I ran up £56,000 in debt and maxed out my mum’s credit card online gambling
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Twelve months ago I was waiting to get off the M1, the thud of the passing lorries juddering through me, when a thought crossed my mind: what if I just let them crush me? Better to end it, I reasoned, than come home and face the £56,000 debt I’d accrued from online gambling, and my mum, who had called sobbing an hour earlier saying she’d maxed out her credit card due to lending me so much. The honking of the car behind snapped me out of that dark path. I’ll be forever thankful for that impatient driver – they saved my life.
Last week, draft health guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence proposed that GPs should ask patients with anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts about their gambling habits, in order to flag those who might need further support. I think it’s a brilliant idea: people suffering from poor mental health are asked about their drug use and drinking, so why not this? Gambling addiction has the ability to ruin lives just as substance abuse does. A recent government review found that there are 300,000 problem gamblers in Britain – the knock-on effects of which are felt on 3.8 million lives.
It was only last October that, after 15 years, I stopped being one of them. After my near-incident on the motorway, I drove home and told my mum everything: that aged 39 I’d lost all of my savings, and hers, and I didn’t know what to do. It was so emotional – we sat there for about four hours, talking it all through, and she just couldn’t get her head around it. How could I have burned through everything, when I’ve always worked, and have a stable job in finance? She was panicking, blaming herself for not having a clue about what I had really been doing behind closed doors. I felt guilty and ashamed, but I promised her I’d get help and contacted my GP the next day. The GP referred me for counselling, and GamCare, the leading UK gambling charity, has been an incredible support.
People assume gambling addiction is just about blokes betting over the odds at the bookies, but it’s so much more than that. Mine started when I was a child, when I would go to the arcade on family holidays. My dad would give me £10 to spend – a good way of keeping me occupied for a while – and I loved it. When I got to my mid-twenties, though, and online gambling took off, I signed up to one site and things just snowballed horrendously. Instead of just being able to win fixed amounts like I had on the slots before, I could win big on the virtual kinds, and card games – enough for a night out with my friends, or more. One night, I won £10,000 across two hands of virtual blackjack.
Of course, I didn’t really win. Because like every gambler, instead of withdrawing the money and calling it quits, I kept going and going until there was nothing left. That night isn’t a proud moment for me, but it’s the truth of what the addiction really does to you; you think I’ll get it all back again. Common sense just goes out of the window.
My line of work meant I was always on a reasonable wage, so at the start, I didn’t feel too guilty about placing small bets. My partner, who I’ve been with since I was 20, was working all hours as a chef – which gave me plenty of time to stay up late after coming back from the office, or on weekends, betting away what I had, sometimes for 10 hours in a day. I could be up until six or seven in the morning easily, passing off the time I was spending on the computer to him as watching Netflix. If he saw the games open on my phone, I’d say I was just gambling with small amounts – £50, instead of £500.
I’d go to work exhausted, but continue to bet on my phone, waiting for the adrenaline rush of the next big win. When I moved to a new firm seven years ago, my colleagues assumed I was incredibly shy as I kept to myself, when really all of my focus was elsewhere.
I hid things well, and no one – from people at the office, to my friends or family – had an inkling. They were confused sometimes, like when I said I couldn’t do certain things because I didn’t have the funds, but I would make excuses about bills, and fob them off. Often, I was turning down those invitations because I wanted to spend the time betting instead. The dopamine hit you get when you’re winning is amazing: you’re happy and excited, quite literally jumping for joy when cash comes in. But when you’re losing, the lows are so, so awful, to the point where I would think about ending my life.
Just before the pandemic, my spending reached a point where my partner’s salary couldn’t sustain us both, so we moved back home with our respective families in Hertfordshire. My mum was caring for my grandma, who had dementia, and watching her deteriorate was devastating. During Covid, working from home, having no social life , I felt like I was in a black hole. Needing reprieve from seeing her decline each day, I became even more reliant on gambling to lift my mood than I had before. When my partner wanted to see me, I would make excuses, so that I could continue betting. I began drinking two bottles of wine every other night, then battling through work each day, but only because I reasoned that I needed a constant in my life, or I’d completely go off the rails. Lying to my mum about needing to borrow money for repairs to my car, when I knew I was going to fritter it away, put me at my lowest ebb.
I wanted to tell her or my partner what was going on, but I felt trapped, thinking I was the only person in the world with a gambling addiction this bad. I was scared he would break up with me if he knew the truth, so continued being aggravated or grumpy, or told him that I needed space, rather than confronting what was really going on.
I’m aware it’s changed the course of our lives: that if this hadn’t happened, we might have children, or still be living together. He’s been so supportive, and now that I’ve given up for good, I’m hopeful we’ll be living together again soon, as I’ve paid off £5,000 of my debt so far. The GP referred me for talking therapy, which has been amazing, and has helped me to see that my habit was the product of abandonment issues that began when my father walked out on our family when I was a child; gambling gave me a kind of comfort and release from that unaddressed pain. I’ve also connected with the gambling addiction community, and now attend several Gamblers Anonymous meetings each week. Hearing other people’s stories has helped me to realise that I’m not the only one like this, and not the worst person in the world, as I felt so often before.
If I’ve ever been tempted to bet after a stressful situation, I now message those in my network, and they’ve saved me from falling back into my addiction. I’ve also installed blocks on my phone and computer from accessing gambling apps and sites, and restrictions on my cards so I can’t make payments to those companies, so I feel on top of the triggers going forward. I’ve got a long way to go; I’ll always be recovering. But everyone says it’s like having the old me back – and I don’t plan to give that feeling up anytime soon.
*The author’s name has been changed. As told to Charlotte Lytton
