Gambling

I was just having a look through my local paper and there was an article on gambling. It stated that people ion my area poured $88.5 million into the pokies in the last 12 months.... that is CRAZY.

I know all about those damn pokie machines because I to had a gambling addiction many years ago. I am not sure at what age it started but I would say about 19 or so. At the time I was dating a guy who liked to have a bet on the horses and of course that would lead us from the TAB to many trips to the casino. I don't even want to think about how much money I wasted doing this. It wasn't just in the evenings either as I remember at this time I was working at the local supermarket and even on my lunch breaks I would make my way to the local Taberet along with fellow work mates and would pour coin after coin into those damn machines. During some of this time I was living out of home and although I always made sure I had money for rent and bills I would have not much else. My parents were very worried about me and numerous times they would spy on me and confront me whilst I was pushing that damn button and most probably taking a drag on my numerous cigarettes.

There was one night when my parents and I went out for dinner to the local pub and coincidentally I happened to leave my jacket there. Then of course later that evening I just had to go back and pick it up and of course have a gamble. On this particular night I had a big win of about $5000. I was pretty excited and made up some story to mum and dad when I got home that I just put in $5 and JACKPOT. With that win I went out and bought myself a piano. God only knows why seeing I could afford the piano but with my gambling how in the world did I expect to afford lessons???? My gambling continued until I got myself into quite a bit of debt and to help me out of it my parents offered to buy my piano off me. This I am sure was just an excuse as they helped me out of my debt but they never took the piano. Anyway as time went on it got worse and worse. What I think I enjoyed was the fact that I could just sit at a machine and all of my problems etc just vanished and it was just me, the machine and my cigarettes.  Although this is a weird thing to say but in my opinion what cured me from my gambling addiction were in fact cigarettes. When the laws changed and smoking was banned in pokie venues I just wasn't interested in going anymore as It just wasn't the same. Leaving a machine to pop out for a quick smoke wasn't as enjoyable as when I could just do both at the same time.

I would never have thought I would say this but THANK GOD FOR CIGARETTES!

Now I should think about trying to quit those........