Eminem released albums titled “Recovery” and “Relapse”, so I guess I am not alone here. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, anywhere from 40% to 60% of recovering substance abusers will avoid relapse... sweet, my life is a roulette table.

Even as an anon account, it didn’t sit right with me that after writing an article titled “When The Addict Finds Bitcoin”, where I displayed the similarities between behaviors of altcoin trading and drug addiction and how I escaped the filthy scene, I found myself once again balls deep in shitcoins losing my hard-earned cash.

It’s really quite a pathetic story. In my last article I admit to the fact that I have a gambling problem.

The Relapse 

It was a few minutes prior to Sunday Night Football kickoff. I was already down $250 and my family was flying in for the week: I was hosting thanksgiving for the first time and I didn’t want to start the week in the holw so I had to get even. By the time I woke up on Monday morning I was down another $250. If my wife knew, she would have killed me. Bitcoin was either going sideways or slightly down while alts were pumping. 

Fuck I would do anything for money right now and this looks promising, I thought to myself. I had some “change” laying around and though I could make that $500 back on the pump and boy was I right. I was up that and more extremely quickly as I caught flashing pumps. 

Should I pull out now ? I made what I lost back plus a g. Nah, can’t sell myself short, no pun intended. Then right before my eyes I witnessed my first flash crash. Wow. 

Watching your portfolio lose value faster than you could hit the sell button all because you bet on a shitcoin that you barely knew what the abbreviation stood for is exhilarating... just as exhilarating as crashing your car.  

Here’s where it gets sick: this lasted for 3 days with minimal shitty sleep & a horrible appetite which resulted in decreased work and training performance. I actually reorganized my schedule to fit altcoin trading—what a joke (spin bike while staring at the 15 min chart instead of cycling along the Atlantic Coast, yupp.) I can’t even tell you which coins I was trading or how many times I bought and sold the same coins at the same price and watched till my eyes hurt. 

The Surrender 

I think I surrendered Wednesday night and rolled what was left of my money from this little “lesson” into Bitcoin. A weight was lifted off of my shoulders. 

Not to mention that while I was stuck in this trade and my article was posted I was getting the feedback and engagement that I dreamed of and more and here I am hiding in the corner like a crackhead trying to break even on alts. That sure made me feel swell about myself. 

Like I said in my last article, it was “thin ice” and I had run out onto it to meet the shitcoin shillers and took the plunge I deserved. 

My Thoughts

So it’s been a week and after some reflection here are my thoughts:

Do as I say not as I do—PLEASE, I have issues, but I also learn from them. Sometimes it just takes multiple burns on the stove top before I learn not to touch it. 

With the shitcoins I was trading, I had to go through the hashtag searches on twitter to gauge the near future. This is how people enter the Bitcoin space on Twitter as well so it really made me think of what I post, why I post it, which accounts I follow, and why. 

I’m not a millionaire. I make what I consider to be a modest salary, and that $1000+ punch to the gut hurt the bank, but not as bad as it hurt my mentality.

I was justifying my behavior. “Let me front load crypto time and Twitter time before fam shows up, then I’ll take a social media break”, I thought, hiding what I was doing to my wife, spending less time with my children. That’s some scumbag shit, to be blunt. Not me, just like it’s not me to write an article on how I escaped altcoin trading and as it’s getting retweeted and positive feedback im doing the opposite of what I claimed to have done in my article. 

This was not intentional, and it brought me tons of pain from various angles. I do not regret writing the last article, and I’m back on the Bitcoin bandwagon continuing down the maxi path.

I am writing this for similar reasons as my last article: to help others. If you learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourselves (hopefully you’re not an egotistical self learner like myself lol), then that makes me whole. 

Was all this meant to happen? I’m a believer in that. Let’s call it two steps forward, one step back. Everyone can use a good old cup or tea with some humble honey it from time to time. You gotta learn somehow. :) 

At this point I can confidently say that last time was really the last time. It’s not that hard of a decision, and with HODLing Bitcoin I have only made money and with altcoins I have only lost money. It’s black and white and writing these articles helps me decompress and stay accountable, and writing helps remind me of my mistakes instead of forgetting them as quickly as you can see that I do. I also have deleted and blocked myself from all sports gambling apps. Full time BTC moving forward.

This thing (Bitcoin) has changed my life for the better in ways I would have never thought (non-monetarily).

I hope this saves someone as stupid as me from losing their money. If you read this article and invest in an altcoin / shitcoin, well then this may not be the place for you.