Dashboard
Everything here works better as a short daily habit than an occasional deep dive. Start with a check-in, then pick one other tool.
Today's check-in
Recent check-ins
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Settings
Choose whichever forms of gambling apply to you — this changes the trigger lists and the words used in the training games throughout the app. General Gambling is checked by default; swap it for whatever's specific to you.
Appearance
Pick a look, or let it follow your device's own setting automatically.
What are you working on?
How your form is built to hook you
Updates based on what you selected above — this isn't about willpower, these are engineered features.
Training intensity
This setting now lives right inside Push Away, Steady Eyes, and Stop Signal — open any of them under Train and you'll find it there, next to the game itself.
Ride the Urge
Psychologist Alan Marlatt's "urge surfing" technique treats a craving as a wave: it builds, peaks, and passes — usually within 15–20 minutes — whether or not you act on it. Stay on the board while it passes.
Your log
No sessions logged yet.
Push Away
Approach-Bias Modification. Addiction trains attention and motor tendencies to automatically move toward cues tied to the habit. This drill runs that training in reverse.
Before you start
A word flashes center-screen. If it's gambling-related, push it away (↓ / tap Push). If it's steady-life, pull it closer (↑ / tap Pull). 30 trials, ~90 seconds.
Your history
No sessions yet.
Steady Eyes
Attention-bias modification, using the dot-probe paradigm. This drill always rewards attending to the steady-life word, training disengagement from gambling cues.
Before you start
Two words flash side by side, then a dot appears where one was. Press the arrow key (or tap the side) matching the dot, fast. 30 trials, ~1 minute.
Your history
No sessions yet.
The Long Game
Episodic future thinking paired with intertemporal choice. Miedl and colleagues used fMRI on pathological gamblers and found pairing a money choice with a vivid personal future memory shifted brain valuation circuitry and reduced impulsive choice in the moment.
Step 1 — Your future cues
Add specific, personal future moments. Not "be debt-free" but "seeing my balance hit zero and screenshotting it."
Step 2 — Play
A series of real choices: less money now, or more later, with one of your cues reminding you what "later" looks like.
Your history
No sessions yet.
Relabel It
Built specifically around slot machines and multi-line electronic games, though the underlying skill applies anywhere near-misses show up. A 2025–26 eye-tracking study found that people who practiced consciously labeling a near-miss as "loss" — instead of "almost" — visually disengaged from it faster afterward. The math doesn't change, but where your attention goes does.
Why this exists
Two structural features are specific to slots and similar electronic games: near-misses (two matching symbols plus one just off the payline) and losses disguised as wins — a multi-line machine can play a win jingle and animation for a payout that's actually less than what you bet. Both are proven to keep people playing longer, and both work below the level of conscious math.
The drill
You'll see a series of short outcome descriptions. For each one, decide fast: is this a WIN or a LOSS — using the honest math, not the feeling. 15 rounds.
Your history
No sessions yet.
Stop Signal
Go/no-go inhibition training paired with gambling cues — building a fast, automatic "don't" reflex.
Before you start
Words flash quickly. Tap / press Space for every steady-life word — do nothing for a gambling word. 40 trials, ~1 minute.
Your history
No sessions yet.
Triggers & If-Then Plans
Gollwitzer's research on "implementation intentions" (1999) found a specific if-then plan, made in advance, roughly doubles follow-through compared with a general intention like "I won't bet."
Pick what's live for you right now
Your saved if-then plans
No plans saved yet.
Session Lock
"Chasing losses" — gambling more after a loss to try to get even — is one of the strongest documented markers of a gambling problem, and large-scale tracking studies confirm it's most likely to happen within a single session, in the moment, not as a calm later decision. A limit set now, before any urge is active, is worth more than a promise made mid-session.
Thought Log
Gambling runs on a small set of distorted beliefs. Neuroimaging (Clark et al., 2009, Neuron) found "near misses" activate reward circuitry almost like a win. Naming the distortion takes some of its power away.
Your thought log
Nothing logged yet.
Facing It
Research on why people delay treatment for years finds shame and secrecy near the top — not the odds, not the math. This module tests that fear against reality and builds tolerance for it in small, deliberate steps.
Daily honesty check
Telling one trusted person is consistently one of the strongest single steps people describe in recovery. Secrecy is what lets the cycle keep its grip.
Self-compassion break
Use after a slip, a strong urge, or a wave of shame. Neff's three-part exercise: mindfulness, common humanity, self-kindness.
Nothing written yet.
Prediction vs. Reality
Name the specific thing you're afraid will happen if someone finds out. Rate it now. After it happens — or after looking honestly at the past — log what really occurred.
Waiting to be tested
Nothing pending.
Resolved — predicted vs. actual
Nothing resolved yet.
The Disclosure Ladder
List conversations you're avoiding, from least to most frightening. Work from the bottom up.
Rehearsal
Pick something from your ladder. Write roughly what you'd say, rehearse it out loud, rate anxiety before and after.
Your rehearsal history
No reps yet.
Reframe Drill
Matching shame-driven thoughts to a steadier, accurate read — quickly and repeatedly, which is what actually builds the habit.
The Compassionate Letter
Imagine someone wise, warm, and completely on your side. Write to yourself as them.
Nothing written yet.
Do This For You
Doing this because your family is scared, or because a partner gave an ultimatum, or because a court told you to — those are real and valid starting points, but research on behavior change consistently finds something important: the reasons that actually predict someone staying the course over years are the ones that come from inside, not the ones handed to them by other people. This isn't about guilt for having outside reasons. It's about deliberately growing your own.
Two lists
Your check-ins over time
Nothing logged yet.
Values Compass
Pick the things that actually matter to you, then look honestly at how close your daily life is to them. The gap between a value and your current behavior isn't a moral failing to punish yourself over — it's just information about where to put your next small action.
Pick up to 5
Your past compasses
Nothing saved yet.
Integrity Streak
Not just "did I gamble" — did you keep your word today, to yourself and to other people, in the small ways too.
Quick honesty check
Nothing logged yet.
Self-Worth
What you did is not the same question as what you're worth. Those get fused together easily, especially in early recovery — this is a space to deliberately pull them back apart.
Separate the behavior from the identity
Your entries
Nothing written yet.
Emotional Toolkit
Four emotions that show up constantly in recovery, and a specific, evidence-based skill for each — not "calm down," an actual technique.
Anger — the STOP skill
Stop what you're doing. Take a breath. Observe what's happening in your body and the story you're telling yourself about the situation. Proceed with a response you chose, not the first impulse.
Anxiety — paced breathing
Slow the exhale longer than the inhale — try in for 4, out for 6. This isn't a metaphor, it's physiology: a longer exhale directly activates the body's calming (parasympathetic) response.
Shame, guilt & embarrassment — Opposite Action
Shame's urge is almost always to hide, isolate, and avoid eye contact. When the shame doesn't fit the facts — or acting on it wouldn't actually help — the skill is to deliberately do the opposite: show up anyway, make the call, stay in the room.
Fear — name it to tame it
Put the specific feeling into words, out loud or in writing — not "I feel bad," but "I feel afraid that my partner will leave once she knows the full number."
Self-Help Library
A starting list, not an exhaustive one — search these titles directly, since exact links change over time. Nothing here is gambling-specific advice; think of it as the broader library this kind of work usually draws from.
Books
Atomic Habits — James Clear (habit and identity-based behavior change)
The Let Them Theory — Mel Robbins (letting go of what you can't control)
Self-Compassion — Kristin Neff (the research this app's compassion tools are built on)
Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (shame and vulnerability)
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts — Gabor Maté (addiction, compassionately explained)
Codependent No More — Melody Beattie (relationships around someone else's — or your own — addiction)
Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl (meaning and purpose, even in hard circumstances)
The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk (how stress and trauma live in the body)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson (choosing what actually deserves your energy)
Think Like a Monk — Jay Shetty (purpose and mental discipline)
Podcasts
The Mel Robbins Podcast — practical, research-backed personal development
On Purpose with Jay Shetty — one of the most listened-to health and wellness podcasts going
The Happiness Lab — Dr. Laurie Santos (Yale psychologist, science-based)
Ten Percent Happier — Dan Harris (mindfulness, practical and skeptic-friendly)
Unlocking Us — Brené Brown
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Podcast — Mark Manson
Feel Better, Live More — Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (physician-led, health and habits)
Therapy for Black Girls — Dr. Joy Harden Bradford
The Hardcore Self Help Podcast — Dr. Robert Duff
The Tim Ferriss Show — deep-dive interviews on habits, mindset, and performance
YouTube
Improvement Pill — animated, practical self-improvement breakdowns
Actualized.org — Leo Gura, deeper personal-development philosophy
Therapy in a Nutshell — Emma McAdam, LMFT (practical CBT and anxiety skills)
HealthyGamerGG — Dr. K (mental health, has covered process addictions directly)
The School of Life — emotional skills and self-understanding, thoughtfully made
Dr. Ramani — relationship patterns and boundaries
Charisma on Command — confidence and communication
Psych2Go — bite-sized psychology explainers
Big Think — ideas from a wide range of experts, not just one voice
Matt D'Avella — minimalism, habits, and intentional living
Journal
For when a check-in isn't enough room. Expressive writing about difficult experiences — in real depth, not just a line — has a genuine research base: Pennebaker's decades of work on writing about stressful or emotional events found measurable benefits for people who wrote honestly about what they were actually going through, compared with writing about neutral topics. Nothing here is scored or analyzed — it's just yours.
Write
Past entries
Nothing written yet.
Relapse Prevention Plan
Build this once, on a calm day. What you do in the first hour after a slip matters more than the slip itself.
My high-risk situations
My supports
If I do slip
Progress
Concrete, visible progress supports "episodic future thinking" — imagining a specific better future measurably reduces impulsive choices (Rung & Madden, 2018).
Set your clean date
Est. not spent
Training sessions
Thought log entries
Money
General education on climbing out of debt — not personal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, talk to a nonprofit credit counselor or a licensed financial or legal professional.
Two common payoff strategies
Avalanche: pay minimums on everything, put extra money toward the debt with the highest interest rate first. Mathematically pays the least total interest.
Snowball: pay minimums on everything, put extra money toward the smallest balance first. Pays off individual debts faster, which research on habit formation suggests helps some people stay motivated even though it usually costs a bit more in total interest.
Neither is "correct" — it's a real trade-off between total cost and momentum.
Payoff calculator
Add what you owe. This runs the math for you — it doesn't recommend a specific action.
| Name | Balance | APR % | Min payment |
|---|
Where to get real help
Nonprofit credit counseling (NFCC.org) — free or low-cost, accredited, can help build a real plan and sometimes negotiate with creditors directly.
Be cautious with for-profit "debt settlement" companies — many charge large upfront fees and can damage your credit further; research any company through your state attorney general's office first.
Bankruptcy is a legitimate, legal tool for some situations, not a personal failure — a licensed bankruptcy attorney or a nonprofit credit counselor can tell you honestly whether it fits yours.
Rebuilding structure
A separate account for essential bills only, moved automatically on payday · blocking apps built specifically for gambling (Gamban, BetBlocker) · self-exclusion through your state gaming commission or the sportsbook apps directly · freezing or locking cards through your bank's app · automating bill pay so essentials go out before anything else is available to spend.
Find a Meeting
Meetings
Find a Therapist
Rather than list individual providers (whose insurance panels and availability change constantly and are impossible to verify here), this builds you a direct search against the real, maintained directories.
Search by state
Other ways in
Call the National Problem Gambling Helpline (1-800-522-4700) and ask directly for a gambling-specialized counselor referral in your area and insurance situation — this is one of their core functions, not an inconvenience. Many states also fund free or low-cost gambling-specific counseling through their state problem-gambling council regardless of insurance — worth asking about explicitly.
Community
A shared, async board — not a substitute for GA, a sponsor, or a therapist, and not moderated in real time. Posts here are visible to everyone using this app.
Hate, harassment, or cruelty of any kind isn't tolerated here — toward anyone, for any reason. It gets removed, and it gets you banned. This is one of the only places some people have to say the truth out loud. Protecting that is not optional.
Post something
Stories
Shared by people using this app. Not vetted or fact-checked — one person's experience, not a guarantee of what this will do for you.
Share yours
Goals & Plans
Concrete, specific goals hold up better than vague intentions. Talk one through with Guide if you want help shaping it, then save it here.
Add a goal
Active
No goals yet.
Completed
Nothing completed yet.
Accountability
Give a code to specific people you trust — a sponsor, a partner, a therapist — so they can check in on your progress without you having to report it yourself every time.
My share code
View someone's journey
Enter a code someone shared with you.
Resources
This app is a companion to treatment, never a substitute for it.
Immediate support
National Problem Gambling Helpline — 24/7: call or text 1-800-522-4700 (also 1-800-GAMBLER / 1-800-MY-RESET). Chat at ncpgambling.org.
Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call/text 988, 24/7.
Treatment & community
Gamblers Anonymous (gamblersanonymous.org) · Gam-Anon for family/partners (gam-anon.org) · nonprofit credit counseling (NFCC.org) · a therapist experienced in CBT for gambling — see the Find a Therapist tab, or the helpline above can refer you locally.
Self-exclusion programs
Most states with legal gambling run their own free, confidential self-exclusion program through the state gaming or lottery commission — searching "[your state] self-exclusion gambling" will find it directly. The National Voluntary Self-Exclusion Program (NVSEP) covers casino properties and online operators across several states at no cost, working with state problem-gambling councils. Individual sportsbook and casino apps (FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and others) also have their own in-app self-exclusion and deposit-limit tools under account settings — features and any support offered vary by operator and state, so check the current details directly in the app rather than relying on secondhand claims.
Apps that block gambling sites and apps
These work at the device level, blocking gambling sites/apps directly, and complement self-exclusion rather than replace it: Gamban (gamban.com) blocks gambling sites and apps across your devices. BetBlocker (betblocker.org) is free, built by a UK gambling-harm charity. Both are commonly recommended alongside self-exclusion, not instead of it — search the name directly to confirm current availability for your device.
Using this site well
Treat the training games and journaling tools the way you'd treat a promising but early method: worth doing consistently, worth pairing with the fundamentals that are actually proven — CBT, Gamblers Anonymous, a therapist, self-exclusion, telling someone you trust — and not worth betting your recovery on alone. Every tool in Train explains its own evidence right where you use it, including where that evidence is thin.
Share this
If this has helped you and you're open to sharing that, passing this along directly to one person is worth more than posting it anywhere.
Our Story
Every tool on this site started as something private — a way to speed up one person's own recovery from problem gambling. Not just white-knuckling through the cravings, but actually rewiring the habits underneath them, facing the shame instead of running from it, rebuilding trust with the people who'd been lied to, and climbing back out of the financial hole gambling leaves behind.
The tools that actually helped got kept, and the site grew because the real fight turned out to be bigger than any one habit. It's not just about not gambling — it's about who you're becoming while you fight it. That's why this isn't only urge-resistance games: it's built around the research on why people actually stay stopped, why shame keeps people stuck longer than almost anything else does, and what it takes to trust yourself again once you've lied to the people closest to you.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped being just one person's toolkit. If it was helping, maybe it could help the next person too — so here it is, built by someone who's still in the middle of this, not someone looking back at it from the other side.
I'll Be Back was created and funded by a compulsive gambler in recovery. It is — and always will be — free, in full, no catch. If you're able to give, it helps keep this tool alive, and helps it reach the next compulsive gambler like us.