Day 203 - Components of my Gambling Withdrawal
Gambling withdrawal is an odd one, like other behavioral addictions, there is no central physical effects other then dopamine itself. When I quit gambling, I did not find myself sitting in the corner, scratching at the walls like one would see in movies about Heroin withdrawal, nor did I find myself having life threatening health issues like one may have when quitting alcohol. Withdrawal from Gambling though, was still a huge thing and a difficult thing to deal with. It is not something that should juts be dismissed. Indeed, there exist in patient programs for gambling addiction. If Gambling withdrawal was a simple walk in the park, these programs would not need to exist. Behavioral addictions can cause massive withdrawal issues, both on the mind and the body. In this article I will talk about some of the withdrawal effects that I have been dealing with, and still deal with today.
The Body - Gastrointestinal Health
The first thing to realize for most behavioral addictions is that it usually has us leading VERY unhealthy lives. We stop taking care of our bodies, and led our bodies suffer in neglect. We eat poorly. I imagine most gambling addicts have some of the worst diets ever, since we don’t care about eating, we are just trying to kill hunger when it comes up because hunger gets in the way of gambling. So the gambler eats fast food, shitty frozen meals, soda, etc. We eat sugary shit because it amps up our dopamine and has us anticipating and desiring more gambling. When I stopped gambling at first, I did not realize how poorly I had been treating my body. Then came the sickness. I found myself everyday on the toilet with diarrhea, stomach cramps, bloating. I felt like absolute shit. It is tough to quit an addiction when you are feeling like absolute shit, because your brain is going to tell you that you feel this way because you are not gambling.
How to get past this? Well for me I actually told myself that “I feel like shit because THIS IS PART OF RECOVERY”. I know that the real reason I felt like shit was because I had been treating my body terribly for so long. Yet, I adopted the idea that it was all because of withdrawal from gambling. By telling myself this, it made my withdrawal symptoms part of recovery. I kept telling myself “Yeah I feel shit today, but tomorrow will be better”. I kept telling myself that every time I overcame these shitty feelings, every session of sitting on the toilet for 30 minutes was helping me quit gambling. When you reframe the issues like this, the withdrawal symptoms actually start HELPING me to recover. I felt like shit after quitting gambling… SO GAMBLING WAS MAKING ME FEEL LIKE SHIT.
Further, everything I did to help the symptoms (eating better, exercising) I could also frame as being part of my recovery. As these health issues got better (and they did, way faster then I would have expected) I kept telling myself “YOU ARE FEELING BETTER BECAUSE YOU ARE NO LONGER GAMBLING”. Sure, maybe in the scientific sense gambling didn’t effect my gastrointestinal health all that much, but telling myself it did helped me deal with issues when they were bad and continue to help inspire me to do things for the benefit of my health.
The Body and Mind - Sleep and Fatigue
As a gambling addict, I had insomnia. I can look at myself in the mirror today and see some pretty dark areas under my eyes. Purple and dark blue, seeing the veins, there is no way around it: I had terrible sleep as a gambling addict. Funny thing is, when I initially quit, while my actual sleep did get better, I felt a massive overall fatigue. I was tired all the time when first quitting. This makes sense, without the dopamine pumping me up and making me energetic I was just a person with terrible sleeping habits… no shit I felt tired all day long…without my “Instant Energy Gambling” pill… I was a zombie.
This is so hard to deal with, because I knew at every moment I could get back to my baseline energy by playing some slots, or making a bet. I had to resist this. That meant napping during the day for hours some days. That meant lying in my bed being bored out of my mind for hours. That meant replacing gambling with audiobooks, podcasts, movies, etc. I was determined to deal with my fatigue without turning back to gambling. Quitting any addiction is tough because you will feel worse for the first 30 days to 90 days then you ever did in the addiction. You have to push through. For me, what helped me push through the most was taking on the belief that everything I was feeling was because I was quitting.
I remember trying to quit before, and so often my mind would be filled with “Yeah, but I feel so terrible right now”, “Why am I quitting? I feel like shit”. Those thoughts always brought me back to gambling. Now, I think “Yeah I feel so terrible right now… AND IT IS GAMBLINGS FAULT!”. No pain no gain… it is a mindset the recovering addict MUST adopt!
Today, my sleep is getting better every day. I sleep at a better and more regular schedule. I try to have good sleep hygiene, I take sleep very seriously now. I am no longer an insomniac, and while the dark patches under my eyes still remain… they are fading away everyday.
The Mind - Anxiety, the Drive to gamble, and Dreams
Any recovering addict is going to have to deal with a massive influx of anxiety, especially in those first early months. For me, quitting for a few weeks was easy, I had done so many times before. Quitting for a few months… was a mountain, a mountain of dealing with near constant anxiety. Was I doing the right thing? Was I doing it in the right way? What about the shame when people find out? Will I still be miserable even if quit? I dealt with these thoughts all day, everyday for months. Being able to dismiss these thoughts, to reframe them, and ultimately defeat them was the hardest part of quitting. Yet it was also the most rewarding… if I can overcome these anxieties.. my entire life will change. Even some core parts of my personality will change. If I can beat this anxiety… I can do anything in this world.
One of the more acute aspects of this anxiety was just the simple drive to gamble. See a gambling ad, or watching a sport, or reading stock news, or whatever… there was this lingering and persistent thought “Hey, why not?”. Why not a little bet? Why not deposit a few hundred? I would actually imagine myself doing these things. I would actually imagine myself spinning a slot, when in reality I was just sitting on the couch watching TV. I was no longer gambling… but my mind, my imagination was still engaged with it. I don’t think there is any secret to getting over this, it is simply time. Over time the drive to gamble goes away. Even at time when it still remains, I don’t actually imagine the action anymore. I may have a thought, but my mind leaves it at that, at just a thought, as something that can be ignored and dismissed.
200 Days clean, and I still get gambling dreams. Hell, as I have improved my sleep, I actually dream more and remember my dreams more. Sadly, some of those dreams are still about gambling. Early on, these dreams would be about me winning, about me enjoying a casino or whatever. However, what I have noticed is the dreams have changed. Now, the dream isn’t about winning or gambling… it is about losing my recovery. I had a dream about gambling, but the entire thing was more like a nightmare about what would happen if I gave up recovery. I dreamed about failing recovery, about relapsing. Crazy thing is, when I woke up I actually had to tell myself “I didn’t actually gamble”. I had to literally check my bank account to make sure I didn’t. That is fucking wild when you think about it. That I was addicted for so long, had relapsed so many times that I couldn’t even trust myself when faced with a dream!
But, with all things I have talked about here, NO PAIN, NO GAIN! I take a dream like that as a sign that I am healing, as a sign that even if my mind and subconscious have not given up gambling entirely, my actual mind, my actual self has. So yeah, I probably will still dream about gambling, and yeah I may have to check some mornings that I didn’t actually relapse… but if my dream about gambling isn’t about enjoying it, but rather a nightmare about being terrified of relapse… I welcome those dreams. I welcome them because they let me know that my relationship with gambling is changing… and hopefully some day will be completely non existent.