Twenty minutes is the goal, not the rest of your life. Put the phone in another room, ring the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 or message one person, and put physical distance between yourself and the money. Three obstacles, twenty minutes. You do not have to stop wanting to bet. You have to be somewhere else while you want it.
The urge is not asking to be argued with
You are not going to reason your way out of this one, and you have probably already tried in the last ten minutes.
An urge is not an opinion. It does not respond to being told about the overdraft, the last time, or what you promised on Sunday. What it responds to is time and distance, which is why every piece of advice below is physical rather than mental.
Nothing here asks you to want it less. It asks you to be further away from the account while you do.
The next twenty minutes
Do these in order. Number one first, because it takes eight seconds and it does most of the work.
- **Put the phone in a different room.** Not face down. Not in a pocket. Another room, ideally one with a door. If you are out, hand it to whoever you are with and say "keep hold of this for twenty minutes".
- **Move your body somewhere else.** Outside if you can, the kitchen if you cannot. Standing up and changing the room interrupts the run-up in a way that sitting still and resisting does not.
- **Tell one human being, right now.** A text is enough. "I want to bet and I'm not going to" is a complete message and it does not require them to reply well. If there is nobody, that is what the helpline is for. It is open 24 hours a day and they take this exact call all night.
- **Put the money out of reach.** Physically. Card in a drawer upstairs, or handed to somebody. NICE's guidance for clinicians lists "methods to limit access to money, for example, agreeing that a family member will take control of finances" as part of the practical stack, which is a formal way of saying what everyone in recovery finds out on their own.
- **Do something with your hands for the remaining time.** Wash up. Walk to the end of the road. Anything with a start and an end. The urge is loudest in the empty stretch.
Twenty minutes is not a magic number and nothing chemical resets at the end of it. It is simply longer than most urges hold their peak, and it is short enough to be believable when you are in the middle of one.
While you are waiting, do one lasting thing
The urge will come back. It is worth spending part of tonight making the next one land somewhere harder.
If you have not registered with Gamstop, do it while you are agitated rather than after you have calmed down, because the calm version of you always thinks it can be handled later. Registration blocks gambling websites and apps licensed in Great Britain, you choose a period from six months to five years, and in Gamstop's words, "once you've registered, you cannot cancel your registration during the exclusion period."
That last clause is the entire point. You are handing a decision to a system that will not give it back on a bad night.
Then switch on the gambling block in your banking app. Between them the two take about ten minutes. [The full stack, in the order to set it up and with the gaps each layer leaves, is here](/guides/gambling/gamstop-bank-blocks-and-blocking-apps).
If the urge is a chase
It matters whether you want to bet or want to get it back, because the second one is a different animal.
Chasing is written into the diagnosis. One of the nine DSM-5 criteria for gambling disorder is that after losing money, a person "often returns another day to get even ('chasing' one's losses)". It is not a personal failing you invented. It is the single most predictable thing about losing money gambling.
The chase also lies about arithmetic. It presents the next bet as recovery rather than as a further loss, which is why people who are perfectly numerate at work will stake the rent at midnight. [We have written about that mechanism separately](/guides/gambling/loss-chasing-and-the-near-miss).
If the money has gone tonight, the money has gone. Nothing available to you in the next twenty minutes changes that, and every option that pretends to will cost you more.
If tonight is worse than an urge
Read this part even if you think it is not about you.
NICE tells clinicians to "recognise that gambling and gambling-related harms can be a dominant risk factor for suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, even in the absence of other risk factors", and that the risk "may be highest immediately after a gambling episode". Which is, for a lot of people reading this, roughly now.
Samaritans is **116 123**, free, day or night. In immediate danger, **999**. You do not need to be certain about anything to ring.
Tomorrow, not tonight
When the twenty minutes have gone, you have done the thing. Do not spend the rest of the evening auditing yourself.
Tomorrow, two jobs. Work out which hour and which situation this happened in, because urges are not random and yours will have a shape. [Mapping your own danger zones](/guides/gambling/your-gambling-triggers-and-danger-zones) is a half hour with a pen that saves you several nights like this one.
Then, if money is the thing sitting on your chest, get free advice rather than another loan. StepChange is free and independent on 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm.
If it helps to have the blocks, the risky hours and the person you message in one place rather than across six apps, that is what [Renovyn's Shield](/shield) is for. Friction, plus somebody in the loop. It does not treat anything.
Common questions
**How long does a gambling urge last?** Long enough to feel permanent and shorter than it feels. Most people find the peak passes inside twenty minutes if they are not looking at the thing that triggers it, which is why the phone going into another room matters more than anything you say to yourself.
**What do I do if I have already opened the app?** Close it, stand up and leave the room with the phone still in it. Do not delete the app as your one action, because reinstalling takes ninety seconds. Delete it and register with Gamstop, so the account you rebuild is one you cannot log into.
**Is it normal to feel restless and angry when I stop?** Yes, and it is on the diagnostic list. Being restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop is one of the nine criteria for gambling disorder. It passes, and [the first week is its own piece of work](/guides/gambling/the-first-week-without-a-bet).
**I gave in. Have I ruined it?** No. NICE's own guidance tells clinicians to treat relapse as something that "may be part of a recovery journey or learning event" and states that "relapse does not indicate individual failure". What you do in the hour afterwards decides far more than the bet did.
Sources
- [DSM-5 gambling disorder criteria (Connecticut DMHAS reproduction)](https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/dmhas/pgs/dsmdiagnosispdf.pdf). Loss chasing as criterion six, and restlessness or irritability on cutting down as criterion two.
- [NICE NG248, Harmful gambling recommendations](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng248/chapter/recommendations). Limiting access to money as part of the recommended practical stack, gambling as a dominant risk factor for suicidal ideation, the timing of that risk, and the wording on relapse.
- [Gamstop, About](https://www.gamstop.co.uk/about). What Gamstop Online blocks, the six month to five year range, and that registration cannot be cancelled during the period.
