brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today today's question comes from

brook in kentucky brook writes i've spent close to six hundred thousand dollars on gambling over the last

nine years i regret this habit and have become very depressed the worst part is i still gamble

but much less and now it's

controlled. My married income is $300,000 per year, and if not for my gambling, we would have

no mortgage and much less stress. I used gambling as an escape and didn't realize the amounts

of money I was going through. I am deeply regretting my actions and feel terrible about all the money I wasted.

Is there a way to put the stupidity behind me and not be angry with myself?

I mean, this sort of pathological gambling and this continuing to gamble tells me

Brooke has not fully metabolized the depths of all of this and so i i mean

anything i wanted to add here would just you got to go you got to go to gambler's anonymous today

and submit to a 12-step plan i, this is so much bigger than you.

And it's just going to be tough.

You can't just decide, well, I'm just going to put this stupidity behind me and not be angry.

You haven't fully absorbed.

You haven't fully owned all the decisions here, right? In most cases, John, with these types of any kind of addiction, really, is full sobriety the the path is there a way for

someone to go well i still gamble but now it's controlled like is there a piece of you that is still

out of control um i mean there's there's some actually been some movement there the last few years in

the addiction community this idea that like once you admit it you have to be sober for the rest of your life.

The answer is no.

And that's so individualized and it's so person by person.

And this is, I mean, this is in the alcoholic world.

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