Time to change

Hello everyone,

My name in Aidan I'm 27 years old, I have 2 beautiful little girls aged 4 and 6, and a lovely girlfriend of 10 years... Unfortunately I also have a destructive gambling addiction, one of which I feel powerless to control.

I have finally had enough of putting my family through this dreadful addiction. They deserve better and if I continue the way I'm going I will lose them along with the respect and love from my wider friends and family.

As a bit of history, I started gambling at around the age of 14 in the local arcade. At the age of 17 started driving to the local service stations to play on the slot machines. At 18 I started going to the casinos, I soon self excluded myself. From then I have gone to fairly extreme measures to gamble, borrowing and on one occasion stealing money from one of the people I love dearest, driving hundreds of miles to the nearest casino to gamble, the list goes on.

Around 4 years ago I built up 21k of gambling debt, I recently paid that off and stopped gambling. I managed to stop gambling for 6 months. In the time I became a much happier and honest person. I was no longer possessed by gambling and had no worries about whether I could afford to do things or pay for birthdays and Christmas.I even bought myself a nice car and bought myself a nice watch.

Within the last 6 months I started gambling and have returned to my old ways. The car I bought now has a loan against it, the watch was sold losing a thousand pounds in the process. I am no closer to proposing to the mother of my girls and no closer to buying a house.

In January this year I took the bold decision to go self employed in order to hopefully earn more money and give me more time to spend with the girls. Work started pretty slow but recently things have picked up and I'm starting to see some cash for my hard work.

Since starting my new work my gambling has increased. 3 weeks ago I blew a reasonable proportion of my 1st paid invoice on online gambling. On Thursday My 2nd invoice cleared, I told myself that this money was safe and that I wouldn't touch it. A few hours & beers later I was on online roulette again gambling. I managed to blow the lot until there was nothing left, this money I needed for bills. This wasn't the first time I've done something like this, but this time it felt different. I felt so so angry, so guilty and really really depressed. Although I've felt this before it was so much more intense.

I came clean and told my partner what I had done. She is so supportive and she deserves so much better as do the children. So now enough is enough.

I don't want to be a waster all my life, I want to provide for my family and give them everything I was so lucky to be given as a child.

I'm going to gamblers anonymous next week, I'm going to get some one on one support. My partner is going to take over my finances and I am going to have no access to money.

I've stated this diary and will aim to update it at least once a week. I want it here as a constant reminder of what gambling had done to me and what it will continue to do if I don't stop.

Thanks for reading 🙂