Gambling has totally devastated my life

Anthony Franklin StopGamblingUK

I am 37 years of age and have gambled for more than 20 years of my life. For more than 20 years I have realised that I am a problem gambler but have struggled to learn to control my demon.

 

Little did I realise when I innocently started playing those slot machines all those years ago, the impact gambling was to have on my life. As a direct result of gambling and my associated behaviour I left home at 16 years old and didn't see my family, brothers or sister, mum or dad for six years.

 

Gambling progressed from fruit machines to fixed odds terminals in betting shops and latterly to online gambling. The urge to gamble and dreams of a big win meant that I gambled whenever I could get the money. It is hard to estimate the total amount of money I have wasted on gambling but it runs into many hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years.

 

As I learn to abstain from gambling I find that the way back to a normal life is long, hard and complicated. I have to accept that I cannot live a normal life. I cannot have a bank account with a debit card. I must either carry cash or an expensive prepaid MasterCard. Renting a property is not easy as most letting agents now insist on credit vetting potential tenants. If I want most utilities including gas, and electric or the telephone I must either have an expensive prepaid meter or pay hefty deposits for service. As I go along I am always learning of new things that I cannot have in my post-gambling world including sometimes employment! 

 

And if I have a lapse, which has happened and is not totally surprising on the road to recovery, then the online casino will happily clean out my prepaid MasterCard. They don't care that I have a problem and that on many occasions I have advised them of that problem.

 

I am currently in the process of writing a book on my life and its crazy twists and turns on the path to gambling destruction.

 

Below is an extract from my forthcoming book:

 

"I regularly feel what I call the morning after syndrome. This is how I describe the morning after I’ve wasted money gambling. It used to come on only after I’d lost significant amounts of money, but now I get it after losing just a few pounds. Anyhow it’s a rubbish feeling. It’s a sort of pit in the stomach that just won’t go away. It dampens all the life in my soul and puts dark clouds over everything.

 

I have no energy and on these days just getting up becomes impossible. I dive into a dark pool where negativity, bitterness, sadness, desperation and anger all merge together. On these days I can’t clean or cook or do anything other than sleep. All I can do is try and sleep these feelings off. I can’t possibly work, what is the point? Why go to work for eight hours to earn maybe a maximum £100 or £200 when I have just wasted maybe 20 times that in a couple of hours. At these times it doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand it, and I don’t understand why I do it. All I know is that I don't feel good."

 

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