Do this first
About an hour, in this order. Each step works even on the days you have no intention of using it, which is the entire point of doing them now.
Motivation is not a plan. The reason this sequence comes before anything else is that every item on it keeps holding after the feeling that made you start has worn off. You are not relying on yourself at nine on a Friday. You are making the bet harder to place than the urge is willing to work for.
If you only get through two of these today, make it the first two.
1. Self-exclude, where you live
This is a list the operators are required to check. It is not a promise you make to yourself, and that is exactly why it is first.
The programmes differ far more than anyone expects. Some cover online betting, some only cover casinos, and a few states run several separate lists so that banning yourself from one leaves the others wide open. Some end by themselves on a date you will have forgotten. A few cannot be undone at all.
Do the form now if you can. Several states need a notary or an appointment, and if yours is one of them, book it today and carry on down this list meanwhile.
2. Put a blocker on every device
Blocking software is not a wall. It is a delay, and a delay is usually enough, because the urge that gets you to open an app rarely survives half an hour of obstruction.
Install it on the phone first. The phone is where almost all of it happens, and a laptop blocked while a phone sits unblocked in a pocket achieves nothing.
A comparison of what each one actually covers, and what it does not, is coming. Until it is here, the helpline at the top of this page will tell you what people in your state are using.
3. Ask your bank to block gambling
Many banks and card issuers can refuse gambling transactions at the card level, and most people have no idea it exists. It is usually a toggle in the app or one phone call.
The useful part is the cooling-off period: at many banks, switching the block back on is instant, but switching it off takes a day or two. That delay is doing the same job as the blocker, at the point where the money actually moves.
4. Close the accounts, properly
Closing is not the same as deactivating, and operators are not always keen to make the difference obvious. A deactivated account waits for you and can usually be revived in a minute, often by replying to the email they will send when they notice you have gone quiet.
Ask for permanent closure, in writing, and keep the reply.
5. Get off the lists
The texts, the emails, the push notifications, the free bet that lands exactly when you are bored. These are not random, and they continue long after you stop. Turning them off is tedious and it is worth an afternoon.
6. Tell one person
One. Not an announcement, not a confession to everybody. One person who will not be shocked and will not make it a drama.
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that makes the others hold, because it ends the part where everything about this has to be managed alone and in secret. If there is nobody in your life you can say it to today, the helpline at the top of this page is a person, free, any hour, and they have heard it before.
When you have done these
You will have put several obstacles between an urge and a bet, and none of them depend on how you feel tomorrow. That is a reasonable hour's work.
What a page cannot help with is the evening itself: the specific hour when the urge arrives and there is nothing to do with it. That is a different problem, and it is what the book is for.