[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”STORY OF A GAMBLER (CHAPTER 7: ROUTINE)” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]Have you ever hit rock bottom? Or known anyone who has? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I think for someone that battles any addiction it’s a safe bet that they’ve hit rock bottom at least once in their life. I can remember clearly the first time it happened to me; it was about six months after I received the loan from my parents. During that time, my addiction was full on, everything I thought of revolved around gambling in some form or another.
I was waking up at 5 AM in the morning to help out around the house. I left the house for 7:00 AM thinking that it would give me about two hours to gamble before I had to be at the office. I would usually gamble in the morning and end up not winning anything. Then I would show up at work a bit late, and I would be irritable due to my morning losses, work on some cases until around 11:45 and then head back to the casino for my lunch break.
Sometimes, I went back to the office after lunch late it all depended on how my luck went at the casino. Nearly every day I’d try to leave the office early so I could go back and gamble and try to win back some money before I had to go home for dinner. Most nights I would show up at home around eight after dinner was already cooked. I think at that time, Annie thought that I was having an affair, and in a way she was right. I was having the most toxic and expensive affair there was. It was an affair with gambling, and it was my mistress, and I couldn’t get rid of her, no matter how hard I tried.
One evening when I was on my way home from the casino, I received a phone call from Annie who was quite frantic and wanted to know where I was because George my boss called home and wanted to know if I was feeling better. You see, I had told him I thought I needed to leave early because I wasn’t feeling well, so he sent me home for the day. I wasn’t sick at all, well not in a physical sense, I “needed” to gamble and I had already received warnings from George about coming to work late and leaving early.
Annie was frantic and wanted to know what was wrong. I lied and told her that I was at the doctor’s office waiting to see my physician. Unfortunately for me she had already phoned the doctor and I was caught in a lie for the first time. When I got home that evening, the place was a mess she was going through all of my personal belongings looking for evidence of my unfaithfulness.
According to her, everything was starting to make sense. My leaving early in the mornings, coming home at all hours, my moodiness. Everything fell apart that night for me. She told me to leave the house and to never come back because she was convinced that I was cheating on her with another woman. I didn’t tell her the truth yet again, because I couldn’t. Something deep inside of me wouldn’t allow me to, so I let her believe I was unfaithful to her and I packed a few things and rented a hotel room.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
