It’s the Shame That’ll Kill You.

Gambling stole everything from me. Shame tried to take the rest.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

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My real rock bottom.

I awake mid-afternoon, hungover and hollow. Squinting at my phone, I scroll through bets I can’t remember placing, avoiding messages I can’t remember sending. This had become a routine Sunday for me — my bank account empty, my shame overflowing.

In early 2023, I had gambled myself into a financial grave.

I wasn’t just living paycheck to paycheck — it was so much worse than this. I had substantial loans from five different payday loan companies; money which I had only used to further my addiction. I was drinking heavily and regularly to cope with the mental stress that came with gambling away every penny I had ever earned. To take the edge off my anxiety, I would take a strong, prescribed benzodiazepine.

This drug wasn’t just handed over to me by some quack G.P. either. In 2022, whilst trying to return to University in the middle of my peak gambling, I began literally collapsing under the pressure that each day brought with it. My anxiety had reached such levels that multiple times during the week, my body would simply give way; leaving me trapped on the floor in a state of paralysis. (A later diagnosis of ADHD would provide some insight to this.)

The alcohol-benzo-gambling cycle was vicious, and entirely self-perpetuating.

I would start gambling for the day, my anxiety would spike, and I’d take a benzo. This would calm me, but also removed what few inhibitions I had left. In turn, I would gamble harder, steadily losing the money I needed to survive. My stress-levels would rise throughout the day; leading me to drink at night to escape it.

Benzos and alcohol are a deadly combo. Before I knew it, I would all but black out — hitting 0 inhibitions, and 0 control.

I would wake up the next morning having placed bets I couldn’t remember placing, sending messages I didn’t recognise; and ultimately wallowing in deep shame. The only thing I felt could make the shame more bearable was the emotional-numbness that gambling gave me.

So, I’d pick up my phone…and the cycle would continue.

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I tried to kill myself. Twice.

I had been struggling with suicidal ideation since 2021, after being prescribed an anti-depressant that I reacted badly to. But in early 2023, my brain had mulled over the ideas enough — it was ready for action.

For me, my ideations were constant, intense, and incredibly confronting. It wasn’t uncommon for my brain to provide me with clear imagery of my wrists slashed. It would beg me to veer to my right as I drove past a concrete wall. I would often imagine the chilling sensation of a gun against my temple. There was even a night where, whilst watching a movie at my friend’s house, I became fixated on the idea of hanging myself from the wooden pillars of the roof above us.

I still vividly remember the scariest moment of this period.

In the middle of the night, I woke up; wide-awake, and all of a sudden. A voice in my head spoke to me crisply, loudly, and with perceived authority:

“You’re a piece of shit. Kill yourself.”

After enough time spent with these thoughts, I began to believe them. Not just that I wanted to die — but that I deserved to. That these thoughts were a prophecy, of sorts. In the midst of my hopelessness and shame, and mixed with an inability to see myself ever breaking free from my gambling addiction, death seemed the only valid option.

I didn’t plan the attempts. They were spontaneous reactions to particularly bad nights — built on unbearably bad years. I barely left a note either time, something I reflect on with indescribable levels of guilt, for they would have left my loved ones with a lifetime of pain and confusion.

But in those moments, I truly couldn’t see that.

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Suicide is a viable escape, but only for You.

The truth in this heading was one of the hardest things for me as I grappled with my ideations and addictions. I was so desperate to escape from this life and these cycles I felt trapped in. These ideations - from my understanding at the time - were simply a by-product of my brain recognising that I felt hopeless, and coming up with a solution that worked. For me, the sufferer, suicide was a viable escape. Were I to kill myself, my problems would cease to affect me.

The flaw in this logic, of course, is that my life is not just mine. I can sit today and reflect on the hundreds of people that I would have impacted horrendously had I succeeded with my attempts. The people that might never had recovered from it. Suicide is a viable escape in theory, absolutely; I can see now, however, the ripple effect it has.

I remember telling my gambling counselor, “I know this might affect people, but their lives will go on. The world keeps spinning, whether I’m here or not.”

My brain had left me completely and utterly devoid of any ability to recognise the value of my life. The love that others had for me, and the incalculable damage my premature death would inflict on these people. I didn’t believe I was lovable, or redeemable, even by God.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

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It’s the shame that’ll kill you.

Not the gambling itself, nor the debt; the shame.

The only way I began to heal was to break my silence, and let others in.

I can sit today with zero doubts that I have so, so many people that love and care for me; irrespective of how much I could EVER think that I had or have fucked my life up at any given point.

So what changed? What allowed me to regain the ability to seek out and feel loved? To recognise my own intrinsic self-worth.

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Step I. Telling the Truth.

I had to come clean to those around me who could give me the reassurance of their love and forgiveness.

My friends and family couldn’t voice their love or their forgiveness for me at the levels that my brain needed at that point in time, for the simple reason that they had no idea the depths of my problems to begin with.

Love needs communication; direction. It needs you to be willing to let down all your walls and guards, and let those close to you see you with higher levels of vulnerability than I suspect you’ll ever be comfortable with. For why would my loved ones think to offer me a hospital bed, when all I was asking for was a band-aid?

My shame had been too heavy and all-encompassing for me to even be able to consider opening up fully to friends. It was such that I doubt, for a lot of my active addiction, that I even asked for a band-aid; to repeat the metaphor.

What I learnt quite quickly, however, was that there had been love surrounding me through the entirety of my addiction. My shame had simply kept me blinded to it all.

Step II. Therapy.

So. Much. Therapy.

Therapy with a psychologist, a psychiatrist, group therapy, a sponsor, accountability partners. Every and any kind of support I could access, I did. I cannot recommend it enough.

Step III. Learning to give it time.

As I have progressed through therapy - out of active addiction - I have slowly learnt to love myself again. It’s not complete, and it may never be. But with time, comes the most important forgiveness and love of all; self. I realised that my brain wasn’t evil, it simply wanted, nay needed, to escape the chaos. In time, I stopped seeing myself as a failure, and instead saw myself for what I was — a human being, desperate for help.

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If you’re struggling, whether it be with addiction or one of life’s many curve balls, chances are your road to recovery is being blurred by shame. To err is human. But to believe you’ve irreversibly fucked up your life beyond repair? That is nothing more than your pain lying to you.

Let me tell you from experience — there are very, very few things that one can do in this life to leave them too far from hope and love. Every single reaction that I thought people would have to finding out about my addiction was completely and utterly wrong.

Yes, people were upset — but mainly about how much my issue had hurt me. Yes, not many understood why I had let it get it deep as it had — but those that didn’t encouraged me to keep seeking out those that did.

And no, there was no magical cure to it all. Even today, almost two years on, it involves me taking multiple steps each day to rebuild myself emotionally, spiritually, and financially.

The difference is, I’m no longer doing it alone.

So: open up. To a friend. A therapist. A support group. Or even an anonymous online forum.

Just don’t do it alone. You don’t have to. And I think you and I both know the path you’re heading down, should you keep trying to.

Love,

Sean.

Day 675. One Day at a Time.

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Crisis Resources

• Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

• USA: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

• UK: Samaritans 116 123

• Global: https://befrienders.org

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