If you want to succeed, you shouldn’t be in crypto with gambling mindset (Self-Story)

I saw few posts about gambling / Futures Trading etc. and I just wanted to share "few" words.

I was around 13 years old when I was on a summer holiday in the seaside city, on one of the evenings walks with my cousin by the beach we saw this roulette guy with his half-broken wooden soviet looking roulette that was barely spinning, (yeah it was the early 2000s he didn't give a shit that he was allowing a bunch of kids to gamble on his "attraction") anyways so we have roughly 1$ pocket money for that evening and we bet on roulette, eventually we get to $16 by few lucky spins and THAT right there was the little spark in my brain thinking that I have found the solution to every problem in life. Hard to describe the feeling but euphoria/excitement are the closest words I can think of. We walked around for few minutes thinking "okay let's stop we have 2 weeks worth of pocket money!!!" – of course, we didn't, lost everything within half an hour and THAT is another spark in my brain feeling this huge grudge and bitterness that how did we allow to lose it all! – So after that evening we kept going back to that asshole roulette dude and losing our pocket money almost daily with idea that "we have to get our pocket money back!"

Years went by and I forgot all about that roulette guy and his existence until in my early 20s being a poor student I discovered a different version of it – "online betting" you probably know where I'm gonna go with this so I'll make it as short as I can… first few bets won me some money and I thought, this is it! I don't have to be poor any more! 5-6 years of horrible sleepless nights, terrible mood swings just sitting and steering at my phone screen, betting 24/7, chasing losses, sometimes winning but I would want to win more to pay off huge debts from betting on a first-place (fucking irony…), slowly losing friendships because I either had no money or no mood (or neither) to hang out, I'd count my wages for 2 month's ahead on a calculator to convince myself that I can gamble and pay it off from my wages and most importantly I quite a few times had suicidal thoughts when I just saw no way out at that time.

years later my daughter was born (intentionally avoiding to mention dates/years etc – sorry) and that was the tipping point for me where I looked at her and thought now is the perfect time and reason to end all this. I did, haven't gambled since. easy to type in one sentence but man it sucked… no one likes to accept the defeat and especially gamblers. but TIME is a very important factor, as more time went by less angry and bitter I felt, eventually half a year later I had busy dad life, job, few hobbies and eventually it just all went away. I looked at it as a past mistake that I couldn't undo but I could make sure I don't make it again. While I'm at it here's another factor, gamblers are often portrayed as this fucking assholes who only care about themselves and no one else, but the truth is it all comes from a kind place for most people, I remember thinking "If I win this, I'll help out my parents, I'll do this, I'll do that" you get the point. Also, because it's such a taboo to discuss gambling as an addiction (or sickness) people often don't tell anyone because they are ashamed of it and you end up all by yourself in this horrible endless circle feeling helpless and hopeless.

Now, why I said all this:

Very likely there are a lot of people here who entered the crypto market from a gambling background OR there are a lot of new people who just entered crypto and will potentially see quick +50% +100% + returns which might trigger THAT spark which I had when I won that $16 on roulette and thought world was mine. We here always say "only invest what you are willing to lose" but I know a lot of us overlook that sentence when our portfolios are +100%… So if you get lucky the first few times, stay focused and don't think you have figured it all out and pour everything you have with hopes that you'll carry on getting lucky. or if you are someone with a gambling problem, accept it, face it, talk about it with your family and friends (or us here!) and move on, let all that shit go and start over, take a break from crypto too, walk away for a while and try and get new hobbies to distract your mind because I promise you once you accept that defeat and move on, as time goes by it only gets better and better!

I am very sorry for this (probably unnecessarily) long ass post but I had to share it because reading real peoples stories like this helped me get through quite a bit.

Sidenote: I wrote my heart out few days ago with this post and it was removed after half an hour for misleading title / flair (title was "If this post helps one person – my job is done")