My Gambling Addiction

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it, and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you, during this episode, please send me an email at info at the end Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

Straight out of uni, I fell into a job in television. And for me, I was earning more money than I ever had. And more money that I knew what to do with at that point, I'd gone from being a poor Uni student to being a freelancer earning pretty good money for for what I was doing, have you very good money for what I was doing, and had all this expendable income. So I found a way to spend that money. And just after the interview with Tom Cartwright, which was the previous episode to this one, he was talking about his gambling, and how when an impact established into his whole paycheck chain, check in a in an afternoon or a day. And the pattern around that. And I say that even through the interview for those of you listen to it, like it just reminded me of like my own addiction in that at that time. So I went from being a drinker that used to get into all sorts of craziness, which I might share in some other episodes, I will share on some other episodes to suddenly like, oh, cool, this is, you know, is interesting. Like when I was only earning uni money, I was watching other people and there was some sort of Lua to it. But now I had all this money. And I will I'll just put a little bit in. And then of course, what happens when you do any sort of that, that gambling with poker machines or card machines is gonna have a win. And sometimes a win can be a little bit large. And then when you have those sort of wins, you get a real rush from it. And then you get a bit of a lot of that rush, and you want more of it. And there was actually a time where I had a few, like sort of significant when I'm talking about four figure wins, where suddenly it's like, oh, man, I want more, I want more of this sort of rush. And also because then you can share to your friends and all these sorts of things. And then it just becomes this pattern. And then of course, you know, when every time was, when I was bored at night out, I would go and do that to try and recreate that that rush was chasing the rush. And what ends up happening is you can lose a lot of money quickly chasing that rush. For those in Australia, well, doesn't have to be Australia, but most of his guests are Australia, but the how he games, podcast, interviews, sports people, not necessarily about their career, but sort of before, before, during and after their career more of their life. And one particular guy there Brendan for Viola talks about how his gambling, addiction and how he would he would have massive ups and massive downs and just couldn't stop himself. So it's it's a thing and just the more money that you have to play with like he had and the more you use. And so while it was in the same position, obviously not the same figures, but I wasn't on those sort of salaries that a professional sports person plays, but same thing I was I was bringing myself back down to my default level of wealth, I guess. And I would get my bank statements in two envelopes, because there were so many pages. So it'd be like, I'll get $50 out. I'll get one more 50 Lower, I won't get any more after that. And then one more 50 And then we'll move on and they might leave it there might be a 20 claim I can't go 50 That's crazy. I'll get 20 And then I'll go back to 50s. And then the last entry of the night would be like $10 at the at the service station at the garage, which would just be feeding my face of crap food and so that was a bit of a pattern. And I'm falling asleep places to. But again, that's another pattern. But what I know from from the drinking from the gambling in particular was just chasing the feeling. I had suppressed so many of my feelings since I'd been a sort of early teen, that that I was just chasing anything that would allow me to feel. And the the rush of winning was just something like nothing Oh, well, it was probably like somebody else. It was like, it was like, what it's like in sport when you have those moments, but then you could actually recreate it at other times of the day. And it's like, wow, man, I wasted a lot of money. until I reached the point when I was able to find that fulfillment in other areas. Probably thinking about it now would have been around the time of having my first child would have massively contributed to that. Also, at a time where I had some sort of purpose around my money, which was actually having my own home. So my wife and I managed to scrounge together enough to buy a unit buy an apartment. And yeah, and things change but but what I have now, I didn't know at the time, but I now know it was chasing that rush, and then go on different journeys of okay, trying to recreate that rush other ways, like, perhaps playing sport, too many, too many different things going on, I was playing a heap of different sport at once trying to chase that rush, instead of just trying to come back to the center and finding more of that joy and fulfillment in other areas of my life. It was the chase of the rush is actually searching fulfillment, searching for the feeling. And it's finding the more that you can allow yourself to experience the full spectrum of emotions, stop suppressing, change that pattern, start finding more fulfillment in your day to day, there's less of that need to chase it elsewhere. And that's a great place to be. So the message from this particular episode is, if you have got those tendencies to do, behave in a certain way that you then regret later. Just ask yourself, what is it you're actually chasing? What is the behavior, trying to fulfill in you? What neither you're trying to meet through that behavior? Because with that awareness, you'll be able to change you'll be able to have a look at well, okay, that's what I'm actually chasing, well, then how do I replace that with something that, and I'll tell you, this is absolutely possible. Not only that will feel as good as that it will actually feel better. And that is possible. And I didn't believe that back then. But the more you can find what it is that brings you your natural zone of genius, when you find more purpose in your life. And you can have experiences you can enjoy experiences that are like nothing else you've experienced in any other part of life. And that's when life gets really exciting, really meaningful. And, yeah, you really start to develop that ability to back yourself at a whole other level magic place. Enjoy your day, speak to you soon.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief. Let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform