YOU ARE VALUED HERE!
Always Know and Build Your Worth.
No Need To Count The Days If You Live A Recovery Lifestyle!
Catherine Townsend Lyon
Gambling Recovery Expert & Advocate
We are only given one life to live while helping others along our journey. After years of addicted gambling, wasting a portion of my life, I will never again take for granted the beautiful life I have been given by GOD and will continue soar to heights I never dreamed possible from the work I have done within my recovery. . .
Author and Advocate Catherine Lyon
My recovery journey started in 2002, and again in 2006 from my mental health challenges.
I woke up in a hospital as the result of another failed suicide attempt and then went back to an addiction and mental health crisis center for a 20-day stay. The problem wasn’t that I gambled again and relapsed; the problem was not taking my psych medications for a few weeks. I thought I didn’t need them; that I could be normal like everyone else around me, but as you read my story, you’ll see that didn’t work out too well.
I had a few severe financial crises happen, and since I had not taken my medication and had worked through all of my savings, I panicked and chose to steal from someone. What a mess! Of course, she pressed charges. I was arrested, went through the courts, and was sentenced to many hours of community service, two years of probation, and paid restitution that I’m still paying today.
My point?
You have to do the work in all areas of your recovery, including your finances. I chose to not do all the work necessary for a well-rounded recovery. Even though I was not gambling, my financial and legal troubles told me I still needed to work with a gambling addiction specialist. After my troubles occurred, I worked with a specialist for a year while I went through the legal mess I created. Why am I sharing this? Our recovery stories and words are powerful tools to help others.
After this second suicide attempt and crisis, I learned I did not have a well-balanced recovery and had a lot more work to do, and I also learned that God, my higher power, had bigger plans for me, a purpose for me that involves helping those reaching out for recovery from the cunning illness of compulsive gambling addiction. After I was released from the crisis center in 2006 and started working with a gambling specialist and got my mental health under control, I began to see the stigma surrounding those of us who maintaining recovery, and those of us who suffer from a mental illness, and we have a huge hurdle in our path.
I am a dual-diagnosed person who lives in recovery and has mental health challenges. It can make obtaining recovery a wee bit more work, as I discovered. The nasty habits, behaviors, and diseased thinking needed more correcting. Working with the gambling specialist was eye-opening.
He helped me break down the cycle of the addiction, and we also worked with tools and skills for dealing with financial problems that may arise while in recovery. I was given a fantastic relapse prevention workbook as well. Although I didn’t relapse into gambling, this workbook has helped me develop a plan for any financial or life event that may arise during my recovery journey. You need a plan before life events come.
Another tool that helped was journaling every day. I have always done this, but my specialist showed me how to relieve stress and learn more from my journaling. Those journals were used for help in writing my current published book. Writing my story and experiences in memoir form was a very healing process for me. I shared my gambling addiction and alcohol abuse, my past childhood abuse, and sexual trauma, and what it is like living with mental illness. I never dreamed I would be a published author, recovery advocate, writer, and blogger, but these are just a few of the recovery blessings I have received in my journey thus far.
By writing my book, and memoirs, and sharing it with the world, I hope to help shatter the stigma around gambling addiction, recovery, and mental and emotional health. I want to be a voice for those who are childhood sex abuse survivors. Through my book and my recovery blog, I have chosen to not be anonymous or silent any longer.
I want others and the public to know how devastating compulsive gambling addiction is and how easily one can become addicted. It truly is a real disease and illness. I want others to be informed and educated, and I raise awareness of the effects it has in our communities and in families’ lives.
The expansion of casinos, state lotteries, and now legal sports betting and online gambling venues are making gambling more and more accessible today and are now touching our youth. Currently, 1.9% of our population are problem gamblers. Through my own recovery and by writing my book, I have learned a lot. The best advice I can give? When starting recovery learn about this addiction. Work with a specialist or recovery coach to learn the cycle and then learn the tools and skills to interrupt it.
Work a well-balanced recovery that encompasses mind, body, spirit, and finances. There are many ways to recover including in or outpatient treatment and 12-step meetings. Anything and everything you can find? Do it. Only one option may not be enough for success in long-term recovery. Sadly, I learned this the hard way.
Now that I have reached and maintained 15+years of recovery from gambling addiction and alcohol abuse, I know it is my job, my purpose, to be of recovery service to others. Life today is good!
My husband and I learned that we can weather any storm together. I’m proud that my book has done so well and has opened doors for me to share what I have learned. I share as much as I can with others. I do this in many ways. My second book is almost finished, and I hope to release it in early 2023.
It will be more of a “how-to” for reaching that elusive first year of recovery. With a high percentage of people relapsing after rehab or treatment, I wanted, and my readers asked me, to share how to attain the first year of recovery. I also share my recovery and experiences in blog form here. All I can do is urge others to never give up. You are worth a better life in recovery. Sharing our experiences and our recovery story with others is just as important as the professional or clinical side of how to recover. Sharing one’s story is a powerful tool for others to listen to and learn from.
My last tip is to do something for your recovery each day. It will help keep you within your recovery, and you won’t ever become complacent on your journey.
Thank you for reading my story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx8Z4oHkScs
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I was invited a few years back to be interviewed by my friend Lisa Frederiksen for her fantastic informational recovery website. I thought I would share some of my interview she did, as she was kind enough to do so and to have a new platform to raise awareness about how I learned to “break the cycle” of my gambling addiction and alcohol abuse as I began the road to long-term recovery.
I was honored and jumped on the chance, (lol) as she has helped many from addiction as a powerful advocate, speaker, and in writing as a popular author of several addiction/recovery books, like her newest title, “10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop!: What You Really Need to Know When Your Loved One Drinks Too Much (1) available on Amazon online.
First, here is more about Lisa and our interview I so appreciated her doing about me and please visit her website OFTEN at BREAKING THE CYCLES …
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LISA’S NEW BOOK IS a MUST READ:
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Available at local bookstores, libraries, and online retailers. Here are a few:
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Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Target
Wordery
Walmart
Amazon U.K.
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ABOUT LISA FREDERIKSEN:
Lisa Frederiksen founded Breaking The Cycles.com to provide education, prevention, and intervention services on a range of addiction*-related topics anchored in 21st-century brain and scientific research.
This research was guided by her 40+ years of personal experience with secondhand drinking, a concept she first introduced in 2009. Working to overcome its impact, she’s spent the last 16 years studying and simplifying this research on topics related to her experiences. These topics include alcoholism, drug addiction, alcohol, and other drug use disorders, mental illness, co-occurring disorders, the family member’s experience, toxic stress, adverse childhood experiences, codependency, brain development, and childhood trauma.
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Lisa’s goal in founding BreakingTheCycles.com in 2008 was to change, and in some cases simply start, the conversations on these topics so that together we can end the stigma, misinformation, and shame that keep over 120 million Americans stuck fighting something they truly don’t understand. This 120 million represents those struggling with their misuse of alcohol or other drugs and the people – typically family members and friends – who love them and try desperately to help them stop.
She does this through presentations, workshops, consulting, blogging and media outreach. Lisa holds a BA in Economics, the University of California at Davis and with over 39+years of experience? You’ll need to visit her page as there is TOO MUCH TO LIST! (Lol.) Here: “Changing The Conversation”…
**The term “addiction” may be regarded as equivalent to a severe substance use disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013).**
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“Now that gambling addiction is currently the #1 addiction with the highest suicide rate than any other and over 16 million problem gamblers in just the US alone, I want to share some of my story and devastation in my life due to this cunning addiction,” says Catherine Townsend-Lyon, today’s guest author.
Best-selling Kodel Empire Publishing Author of the book, Addicted To Dimes: Confessions of a Liar and a Cheat, Catherine is a freelance recovery writer, a former columnist for “In Recovery Magazine’s ‘The Author’s Café’.” She also writes for several addiction/recovery publications, including: “Keys to Recovery” and will be featured in next month’s issue of “Recovery Today Magazine.” Catherine was chosen as a contributor to a major media article published by Time.com and Nautilus.us magazines titled; “Addicted to Anticipation: What goes wrong in the brain chemistry of a gambling addict.”
Catherine is an Expert Recovery blogger of Gambling Addiction Recovery for Addictionland.com and is the founder and author of her blog here at “Bet Free Recovery Now” covering gambling addiction and recovery.
Recovery from Gambling Addiction by Catherine Townsend-Lyon
My name is Catherine, and I am a recovering compulsive addicted gambler. Jan 29th, 2020 will be my 13th-year mark in recovery, but will never forget where I have come from with gambling addiction. I came from the depths of hell, hopelessness, and despair. Gambling addiction took just about everything from me like family, friends, reputation, jobs, my home, car, almost my marriage and cost me way more than money; it almost cost me my life twice from suicide.
At the same time, I was also suffering from undiagnosed mental & emotional health issues and disorders I had no idea about until 2002. My first failed suicide attempt. I woke up in the hospital with bandages wrapped around both my wrists and could hear two people talking about knives all over my living room as I blacked out again. They were the two EMTs and a police officer who brought me to the hospital as I found out a few weeks later. All I remember was everything going black in nothingness. Now I know it was a complete mind and body break down. A mental/emotional blackout. From there I went to an addiction/mental crisis center. Was on suicide watch the first few days.
Shortly after, a psychiatrist started working with me. And of course, here I am, I was a compulsive gambler and being dually-diagnosed with mental health disorders. So, I started working with an addictions counselor as well as a psychiatrist. I had attempted to stop gambling on my own but felt I could control it on my own. I failed with many relapses and binges due to the “diseased thinking” while in outpatient treatment. I guess I had not reached my bottom yet. Even after a 28 day stay in a crisis center and a suicide attempt!
It’s called ADDICTION. It is a sickness that is very hard to overcome. But possible. And this wasn’t my last time I would work this circuit. Not due to actively gambling, due to the financial pressures from this disease, I had another suicide attempt in 2006 as it seemed I had not done enough work in all areas of recovery, including my financial inventory. First lesson? A well-balanced recovery plan.
But in 2006 I also just wanted to be normal, live life in recovery without having to take medications for mental/emotional issues. So, I stopped taking them thinking it was just the gambling that was causing my mental illness problems of PTSD, manic depression, mania, anxiety, and bipolar insomnia cycles. So, within two weeks of no meds? I was back to severe depression and suicidal. What was my answer?
I took all my meds at once. I had gotten to that dark, black hole of hopelessness again. Back in the hospital again, another 20-day crisis center and 4 days of suicide watch. When released this time, I had learned the hard way that I need to take my meds to maintain my mental/emotional health and well-being as they call this being “dually diagnosed or dual diagnosis.”
Recovery with even negative experiences, sprinkled with some “faith” can show us many life lessons in recovery. If we are not learning them, we won’t see our growth. Even when you are not participating in your preference of addiction, we can still have problems arise and life challenges in recovery, so being prepared is vital.
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NOW, The Rest of My Story Can Be Read on Lisa’s Amazing Website At “Changing The Conversation”…
And, again, all of her books are very well written and so helpful for anyone who is suffering in silence from addictions. Please, give her a visit if you are a person maintaining recovery and there are exceptional information and advice even for family members as well.
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