Do I deserve to live?

[ianrio]

I’ve been in therapy since my early 20s, hospitalized several times, I had multiple therapists and could say that i’ve benefited from it greatly tho it was very tough. I used to suffer from obssesive thought, anxiety and severe clinical depression but the things got a bit better with the time.

3 years ago one of my olf friends offered me a job in his business, knowing that I’m coming back from my traveling in brazil to russia. I’m not a kind of person to dedicate my time to making money but since I had none I figured I should give it a try. Work was tough and I had to prove I’m worthy to be a part of the team, so I started taking antidepressants to tolerate the job i don’t like (though I tried to quit 2 times). Time went on and by the end of the second year of work i saved around 25 000$, money that I never had in my life and then the tragic thing happened. It was late 2020, early 2021 when the bull run in crypto strated and I decided to give it a go, eventually i turned 25k into 100k and got euphoric, my friends were not into crypto at that time so they couldnt comprehend what was going on with me. I ended up losing all of my money over the next 2 months having bad trades and trying to make money back, as a result of this I devoloped a strong gambling addiction cause I started to use leverage in trading. I couldnt handle the reality, that I’ve spent 2 years doing what I don;t enjoy, and be around people that dont really understand who I am. I had to develop a persona for fitted the lifestyle my friend expected out of me. So losing everything was a huge trauma and I couldn;t handle it well, i got obssesed with making my money back.

I don’t even know who I’ve turned into but last week I lost everything again, couldnt admit it, and decided to take my partners money to trade what i’ve lost back without telling him, and I lost that money too. They found out and kicked me out of the business. I want to kill myself, I honestly don’t know how I could do such a thing but the pain right now is unbereable, I’m paranoid that nobody in the world would even consider to have a relationship with me if they find out what I’ve done. I really feel like I don’t deserve to be alive.

[SheetMetalHead]

Hi @ianrio. First off, welcome to Heartsupport! You came to the right place.

I can draw parallels with the first part of your story, about working hard, having your crypto investment pay off huge, and then losing it. In high school, I got my choice of full academic scholarships due to lucking into a good test score one day. It was like the work I was doing as a matter of course had multiplied into unbelievably good fortune, and it felt really good. I then went to college, got crippling depression, and walked away from my full ride (incidentally also about $100k). I felt like I lost my whole identity. I lost everything, deserved nothing, and promised myself I’d never expect handouts again.

This is where our stories diverge. I let my experience crush me. You grew determined to recover your losses. I can imagine the euphoria of multiplying your money and the feeling of status that must have come with it. I can imagine wanting to get that back, quickly, in a way that would deliver the same euphoria. I can understand a gambling addiction, at least at an intellectual level. “I just need to win the next one. I just need one jackpot, and all my trouble will be over.”

You didn’t accept defeat, you fought to turn your luck around. That said, epic uphill fights come with significant cost and collateral damage. In your case, you lost your money, hurt your partner by gambling away his money, and then lost your job and his friendship. What you experienced was the feeling of utter defeat, of having nothing left to fight with, of no more hope. It is so shitty. Like, what’s left after that? I can understand how you felt so crushed, and I can empathize with you feeling like you deserve nothing.

Here’s the thing though. All I’m reading throughout this post points to tremendous resilience on your part. You needed money, so you took antidepressants and worked a job you didn’t like to get it. You lost your crypto earnings, so you got gambling hard to get it back. You got to such a bad place that you were hospitalized, and your doctors have said that it did you good. Right now things suck. When you’re in a valley, all you can see is the valley. With your grit and determination though, you will recover. Maybe you have nothing right now. Maybe it will take a long time. Maybe you don’t have any hope. You will recover though. You’re a fighter. And when you do recover, you’ll be wiser for your experiences. You’ve learned a powerful, painful lesson about overextending yourself, loyalty and honesty to friends, and leveraging resources you don’t have. Sometimes we need to be humbled to appreciate what we do have. I know my losses drove me to work for everything I have and to succeed on my merit alone. I know you will be stronger for this.

Thank you for sharing here. I know it wasn’t easy. Know that you do deserve to live, and for what it’s worth I think you sound like an intelligent, technically-minded person who would be worth knowing.

[DiscordReply]

From: eloquentpetrichor

Welcome to the community, ianrio! Thank you for sharing with us and you definitely deserve to live

I am so sorry you have developed this addiction to gambling. I don’t have much advice for you besides talking to your therapist and finding some help for this addiction. Your life is definitely not over and I think you can recover and become who you were before.

Is your friend and partner pressing charges for the theft? I hope not. And I hope that you may be able to repair that friendship some day.
I think that you should work on yourself and getting to a place where you feel like you can trust yourself before you worry too much about if other people will trust you. If you cannot trust yourself than why should they trust you. I really hope you find a path forward that can help you heal and recover from these last few years of ups and downs and you can find financial stability again. And I hope you can find a job you actually enjoy. That can be so helpful.

Good luck and please feel free to share here anytime. This is a good place for sharing your ongoing struggles and finding support. See you around, friend

[DiscordReply]

From: Rohini_868

hello friend! You’ve had a really intense past 3 years or so, haven’t you? I’m so glad you’re here with us to share these thoughts and these stresses you’ve been carrying for so long! First of all, I wanna say that we love and care about you, just as you are, with all your past and all your scars. Our mistakes don’t define us, our past doesn’t condemn us. You are valuable and you matter. I am so sorry that you got affected by the crypto crash, that must have been devastating, and I’m so sorry that addiction kicked in while you were trying to get back on your feet. It must have been crushing to have worked so hard for so long and then lose it all. I want you to know that you are not alone. The fact that there is a term such as “gambling addiction” and a whole subset of intervention to deal with it means that there have been so many others who have suffered this same or a similar fate. You are not alone, and there are others who can understand and have the capability to help you through this via gambling addiction interventions? You matter, and i hope that you are safe where you are right now. Some mistakes were made, some errors in judgment, but your future is not set in stone. Right now, the most important person in the world to have a relationship with you is … you. You have to be able to see the person you are, even with your past, you have to love and forgive yourself. You have to believe that you are worthy of love and affection!! Life after addiction is possible, life after mistakes is very much possible. Don’t give up on yourself friend. You do deserve to be alive, to work past this and find yourself in a place where you’re proud of yourself and your journey. We believe in you and we’re here to support you!

[DiscordReply]

From: Lisalovesfeathers

Hi Friend, Welcome to HeartSupport. Thank you for your post. Goodness me that is a post indeed. Firstly can I say that I am so sorry that you have spent so long living with mental health problems, it truly is so difficult and such a massive impact on our lives and every thing in it. Your story is one that I cannot completely relate to as I do not have a lot of understanding about some of the things that you talk about but I get the gyst of it and clearly the point is that you were in a dark place at work and invested some money and made lots back, lost it and then began gambling? which from what I can tell, I can understand how that happened. That euphoria that you speak of must have been something special and really peaked those obsessive thoughts that you have had in the past so it would have been easily done. Then we get to the money you took from your work colleague, yes that was not the best thing you could have done granted, it was a huge mistake, i agree and its clear that you are incredibly sorry for that. You lost your job because of it, so now you move forward friend, we all make mistakes in this life, little ones, big stinking ones but we have to learn to forgive ourselves at some point so that we can move on and make new lives. I think talking it over with your current therapist if you have one would be useful or if you are attending a gambling program that too would be useful. Either way, you do deserve to come back,from this, you do deserve to live and to be happy again. I wish you well, you are valued and you are loved. Lisa xx

[ianrio]

First of all, thank you for taking your time to read and reply, it means a lot.

The post was rather chaotic and I couldn’t fit everything what was going on with me over the last 10 years, so I tried to focus on the last 3.

I’m still having a strong feeling of disgust and guilt towards myself. Though I didn’t have an evil intent taking money from my partner and I haven’t ruined his life in anyway (I took less than 10% of his capital), I feel like I’ve ruined mine and afraid this will be with me till I die.