Hi everyone,
I just want to share a quick round up off my story , hopefully by admitting this to such a large volumes it can help make it all easier and I can gain advice from people who have walked the road
I'm a 22 year old man who has been gambling since 16/17 , at the start it was pretty basic. Few pound on a football bet at the weekend . If I won happy days of not there was no substantial amount lost so no care. In my time I had a few big football and golf bets up. For stakes as big as £5 I was winning £500+ . And putting the money to good use on cars , holidays clothes. Then it started to progress . I found horses, and greyhounds. These only started out the same way with small stakes just for the fun of it.
But they accellerated ... And quick. I started gambling more , and more frequent . Stakes getting marginally bigger . Now I was in the area of doing doing £20 bets and winning £1000+ . This money wasn't solely spent on material goods anymore . Only a mere fraction was put to any real use . The rest squandered . Back Into the bookies .
I had lost a susbarantial amount of my savings, but that was my money. I would never gamble anyone else's. I seen myself losing a weeks wages in a few hours and scraping by myself for the next week as I didn't want to make anyone suspicious .
About 8 months ago It all finally caught up on me. I squandered all savings, was in a rut that I couldn't get out off. So I turned to my girlfriend and finally admitted I had a problem. A problem that came to no real shock to her . With her help I was able to beat I. I went 6 months without a bet . And felt great for it. Had money for nice things and it all seemed good. And given my occupation beating this had gave a real sense of achievment because of the charecter I had shown.
You see my job is a cashier in a bookies. The same thing putting money in my pocket... Was the same thing it was being spent on.i would never let my gambling affect my job. I would never bet with my own firm or take money from the till but I was surrounded by the demons I was trying to forget . And when I had done this 6 months bet free It felt as if I had overcome a real struggle.
Then my girlfriend who had help me beat this had broken up with me. She had all accounts of mine locked down and they hadn't been used in months . A few weeks after we broke up I asked her for my passwords because she had no right to that sort of information no more . She gave me them and inside 1 hour I had blown a weeks wages. I felt so low again, I had worked so hard to crumble. I made her change them all again and to this day I still don't have access to my accounts... That's access to account I used to use. Of course with the amount of online bookmakers it's easy to open a new one with a new firm. Which is what I did.
I guess it was a way of acting out , a way to feel something after us breaking up. Over the Christmas period I spent most nights out partying. Trying to move on and forget. I hit some nice winners and was up £1000 and really enjoyed myself over the Christmas period . But when the luck stopped and the money dried up it was back to old ways. I had a new account with no deposit limits . I went mad . I was borrowing money from friends to pay other friends . Just last week I had won a football bet of £420, coincidentally enough I owed about £410 out so this was a saving grace , a way to get my head above the water at last. The money reached my bank this morning at 12.00 am. By 1.30 I had blown all £420 on blackjack. I couldn't sleep all night. I had my out but went chasing more. It was the final straw in many a way . Could turn out to be the moment that saves me totally .
I have beat this once, last time I had help. This time not so much but I hope I can do it and finally get myself clear of debts and start living my life without gambling.
Thanks for taking the time to read my story
Hi seamy and welcome to the forum. It's good that you have acknowledged your gambling is a problem and come for help. You just need to add to that real honesty with yourself/others, understanding and awareness and commitment. The honesty with yourself is halfway there, you need to acknowledge though as well that you will never win in the long run as a gambler, you can't predict, there is no winning system, that's why you are here. You will be tempted to believe there is one last win meant for you, there isn't. Don't kid yourself. You might try to understand why you gamble? You mention that once things went wrong in your life you sought comfort in gambling. This is a big trigger for many and perhaps talking to gamcare might help you understand or get help with understanding this better. Finally you have to be 100% committed to beating this thing! anything less will lead you back to loss. Block access to the sites, give over control of your money etc. anything to give you some space to work on this addiction. One good thing is at your age you have a real opportunity to kick this and put it down to experience. I'm only really managing to do that at 40 after many slips and falls. I hope it goes well for you.
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