Best Of

Also, good to note: using boosters at the start does not help. Available are (1) colour bomb; (2) wrapped & striped; and (3) jelly fish.
But as you can see the game starts with a very limited narrow board, while trouble is only unlocked when you have cleared the indicated number of coloured candies.

This is a great demonstration of how the game uses events to manipulate us. I commend you for choosing sleep over the two party poppers. I found myself in a similar situation with the Bakers Box a few days ago and did exactly what you did: I went to bed.

We're in control, not King!

Did you play all the 18,000 levels without saving this game? Did you have a different, previous Candy Crush account saved on Facebook?

If that is the case it would explain why your gold disappeared. Gold cannot be transferred between accounts. As soon as you open a brand new game to start from level 1 you create a new player ID, even if you do not save the game. This new player ID is essentially a new account. So gold does not pass on if you then use the same game to log into an already existing account.