Originally posted on 09/09/2013:

I live in Vegas and work on the strip, so I know a lot of people personally that have full-blown gambling addiction. The obvious route is to seek help, which is widely available just about anywhere. But....

Something else I noticed is that most of these guys I know have very little to look forward to, or what they should be looking forward to (family) has gone south, and they're drinking to run away from it, and gambling here just goes hand-in-hand with that. Find something, anything, that you can see yourself getting excited about or looking forward to in the future. Every one of us has multiple things we're at the very least intrigued by. I like to cook when I'm feeling calm, and when I'm amped up I like to go to the gym and box and train with other people close to my size if they're there and up for it, and if I'm too lazy for that I'll sit around and watch Sugar Ray Leonard or Bernard Hopkins videos and try to take away what I can from them. I feel like I could turn to these things if I was trying to get over something like that. Everyone I know pretty much has something as their go-to that doesn't involve gambling, drugs, or booze -- things like biking, guitar, running, working on cars, shooting guns, chasing tail, collecting, MMORPGs, trying to look as fit as possible, etc. Religion can come into play here too in certain cases, though it's definitely not for everyone. It just feels great to go out and get better at something little by little.

You're never going to be a successful gambler, even if you have a few tricks up your sleeve, you've done well in the past, blah blah blah -- aint happening. Seriously, there's like 20 people that can claim real sustainable success with sportsbetting, you might as well try to join the NBA. You can however become really awesome at something else, which can make it pretty easy to say good-by to the old lifestyle.

If life sucks at the moment, and there's only one thing that makes you happy (betting), well shit, that's what you're gonna do. On the other hand, if you have real options on what to go out and do at any given time, then it can be a lot easier. Tim Ferriss said that the opposite of happiness isn't sadness, it's boredom. I believe it. So that sums up my one real piece of advice: Set shit up to where you're almost never bored. Watch what happens.

And while you're at it, kill your access. Throw away your router and disable internet on your phone, or at the very least get all your gambling sites blocked. Make it so you couldn't go back even if you wanted to.

Hope any of this helps.