Addiction

I'm an addict...Coming from someone who has an addictive personality, I guess that's not surprising.
However, lately, Solitaire is my drug of choice and I just can't stop. Last night I stayed up until 5 am partying hard with Solitaire!  OH YEAH!
I get in this crazy mindset where I must win and even when I do win I must win again.  It's the addictive personality I have.
 I'm so grateful I'm not a gambler...bc that would suck; however, I have gone gambling a few times in my prime. I'm banned for life from one casino- I won't go into much detail- it just involved an addiction I had a few years ago- where a  drink or 10 and some fighting took place.
 Anyway, last time I went gambling was about two years ago.  I was working for one of my elderly ladies (she's 96 now) and her synagogue would have casino day once every 3 months or so.  So...being her personal assistant I got to go.  I probably went with her twice and the last time was a disaster for me.  I attempted to be mindful- I just brought 20 dollars cash with me.  However, if I was very mindful I would have left my debit card at home. So of course after playing the 25 cent machines for five minutes, my $20 dollars vanished! Stupid machines. Mind you my elderly lady would bring about $300 dollars with her and we'd be at the casino for at least 3 hours or so.  So after 5 minutes of playing and losing my 20 dollars, I sat around for awhile twiddling my thumbs until this brilliant idea popped in my head- oh I'll just take out $20 more.  Well, I got to the cash vending machine  and did the prompts, but all that could be taken out was 50 or 100 dollars (if I remember correctly; however, there may have been other options, but who needs those details). Anyway- because my credit card was going to be charged a fee of about $5.00. My angel on my right shoulder was like "Walk away Aoife, Walk away" However, the devil on my left shoulder was yelling much louder in my ear and because of that I said "ah heck with it. Take out the hundred and just use a $20." So after selecting the $100, you would think the machine would spit out five 20s so that way I could just use one 20 and lock the remainder in my purse.  But.. oh no- this machine was smart.  It gave me a fresh, crisp $100 dollar bill. Well..as I attempted to go to the cashier to split the $100, I couldn't help but be distracted with all the machines and their glorious noises.  I swear they were screaming out my name.."Aoife, Aoife play me- You will win big".  So, instead of doing what the angel on my right shoulder was telling me, I followed the devil.  So, there I was- with a crisp 100 dollar bill.  I told myself again- okay- I'm only going to play 20 dollars of this 100 dollar bill...if the amount gets to around $80, Ill cash it out.   So there I was..me against the machine ready for the smack down.  Delicately I placed the $100 dollar bill in the slot sending good vibes with it as the machine sucked it quickly from my hand.   "It's on" I told myself.  So as I was pressing buttons and not really knowing what I was doing, but thinking I did, I saw the amount decrease and increase, decrease and increase.  Once it got to my $80 limit, I just had to keep playing. I thought to myself- I can win this! And...within less than 10 minutes the whole $100 was gone. I didn't even have a penny left over. I felt so defeated and so upset.  I just lost my paycheck for that day and some. I was so bummed, nearly cried and just started beating myself up- stupid, stupid, stupid.  How did I let this happen? I know better! Stupid devil!   So in order to try to keep myself from getting depressed over this, I had to remind myself that some people have it worse- some  lose thousands of dollars at a time, some lose houses.  However, my logical mind kicked in, telling me that since I don't have thousands saved and don't own a house- the $120 dollars comes pretty close to that in reality.    It took about a few days to forgive myself for that day. 

So now to present day...I realize I have to fight this addiction.  It is said that one addiction leads to another- I just hope this second addiction makes me useful/is healthy. Like being addicted to the gym, volunteering, healthy eating, or better yet addictive to positive, healthy thinking.

Well all in all,  today has been a good day- tonight I'm going to bed at a decent hour. I played Solitaire for about 3 hours today, sad but true. Another hour was spent playing Word Search, but...that's a whole different story! But all in all, at least it's a lot better than yesterday's time of at least 6 hours and going to bed at 5 am! So I'm making some progress! 


Thank you for reading!