[DanielL]

Thank you Sara, you’ve been a big help. I know I’m hard on myself, and losing my accumulated life savings plus damaging my career so badly, hurts a lot. It’s hard to find a way back when we’re comparing ourselves to where we used to be.

If you don’t mind me asking, what do you do now at 61? You mentioned that you have nothing. That sounds really hard. How do you plan to go on?

[DanielL]

Thanks! I’m glad I didn’t trade today, but a big part of me feels like an idiot for not trading, since today was a clean opportunity for easy profit… the type the investor in me loves. That’s part of the problem with this addiction. There are trades that a smart investor with a long-term outlook can make, and today was one of them. However, there’s no telling what would happen next after the successful trade. That’s the worst part: I’m really good at this, and could do it professionally, but when I do really well something else takes over and I lose my mind. If it was straight-up casino or sports gambling, I’d have no trouble walking away. But this is different – the markets can be a source of immense, legitimate wealth as well. Of all the types of gambling I could fall prey to, why did it have to be this? Why not something useless like cards or roulette, which I could cut off and forget with no second thoughts? Fate is a cruel mistress…

I think I need to focus on getting exercise and accomplishing things at work. I plan to paper trade for a couple of years – that’s trading with no money on the line, just for practice. I have no compulsive gambling problems with that at all… without the high stakes, trading becomes a pretty mundane business, and maybe I can condition the bad mindset away, with the help of prayer.

If I can master this demon and restore my life, that will become a major accomplishment. The alternative leads to a dark place, so my path is clear.

All I know is that investing and finance are a huge passion of mine, and there is no way I am giving them up for life. I will find a way to strip the gambling mentality away from it, and go back to being the careful, patient, successful investor I used to be, and not turn the markets into a casino. I hope it’s possible.

[DanielL]

Thanks for checking up. I’m not foing so well. I wanted to trade today and I didn’t. If I had made the trade I wanted to make, I would have made thousands today. People are noticing my lack of focus and gloomy outlook at work. I went on a pornography binge to fuel my need for stimulation, which I don’t often do. I feel like things are just crumbling, and the person I used to be is gone. All I want is action now. I’m addicted to stimulation and excitement now, it seems.

Not sure how I’m going to deal with this. I guess I need to lower my expectations in life dramatically, and get some exercise to burn off all this anxiety.

[DanielL]

Thank you Sara. I will try to join the support group tonight if it lets me get in.

I’ve already reached out to my closest friends and family and confessed the disaster I’ve put myself in, so that there is no more pretending. They understand, and aren’t really surprised. I wasn’t fooling anyone the past three years, it turns out. Everyone could see it but me.

8 years of career and financial progress, all thrown away over something so ridiculous. I don’t drink alcohol or do drugs, I lead a healthy lifestyle, and I’ve never even set foot inside a casino (to avoid what I knew would be temptation). I’ve only bet once on a card game, and lost $200 going all-in right away, and never did it again. Yet I kept up this craziness in the markets for three years without pausing and asking if this made sense. The markets make it easy to make our gambling look respectable. Sometimes I wonder if we’re really in control of our own destiny after all, when a person can do something so out of character.

I hate myself so much. All I can do is walk around my apartment wishing I could make a 30 second phone call to myself back in 2015.

[DanielL]

Thank you for the compliment Sara. I’ve always been told I was intelligent, but smarts and talent crumble in the face of low discipline. I feel like I have lost all my discipline, willpower, and focus. All I can think about is getting my money back, literally. Of turning back time. And having abandoned my job before, I will probably have to settle for a lower-income job for a while before I regain the trust of people in my field. And I basically pushed my girlfriend away, because I felt she was distracting me from trading (gambling).

I’m just so ashamed of myself right now. Everything was going pretty well, and then out of nowhere this happens and now I’m back to square one. It makes me wonder if I should even try. If I get on my feet again and something like this happens again, what’s the point?

I used to be so mad at my father for gambling away the family’s savings repeatedly over 30 years. Now I’m terrified I’m next in line, and there will be no escape. It makes me want to just do the bare minimum to get by in life, or just check out entirely. These are strange thoughts, but I can’t seem to control what goes through my mind anymore. I was always known for my ironclad self-discipline.

This really is a disease we’re talking about.

[DanielL]

The worst part about all this, is that I can’t stop thinking of getting my money back. I know the money is gone, and I need to make new money the proper way. But still, every few minutes, waves of anxiety pour in, telling me that I MUST get that money back NOW, or my life is over. It doesn’t make sense, but it keeps going and going. Will it ever stop?

[DanielL]

Thank you so much for your encouragement. I am open to any and all words from everyone here. The worst part about all this is that I feel I cannot trust myself anymore.

[Author]

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