Emma's Recovery Diary - 5th July, 2026

Wow, did I think in 2021 when I first started playing Roulette on an online casino that I'd have taken out two loans at £8,000 & £10,000 and be sat with just £1,000 in the bank? 

Unbelievable, right. But I will pay these loans off. And I will kick this addiction into touch. 

If you like a story, read on...

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Truth is, I've always gambled. Sports betting, couple of quid on the horses when I go to the races - no bother. Take it or leave it, I don't care. 

Then, I found Roulette. And that was it. Addiction.

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I've always had a bit of an obsessive personality, I love simulation games - Football Manager, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Sims - I can play for hours. Turns out, I can play Roulette for hours, too.

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I started with 20p per bet and when I managed to win off it, that really was the game changer for me. I found myself watching Youtube videos on how to defeat the system. 

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My relationship when I started gambling had been deteriorating. I gambled because I felt low, lonely & quite frankly...bored. I was on my own a lot. My partner worked long hours and I was in the middle of changing jobs (I had just sold a business so had some money to play with). When my partner finished work, they would go see family in Manchester and it felt like I was forever on my own with my two dogs. 

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On November 30th, 2023 I took a significant loss and decided enough was enough. My addiction has always been fueled by alcohol (and I suspect my intake will actually drastically decrease as I start this journey a 2nd time, as a result of stopping gambling). So even though, I had consumed a fair amount of alcohol on this particular evening, I do, still, remember frantically searching for my driving license to provide ID to sign up for Gamstop. 

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December 1st, I woke up a new woman. 

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Within the next month, I split up with my then partner after explaining on countless occasions that I didn't feel like they were meeting my needs emotionally. I can remember having a day off work and my partner called as they was on their way home and I can recall the conversation like it was yesterday...

"Are you hungry?", I asked.
"No, not really", they said.
"Oh, okay, I'll get changed then" (knowing I was going to have to go out to get some food, even though I wasn't well.
"Oh what you having?"

That was my partner all over. It felt like it got to a stage where they never wanted to be around me, but they also had the biggest FOMO you could imagine. 

I knew in that moment, we had hit breaking point and I called my 6 year relationship quits on the spot. If my partner can't be bothered to nip to Greggs on their way home from work but would rather make me, ill, leave the house to go and get it, what's the point? It sounds silly when you say it like this & in isolation, it probably is - but this was just PART of the problem. 

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We continued to live together in hope that we could work it out, but we never did. I began seeing someone else who became a huge distraction to the gambling and the addiction. I didn't want to gamble, I'd found a new addiction. In hindsight, it was unhealthy. And our relationship started extremely unhealthy because of this. 

Thankfully, we got past our issues and we have as of April 7th, celebrated our 1 year anniversary.

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I spent most of 2024 dealing with the emotional fall out in my life. The rash decisions I felt I made because I had stopped gambling and didn't know how to handle my emotions.

I gamble because of that now. If I don't know how to feel about something? Gamble. Something upsets you? Gamble. Something angers you? Gamble. 

It really is the process my brain goes through. 

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April 2025, I officially start my new relationship. We had been seeing each other for a while now and at this point, decided to move in with one another (by the way, we have been friends for years so it's not like we don't know each other. We're both 32 & 33 and lifes too short). 

In July 2025, we had a rather bad row and I struggled. Badly. I did not know how to cope. We lived in the same house, I couldn't ring anyone to rant, I couldn't leave the house to go anywhere because I'd had a drink. What do you do, Emma, when something upsets you?

GAMBLE.

I'd gone 19 months without a single gambling transaction until this point (albeit, I had blips where I tried to create my Dad an account but they soon realised it was me because of my IP address and blocked me). 

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It's July 2026, I've took out two loans (1 for 8K, 1 for 10K), I'm thousands of pounds down. I sit with 1K in the bank. 

Today, I spoke to Sara on the live chat - I felt heard, like my addiction was real. 

What drug addicts see their drugs advertised on TV daily? They don't. 

Gambling addicts do. 

But I refuse to use that as an excuse any more.

I'll elaborate on my story eventually, but journal entry 1, complete and I don't ever intend to stop. 

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My name's Emma, I'm 32, I'm a recovering gambling addict. I've recovered once, I'll recover again. This time, I won't ever go back.