Perhaps one way to approach this is to steel yourself to deliberately sabotage your means of depositing to online gambling sites.
Close all easy deposit methods, and contact all casinos to tell them you want to self exclude. Uninstall every single one from the PC, and get hold of some of the blocking software that prevents a PC from being used to gamble online. A more extreme solution is to completely get rid of the PC or at least the internet.
Not being able to confide to family and friends is a huge problem, and can quickly lead to isolation, seemingly with no way out. Places such as gamblers anonymous get around this by preserving confidentiality. It may be worth joining a group some distance away, so that there is little danger of accidentally bumping into someone you know while attending meetings.
There is also the possibility of getting confidential medical help from your doctor, although this depends on how health services work in Cyprus.
Help and support is also available through this forum, as we KNOW that each of us either gamble, or have an interest in it, and have collectively experienced all aspects, both positive and negative, between us. You can change your Casinomeister account status to "quit gambling".
Continuing to play free tournaments is not a good idea when this stage (thoughts of suicide) is reached, it is a bit like an alcoholic saying they will only drink when it's free, rather than trying to quit altogether.
A hobby to substitute for gambling should be looked for, one that doesn't cost much, but offers an enjoyable escape from "ordinary life". Replacing the stimulus to the brain's pleasure centres created by gambling, and other risk taking activities, is the biggest problem. This will make any suggested alternative appear "no good" as a substitute activity, unless you find a previously unknown passion for something, such as art, watching the weather (yes, that's me
- especially as a kid, and it was free entertainment too), even taking part in other kinds of contest that involve winners and losers, but no potentially unlimited outlay as with raw gambling.
There is a phenomenon called "comping". This is where groups of people enter the many free giveaways companies use to advertise their goods. These usually involve an element of skill, such as a tie breaker competition, and the prize goes to the best tie breaker (which is really a cheap way for the companies to get a catchy advertising slogan). AVOID the many "competitions" that involve a really simple skill question and a premium rate phone line, this isn't "comping", it's GAMBLING all over again, but cleaned up for the moral masses so it doesn't carry such a social stigma.
), sport (swimming, I'm the candidate for the master of sports), PC-Game (I like to play Quake-3). There are so many interesting things to try!
