My Gambling Addiction Ruined My Life | Minutes With | @LADbible

I decided to put it all into a bat, a horse and a horse race in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March 2018 and if that horse won I would have made that money back. He intended to pay everyone back if he didn't win it. It had literally become a matter of

life

and death and I was going to kill myself. He was one of those people who from a very young age was obsessed with all sports. I didn't really care what he played as long as he played. something and it was the only thing that bothered me, it was really all I wanted to do and then it wasn't until I was 15 when a professional club started to take an interest in me and they put me in the Northamptonshire academy, that's when I thought it was okay, This is actually something that could happen.

You eventually ended up going to Durham University to play cricket there and study, of course, yeah, so I was playing professionally full-time after I left school, so I came to Durham. In October 2006 I had a contract in Northamptonshire and

life

was pretty perfect at that point in my life. I had never made a bet. I didn't know much about

gambling

, it wasn't something anyone in my family did. None of my friends had the same kind of access and exposure that you have now and some of the guys I interacted with early on were interested, it was something they did and one Saturday morning we walked into a betting shop in the center of Durham.

I sat in the bucket chair in front of the machine. I had two quid in my pocket left over from the night before and, being an overconfident, arrogant and slightly naïve 19-year-old, there was The time I put my two quid into the machine, I put it on the only number that was different. from everyone else on the screen. Zero is the last number that appeared and I thought carefully about the possibility of it happening twice in a row and in 12 seconds. then two pounds became 72 pounds and my life changed forever and that was my first bet.

I was always able to tell people that I can't explain the feeling it gave me because I had never had it before and, strangely enough, I would never have it again. Yeah, it gave me a high and Buzz like nothing else and people talk about drugs, that was definitely my drug and how The Habit progressed from that point on. I guess I was different from most people at university because I had a lot of things. more money than most people because I was paid to play cricket. I had a student loan like everyone else. A generous mom and dad.

So I had more money and I thought, "Well, I can still afford to do what everyone else is doing." Who cares if I lose a little at the game? The only thing that happened from the beginning was that it started to take up more and more of my time and I wasn't always totally honest about how much I was doing it. With my peers there would be transparency about it, but I would also go two or three times at other times of the day on my own when they didn't realize while I was at University in 2007, my Cricket career ended. and I found it really difficult, that moment was tough, it affected me a lot and I started betting more and more because I had the money, at that time it would replace sport in many ways and then when I moved to London it was a big point of inflection because I moved to London, I think for the wrong reasons in a lot of ways, because I kind of followed the crowd because I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life if I didn't play sports and that's what all my mates were doing.

I thought it was best to move to London to work in finance to try to make as much money as possible and a big change in my thinking was that before I was very motivated by some kind of success and achievement and now I only cared about money and I think that was partly because I was

gambling

, but also because the culture and the environment around me was what made people take that in that world and, in fact, all I wanted was all the money possible what was the largest amount you earned during this period of time having received good news at work telling me that I was going to get a promotion a little raise a Christmas bonus all those things that you long for as someone in that world .

I went out with my friends to celebrate that night before meeting up with my friends. I walked into the store and made the biggest bet I had made up to that point. a football accumulator um there were six games and two of the games had to be a draw three of the games both teams scored and one of the favorites had to lose I put 500 pounds on this bet I went upstairs and started getting drunk Mates and that night 500 pounds became 34,968 pounds um and that was the biggest victory I had ever had and would ever have from that moment on, not only did I feel like I was totally invincible, I thought it would happen every time I did it when it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter , it is forbidden for it to happen again at some point, but actually the worst thing was that it became like a drug, because now if I didn't earn that amount of money.

It didn't give me the same rush buzz hit like a drug and I wanted that every time I did it so I started putting in more and more each time I bet bigger bets so I kept doing it but I also started to feel guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, stupid emotions that I wasn't used to dealing with and I started fighting them by drinking even more alcohol, taking drugs and life started turning in a very, very different direction. I never told a single person in the world that. I made that money that night, it was pretty hard, but I also lost it within a few weeks and when it was gone I wanted it back, I started trying to get it back and then once I lost that money I started going into debt. and I overcame a short period of time that completely changed the nature of my work, it was like walking from the office to the Lloyd's building.

Historically, on the way there I would stop going to the store for 15

minutes

and place a bet. that now turned into times where I would be there for maybe three four hours, not do what I was supposed to do, then make up a lie about what had happened and instead of that happening once a week , It started happening three, four times a week or every day at that time. He had four bank loans. I had five credit cards. I had missed a couple months of rent payments. And the financial situation was starting to get pretty dire to tell the truth. um, I was really starting to struggle with my mental health, although I didn't want to tell anyone about it, of course, um, but yeah, financially it wasn't very good, but if at the time I had quit, it wouldn't have been so bad. .

It ended up being certain that he had put in about three and a half stone. I had all this debt and I thought, what are you doing? I decided to try and do something about it and leave London at the beginning when I first converted. As a teacher I felt that this was the moment that gave me the opportunity to stop and I tried and while I was doing it I wasn't doing it all day every day and I thought I would solve this problem, but then when the first series came. The holidays came, things started to go wrong in my life.

I started doing it more and more and eventually I would probably spend 75

minutes

of my day betting because I could do it on my phone. There's always a reason to be on your phone. people thought I was on WhatsApp social media emails, all those things that people do, but I was just gambling, um, and that meant I could do it while teaching, it meant I could do it while doing anything else, um, and I just did it. all day every day that's not an exaggeration um it just completely consumed the entire salary they paid me it usually lasted the first or second day of every month um and then I thought well how am I going to pay my debts?

My bills keep betting, I live, I can pay anything. I resort to payday loans. I had 23 different bank and payday loans and then I guess all those types of avenues had dried up and it was at that point that I started turning to individuals and eventually out of desperation. I would make decisions at work that I would regret forever because I would begin to abuse my position as a teacher. I worked at a private school. I wasn't stupid. I knew how rich some of these people were. They had access to that information and I began to take advantage of it and lie to them to borrow money from the parents of the students I taught.

I lied to them why I needed the money. They would like them to respect me. They were worried about me. They had money to lend. I, um, promised to pay them back. I didn't give them a single cent back. I would go all in and when it all came to a head it turned out that there were 113 different individual people I had borrowed money from, ranging from around £75, which doesn't sound too bad, to the better part of £30,000 and He had half a million pounds in pure gambling debt. Obviously now I'm spending the rest of my life paying and it started to take its toll um living in this double life was exhausting and I actually knew in my heart that it wasn't sustainable there was no way I could maintain this pretense essentially that's it the call that I was working on and I realized this scale and the scope of the problem because they had received complaints from all kinds of different people and they had opened an investigation and at that moment I knew that the consequences were going to be as bad as they could be . that I was going to lose my house, I knew I was probably going to lose my job, there was no place I could continue being a teacher there or anywhere else, um, and I knew that I was potentially facing some sort of criminal conviction, I could go to prison because I knew that I had fought, I had been forging signatures on contracts for all kinds of different things and after receiving that news I borrowed a sum of money from someone I had already borrowed money from, I told them a lie.

I'm not very proud of what I said, look I desperately need £10,000 but I promise I'll give it back to you at the end of the week and that's because, by coincidence, it was the start of the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival , the biggest festival of the year. biggest week of the year and I honestly thought I could turn ten thousand pounds into half a million so I made a series of speculative bets and even thought I had a chance and got a bit of luck on Thursday It will never happen again when a jockey and a trainer won almost every race and the £10,000 he had started with was suddenly £58,000.

I decided to put it all into a bet, a horse in a horse race, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. in March 2018. And if that horse won, he would have gotten that money back. I intended to pay everyone back. Yes, I probably still would have lost my house and my job, but at least I could have gotten everyone and my life back. I could continue, but if I didn't win, it had literally become a matter of life and death and I was going to go and kill myself um and I saw that horse race in a lesson. I had kids sitting in front of me doing the work.

I saw that horse race in a lesson. I had kids sitting in front of me doing the work. a horse lost by a few lengths and my whole world collapsed. Did you ask anyone for help at this point? I had always seen a way out and at that moment there was no way out as far as I was concerned. I tried. essentially drinking myself into submission, overdosing on antidepressants, sleeping pills, I even tried to run my car off the road in some sort of 48 hour period before I finally arrived at a train station and was about to do the unthinkable that I was flooded with tears, I had travelers around me, many of them were looking at me, some of them laughed at me and thought what's wrong with that guy because I stood there in a complete mess, crying, but I really didn't.

I don't care because it felt real, the only person I dared to say to in a way that I felt was right was my best friend in the world and that's my little brother. I didn't want to call him. I did not want it. for me in the state I was in because I think he might have reacted differently if he had heard that so instead of calling him I texted him and told him what I was about to do, unfortunately for me after having tried to call me, then he sent me a message and that message saved my life.

He said, look, tell me what the problem is, talk to me about it and I promise I'll try to help you. And as simple as it sounds, that's what I needed. I listened and that's what stopped me from doing it. I went home. I initially confessed to my girlfriend and then to my parents and that was very difficult, but I think one of the things I reflect on more than anything else is his reaction. It was so different from how I thought it was going to be, how I had played it out in my head for the last few years, for so many years that they didn't disown me, they didn't go crazy, they recognized I had a problem, they were glad they did it.

Still here and needed help. I was admitted to rehab for one of a better period. I went for treatment on Harley Street in London. And those few weeks, months, were really very difficult. I like that a lot of people wanted a quick fix. I thought, oh,I'll go in now, I'll get treatment, I'll come out and I'll heal, but I actually had to learn pretty quickly that this was something that doesn't just go away, it's something that I manage essentially for the rest. In my life, the process was difficult. I had to come clean to people and have some of those conversations, especially with people who I owed ridiculous amounts of money to, and I had to admit that everything I had told them was complete nonsense and that it was actually gambling, it was very difficult, but people have been much quicker to forgive me than I think I ever will forgive myself.

Were you able to calculate how much money you spent on gambling for how many years? Yes, I had to do it. Pass I had to come back through messages Emails Bank statements um gambling accounts I think it turns out that over the course of those 12 and a half years I had transacted around two million pounds worth of online betting, which was terrifying in himself, the volume of bets I made each day was I was angry because I had 76 different online accounts opened in the names of 65 different people, so the scale of it all was way beyond what even I thought it was and in my mind Head was pretty big, ultimately no one should go through what I did and I often tell people I'm one of the lucky ones because I'm still here.

Too many lives are lost to gambling every year and that just can't happen and now you do a lot of campaigning work to help people struggling with

addiction

, what does that entail, so now I work full time for a type of organization that specializes in education and prevention, we use our lived experience to try to raise awareness about the problem, educate people about the dangers and pitfalls, reduce stigma, help. People detect signals in themselves and in other people. Do you have any advice you would like to give to someone who thinks they might be addicted to gambling?

Understand that it is very easy to lose control very quickly and the sooner you can recognize it. I've lost control and I do something about it, I better have a problem with the fact that gaming is so ingrained in culture and society and yet it's still a dirty word, um, it's still something that the people don't talk openly. people only talk when they win, never when they lose, it's often something people are almost embarrassed to admit they do. I think it would have been much easier for me to talk about a problem with drugs, alcohol and gambling, that in itself.

This is not right, so asking for help is difficult, but telling someone will be the best thing you can do. One of the things I had to learn, above all, was that it was about managing this for the rest of my life. life um and now I can do that um with each passing day I feel like I'm further away from a bet that can only be a good thing yeah, I ran into someone I knew, I'm not going to say friend You know, like an associate, he got in the aluminum foil a substance that I immediately assume was heroin and I was showing him how to smoke it.