A Guide to Self-Exclusion: Healthier Boundaries
Gambling platforms are required to let a customer lock themselves out. The mechanism works because it moves the decision to a moment when the person is thinking clearly, and makes it expensive to reverse later. There is no reason the same idea cannot be applied here, and a shop that sells these things should be the one saying so.
Write the rule when you are not deciding
A limit set in advance is a different object from a limit set at eleven at night. Put it somewhere you will see it: a note in your wallet, a line in your calendar, a message to a friend. The specific wording matters less than the fact that it exists outside your head.
Limits worth considering
- A frequency ceiling — no more than once a month, or once a quarter, whatever is honest for you.
- A spend ceiling per quarter, written as a number.
- A never-alone rule for anything above a microdose.
- A never-on-a-workday rule, which mostly protects the day after.
- A no-combining rule, especially alcohol and anything prescribed.
Stop conditions, decided in advance
Write down what would make you stop entirely, before you need to know. Disturbed sleep that does not recover. A flat affect that outlasts the week. Anything cardiac. Anything that worries someone close to you. Reaching for it to avoid something rather than to look at something.
If you would not accept the evidence from someone else, do not accept it from yourself.
How to lock yourself out of this shop
Email us and ask for a block on your account and email address, and say for how long — three months, six, a year, permanently. We will apply it, confirm it in writing, and we will not lift it early, not if you ask nicely and not if you ask twice. You can lengthen it at any time. That is the whole point of the mechanism.
Where to get real help
We are a shop and we are not qualified to counsel anyone. In Germany, the BZgA runs a free, confidential and anonymous addiction helpline on 0800 313 31 31, and the Sucht & Drogen Hotline is on 01806 313 031. Across the EU, the EUDA maintains a directory of national services. Telling one person you trust is usually the step that actually changes something.
