You relapsed tonight. What to do before you sleep

If you want to talk to somebody now

These lines are free, they run at this hour, and none of them is us. You do not have to have a plan before you call, and you will not be asked to install anything.

• United States. The National Council on Problem Gambling runs the National Problem Gambling Helpline, printed on its own pages as 1-800-MY-RESET, with call, text and chat. Its Help by State directory connects you with local support and resources across all 50 states, in its own words.
• United Kingdom. The National Gambling Helpline, run by GamCare, on 0808 8020 133. The NHS page on gambling states that it is free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for information, support and counselling.
• The block at the foot carries these again, with a line for Norway.

If Fold'em is already on the phone, SOS is the screen for this. It opens from anywhere in the app and asks nothing of you: six calming tools, everybody in your circle whose number is on this phone, and the helpline for your country. Nothing on it can change your block, end your term or open an app.

There is a widget for it too, a small home screen pad whose whole face is one tap to SOS. It reads no data at all, so it can never show a day count, a status or anybody's name, and it offers two faces so what sits on your home screen stays your decision.

Nothing about tonight has to be decided tonight

Two things before any advice. A relapse is not the end of a run and it is not proof about the kind of person you are; the people who work on this professionally treat it as part of the shape of the thing rather than a verdict. And the hour you are reading this in is the worst hour for any large decision, including the decision that it is hopeless.

So the list below is deliberately small, and there is nothing on it you cannot do again tomorrow.

Close the session, and leave the numbers alone

Stop playing, and then do not open the balance, the bet history or the banking app. Counting the damage at this hour is the most reliable way to start the next session, because a figure large enough to frighten you is also a figure large enough to feel like something you have to win back. It will still be there in the morning, when you will be somebody who can look at it.

If you can, put the phone in another room while you find the number you are going to call.

Tell one person

One is enough, and it does not have to be the person it would be hardest to tell. Saying it out loud once tonight moves it from something you are managing alone to something that exists outside your head. A helpline counts as the one person if there is nobody else at this hour.

If you decide later to seal the phone, that same person is who a keyholder is: somebody who holds one answer, sees a status and never sees what you browsed or what anything cost. The page written for them says exactly what they would and would not be shown, which is usually what makes the ask possible.

Three things worth changing on the phone

Do these in order, and stop whenever you have had enough. Any one makes tomorrow slower than tonight was.

Why the quick methods do not survive the next bad hour

Most people have already tried two or three of these. They are not useless, and the failure is almost always the same shape: the person who set it is the person who can unset it, in the same Settings app, in seconds.

Deleting the app. Reinstalling is a search and a tap, and nothing about the account, the balance or the saved card goes anywhere.

Turning off app installs. Screen Time can restrict installing apps, which does make reinstalling harder. It is also a switch in the same Settings app, and it blocks every other install while it holds.

A time limit on the app. A limit you set for yourself is one you can extend for yourself, and willpower at the limit screen is exactly what you were trying not to depend on.

Giving somebody the Screen Time passcode. Better, and still not what it looks like. Apple's own page on a forgotten Screen Time passcode says to open Settings, tap Screen Time, tap Change Screen Time Passcode twice, and, if asked, enter the Apple Account email address and password that you used to set up the Screen Time passcode. If that account is yours, the reset is yours too.

A filtering DNS profile. Strong while installed, and removable by you in Settings in about the time it took to add.

None of that argues for doing nothing. It argues for reading which failure belongs to the tool and which to the arrangement around it, which is the whole of the next page.

In the morning

Two things, when you are somebody who can do them. Look at the money once, with another person if that is possible, and decide what the next payment is rather than what the total means. And if you want the phone different by tomorrow night, the order that holds starts with a register rather than an app, because a register reaches accounts a phone never touches.

Then the urge itself, which has its own page. What is worth knowing tonight is only that urges are episodes rather than a state, and that the waits in this product exist because a decision made inside one rarely survives the next morning.