit here on the podcast, but again, I’m just one data point. There’s so much more information out there, and I encourage you, don’t just rely on this podcast. Go find other pieces and parts of information, people explaining things differently because you never know what’s going to click. That’s why I say it’s just kind of a knowledge gap. So, I think a lot of times, relapse is that gap in knowledge. Either you weren’t aware of something.
For example, I try to share often that I had a relapse after nine months. The first time, I tried to quit cold turkey, and I share with other people, and other people have come on the pod, and they’ve shared their story of how they’ve relapsed and what caused it. And it was just kind of that feeling of forgetting or whatever the case may be, it’s something different in each situation. But again, it’s that knowledge gap. And I try to share that because I think knowing that… I mean, I’m lucky. I’ve met some people that have incredible clean time and some that have had incredible clean time…and then relapsed, and then now have incredible clean time again. And they are my knowledge gap. They fill that knowledge gap for me because I can fill it in and connect the story and a face with forgetting and with going back to gambling. And that’s been the thing that’s filled that knowledge gap for me. And that’s been one of the reasons I think I’ve been successful, is going to GA and kind of continuing to study people and to collect their stories enables me not to have these gaps in knowledge.
I’m able to fill in the gaps. So if somebody says, or, “Oh, you can just gamble a little bit,” or my mind says, “Hey, you can just gamble for $20,” I can say, “No, I know a person. I’ve actually met several people, and I don’t want that to become me.” And so that’s why I say, fill in that knowledge gap.
And then the second part of the knowledge gap is then maybe we know what we need to do, but we’re just not doing it. And this is one of those things that comes from one of my favorite books, The Slight Edge. And in the book, the author repeats over and over, the things that we need to do to change our lives aren’t difficult. They’re very easy to do. Unfortunately, they’re also just as easy to not do.
And I think that’s why I say, when we have the knowledge, then we actually need to take the actions to put up what we would call barriers. And these are things like giving your money over to somebody. And that’s been the cool thing, I’ve seen several people talk about, they’ve had a relapse, but this time they’re going to put that barrier up. They’re going to give their money to somebody else because if you don’t have access to your money, it makes it extremely difficult to gamble.
It just—it’s a reality, right? We can laugh about it, and we can kind of be like, “Well, yeah, that’s obvious.” But if you haven’t put that barrier in place, you’re kind of still leaving yourself exposed, and that’s an area that could come back to haunt you. So that’s one of those things where, like I say, it’s the actions. Maybe it’s going to GA, maybe it’s telling a friend, maybe it’s just going on anonymously and telling your story on Reddit. And Reddit’s a great place. I mean, it’s ideal for that. Anonymously, you can create a fake profile, an anonymous profile, and you can start to share.
That can be that first step towards sharing more. And that’s why, I mean, I encourage everybody, I mean, to continue to make those steps, just because I know I’ve seen personally, as my sharing has increased, my level of comfort with my addiction and my past and my financial troubles, all that stuff, is pretty much evaporated. And so, I know personally what it’s done for me, and I’ve seen other people the same way, that the more comfortable, the more frequent we tell our story, the easier it becomes.
But you bite that elephant one bite at a time. You gotta start off with doing it in a way that you feel comfortable. Maybe that’s anonymously. Maybe it’s just opening up your Word document right now on your computer, which no one will ever see, and writing out your story. That could be a great first step into starting to share your story, to document your thoughts. Maybe it’s even just kind of drawing, or whatever it is, sketch out how you felt, those emotions, and the thoughts that are behind it.
All those things are kind of those first steps towards bigger sharing. But what I’m getting at is just actions. It’s got to be actions. There have to be actions connected with your knowledge. You can’t just mentally know everything but not take the actions needed. So whether it’s GA, telling friends, limiting your finances, becoming accountable for your time—I mean, all those types of things, all the things we’ve discussed over the last 40, whatever, seven episodes—that’s what I think is kind of the key to not relapsing.
But again, it’s just—I look at relapse, it’s not that you’re a flawed person. It’s not that you have any of these incurable, uncurable problems. It’s just a gap of some kind in either knowledge or execution. So that’s really what it comes down to. Learn what you need to do, and then do it. Because the people that I see that have the most amount of clean time—and a lot of people are like, “Oh, you have eight years. That seems like a lot.” I’ve met so many people that have 20 to 30 and more than 30 years.
In fact, one of my upcoming guests is going to be celebrating 25 years. And so, it just kind of puts my progress in perspective and just reminds me, “Hey, it’s just a lifetime journey.” So continue to grow, continue to educate yourself, and continue to take action. And then the relapses are going to kind of take care of themselves. They’re going to disappear as well.
And then the final thing I just want to say about relapse is I always try to stress to people: I see people say, “Oh, I’m back to day one, back to day one.” And I told somebody on Reddit, “No, you’re not. You’re on day one asterisk, or day one with an asterisk.”
What that asterisk means is day one after a relapse is nothing like the very first day one. And even the day one before that. If you’re on 30 day ones, each one, your day one is completely different because now you have a lot more knowledge. If you’re listening to this podcast, you probably have a whole lot more knowledge and understanding of yourself and the addiction, and what you can do to stop it, the barriers you need to put in place, those actions.
So it’s not the same. And I think it can be devastating to feel like you go back to the same day one. And I always try and put myself in someone’s shoes and say, “Yeah, I mean, if something happened where, okay, I decided I’m going to go play poker for a couple hours because I think it’s a good idea”—which it’s not—yeah, it would be devastating to go back to day one.
But I think mentally now I’m to the point where I realize it would be frustrating, don’t get me wrong. I’d hate to lose my kind of accumulated free clean time—free time is a different way to say it, but I do feel free—but I go back to a day one that’s completely different than the day one that happened a little over eight, almost eight and a half years ago.
So just something to keep in mind that each day one is not the same. I think there’s even probably some better ways that we can kind of talk about and think about what day one actually is. Because I just think each time you start, you start off—kind of like my graph—you start off lower when you’re gambling. Each loss, you’re going down that chain, down that graph. I think recovery, each time you start, you start at a higher point—a place with more knowledge, more knowledge about yourself, more knowledge about the addiction, a better idea of other people, and how you’re not alone.
And that you know how to do this. You know how to get back to day 100 or day 3000, whatever the day is, because you’ve done it before. So hopefully that just kind of encourages you to not fear relapse. Because I think a lot of people fear relapse, and I think there’s a healthiness to fearing relapse. I know I do. Like I said, I don’t want to lose my time.
But if you do, then just get back into it as soon as possible to make that time in relapse as short as possible. And to know that when you go back and reach out for help, that people are going to be there. They’re going to be supportive. They’re not going to judge you because we all can put ourselves in the shoes of what it would be like, and we’ve all probably done it on some level before. So we understand.
So it’s important to get back to your meetings, get back to posting on Reddit, get back to sharing through DMs, whatever the case may be, because it doesn’t need to be this long drawn-out process. And the sooner that you get back to doing what was successful before, but then adding to it with additional knowledge and additional actions, then the sooner you’re going to get back to the day that you had. And then you’re going to pass that, and you’re going to be setting new heights.
Finally, the last thing today is just—I think it’s important always to stress the “one day at a time” idea. And I hated it. I didn’t hate it, but I thought it was so dumb early on. Not dumb so much as cliché. “One day at a time.” I’d hear people, all these guys that had 30, 35 years say, “I still do it one day at a time.” I didn’t understand it back then. But now I do. Now I do.
And what they’re saying, what I’m trying to say, is that just like the day one is different, when we all wake up, we have the same set of challenges. Just me being on day 3000-whatever, I have the advantage of time and a whole lot of built-up life experiences and learning experiences to make putting those barriers in place and making the actions so much easier to take each day. But at the end of the day, it’s exactly the same. Today I need to wake up, do the things I need to do, and just go to bed without gambling.
If I do that, I’m going to be successful. And that’s the thing, it’s the same every day. So don’t be overwhelmed if you’re on day one again. You basically are fighting the same fight I’m fighting, and the same fight everybody’s fighting.
And that’s why it just kind of wraps up this episode in that it’s just a matter of getting more knowledge, better understanding the actions needed, so that you can make it through that day. Because that’s all you need to do. You don’t need to try and get 3000 days in one day, because that doesn’t happen. They just happen one day at a time. And so it’s cliché, it’s weird at first, but I promise you, I’m doing the exact same thing, like I say, just with a different set of knowledge and a different understanding of the addiction than I had on day one. But at the end of the day, it’s the exact same thing I’m trying to achieve.
So that will wrap up today’s episode. Remember, this is for information and educational purposes. Obviously, I want this to help you, but I also want you to go get professional help. I am not a doctor. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not an attorney. I’m not a therapist. I’m not anything with letters after my name or before my name. So please, this is a serious addiction, a serious illness. Go get the medical help and professional help that you need.
And then finally, music for the show is Something Elated by Broke for Free and is licensed under the Creative Commons license. And that is all, and I will see you in the next episode.
