Gambling Experiences
Gambling Experiences (person who gambled perspective)

Trying to make sense of gambling

Being exposed to harm through someone else’s gambling often came with intense emotions, like hurt, betrayal, anger or grief. Then affected others describe trying to make sense of why the person behaved as they had. Some report coming to the realisation that their loved one was experiencing gambling addiction, or that gambling was harming them. Affected others explain the reasons why they think that the other person experienced difficulties with gambling. This includes coping with life challenges and mental ill health. But it also includes that gambling was promoted and accessible around them. Some describe speculating as to the reasons for the gambling but never being sure they really understood.

Life challenges

Affected others talked about a very wide range of life challenges that they felt had contributed to the person close to them experiencing gambling difficulties. Gambling more could be a response to problems that were happening at the time, that any person could face, such as financial stressors, bereavement, relationship difficulties, or pressures at work. It could be a way of coping with mental ill health and past or present trauma. But they also reflected on what the gambling companies did which lured people in.

For some, they felt the person gambled to try and make money, to overcome financial difficulties.

I know exactly when it started, and I know exactly how I felt at the time. He’d become a single parent and money’s tight. He was a health professional, with two children. It’s hard, isn’t it? There’s never enough money to go around. It was something like bingo that came up on the TV when all of that started being quite a big thing. Those free, you can get £10 free play bingo and he won straight away. I remember how excited he was about that and what he was then going to take the kids away, and he never could afford to do things like that… I remember that time feeling, seeing his excitement and what that could do, but knowing, feeling my sense of dread at that time. Little did I know how big that sense of dread would be.

He’s never been well off. He’s always wanted to make his life better, and he always thought that money was the answer to that. And then gambling then became the answer to getting more money, or so he thought.

I can understand some of the motivations, and I can perhaps see how things that were stressful and perhaps things were already a cycle so it is quite hard to determine because it just seemed like it was never ending, a cycle of stress and gambling causing financial pressures and stress, leading to more gambling or not sleeping well, affecting mental health and other emotions and then that leading to gambling. I think I was also quite young so my mum and brother would have picked up on things that I wouldn’t of. So, they might have they probably would have a different answer, I think. They would have been able to recognise things better. I was often wanting in my own world. I think perhaps too egocentric. As a child I just thought about the world being my own world. I didn’t really have much capacity to except, to think about escaping the situation I was in.

And it was only as I got older that I started to empathize that there was more to it, and you know my dad wasn’t just a bad person. There was difficulty and struggles underlying it. I think perhaps one of the – one thing that might be causing things to get worse is that sort of financial pressure and stresses, perhaps. It was recognizing that the provisions in the household weren’t the same as, you know, his other family members or he wasn’t as well-off as his other family members, brothers and sisters and so perhaps talking to his brothers and sisters, or perhaps being reminded of things like that or the difficulties that he might have had, or just the difficulties at home that those might have been triggers. But I’m actually not too confident if I know that for a fact.

Kishan

It could be a traumatic event, that acts as a turning point, such an injury that stops future aspirations, or a parent leaving growing up, or a person not being able to see their children, or losing a job.

Unfortunately, he ended up damaging his back playing rugby, and I make this point because I think this was a point that started to change his career path. And I believe that might have been, never really discussed it a great deal but I do believe people sometimes in gambling they have certain things happen in their life, some people put it as trauma. But he wanted to be a P.E. teacher. I think he would have been a great teacher. And so, he had a compact injury playing rugby, and he was told he could never play contact sport ever again.

We have talked about this… our first childhood experiences for sure… He had a father who had been to prison. His father was then around when he got out of prison, but I think after a period of time just stopped contacting [partner] while he was still a little child. Then I don’t know, eventually settled down one day and started a family in England. [Partner’s] perception is he was a normal dad for them and a good dad to them, but very bad dad to him.

We were trying all sorts of ways to get [husband] access to his family, to his children, because he’s been denied access to his kids. I think that was the catalyst, really. The more we pushed for that and the more that didn’t happen, I think that was the catalyst for [partner] to start regressing a bit… I suppose gradually [husband] started going a little bit down in mood, feeling a bit more depressed about things, a bit fed up about things. He gave up his job, he just walked out of a job…Gradually, that just got worse because once he came out of that job and he didn’t have another job, it was like that mood dipped, it went down, down, down.

It could be that everyday life and work was hard. Or that the person was experiencing mental ill health, or not working due to mental ill health or experiencing isolation.

My brain had started to develop a lot more as I became a teenager, and I could sort of start to empathise with my dad and his struggles. I could see the things that he was going through, that he would work 12 hours a day, multiple days in a row… He must’ve been so tired… but after he’d wake up after going to sleep for four or five hours, he would go to the betting shop.

It seemed to be the scratch cards because he was in and out of work with different things, mental health, and depression, and stuff. It was only really like when he did have a wage and then he has money, there wasn’t a great deal that I could say about it. I think it became more and more of an issue.

That gambling was so heavily advertised and readily available meant it pulled people in.

It’s that accessibility. He went through a tough time in his personal life. He then spent a lot of time on his own, he wasn’t well enough to go to work for a little while. Kids were at school. Then he also did a lot of night shifts. Kids are at school, he’s on his own. He’s feeling fed up. It’s that buzz of that quick win. Those algorithms, they’re just so clever, aren’t they? They give people the win at the exact time.

New factors were increasing the pressures on him day-to-day, which meant his ability to handle his day-to-day pressures were getting greater. And as I said, I think as a result of that, he saw the opportunity or he saw a night on I think it was Ant and Dec he was watching with the family, and I think he saw an advert come up around 365 with Ray Winstone, if I remember rightly, saying it can be fun. He started and he became addicted to the products.

Some reflect that there were many things interacting in the person’s life.

I think there are some people might start drugs. That doesn’t work, they get into gambling. Some people might do gambling, that doesn’t work they then take drink. There is clearly interactions because I know of individuals who I’ve spoken to who have done all of the addictions, all three as they would say. Some have done two, some have only done one i.e., just gambling. A lot of these are all about coping. It’s almost that they’ve all been used as a way of coping with challenges in their lives, whether that be ex-servicemen, for example, whether that be people who have trauma for other reasons early on in their life.

And I do come back to [son] when he had that injury. I can’t say it’s the case and I’ve never really discussed it with him, but I do wonder. I know he always said that changed his life. He had an aspiration in life to be a P.E teacher. He couldn’t do it. And I could understand therefore, that was, I use the word, a traumatic experience. It would be in anyone’s life when you’re planning to do something and suddenly it gets taken away from you. Some people sometimes don’t see that sort of thing as being traumatic. But it is. And as I said, I think he then started. The alcohol was very quickly around that sort of time. But he’s obviously had ADHD all through his childhood. So in his case, it’s probably the ADHD that was a factor that maybe with that trauma led him to the alcohol, led him to the gambling. That would probably be what I would say. It was almost certainly the ADHD in his case was the primary driver of that. So, I think understanding all of the addictions, understanding why people get addicted is important.

John #2

For leisure and a social life

Some affected others perceive that the person started gambling and ended up gambling more for leisure and social reasons. Some people grew up with gambling around them. It was something they did with or saw their family do. For others, it was something they enjoyed doing with friends. People spoke about how gambling can be a big part of what a social group does together. Or it is used to pass the time. They said that gambling companies promote gambling as light entertainment and a hobby and encourage people to gamble more.

Some people describe how gambling was part of the childhood of their loved one.

He’s always had it around him from being a kid. His mum used to go bingo, his sister went bingo, his brother-in-law, who was part of his life from a young age used to go and play on the slots.

He was about eight years old on holiday with his parents and got given him and his brother, they got given a big bag of two pennies each. They went and played all the machines in the arcades like kids do. The big bag of coins was to last them the week, and [partner] got through all of his in one go and he wanted more straight away. He thought, “Oh, no, I need to do that again.” It all stemmed from there. As a teenager, his pocket money would go in fruit machines in fish and chip shops and stuff like that.

From a young age, he went where he wanted with who he wanted unsupervised. He talks about this very pivotal moment for him where I think his mum gave him some change and said, “Go and keep yourself occupied,” and sent him to the local arcade slot machine-type place. There was no you’re underage. He thinks he was about 12 at this time… He really attributes that was the beginning of addiction for him.

Or gambling was part of what they did as a social activity with friends or at work.

He started working with his brother-in-law and one of his best mates and it’s something that they did. When we did have rainy days, and they were meant to be doing landscaping, they just sat in the van all day and they’d just be on their smartphones gambling all day…It was a bit of everyone else was doing it, I’ll give it a go, and then boom, I’ve got some money and then that was it. It just spiralled from there.

I’d say the reasons he started gambling was a social activity. Other people in the office are doing it. He goes along to do it, everybody’s going off at lunchtime, why is he going to go and stay in the office and work while they’re all out down there? Then I also think it was because, well, I’m the only one bringing money in because my wife’s looking after the girls and wouldn’t it be great if I had more money to treat them and things like that. Then I think from when he was in there, it was like an escapism of like, this is his thing to do. It’s a way of, not a boredom killer so to speak, but, yes, just like get away from life or whatever it be. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I probably see that he was targeted through, well, if he’s regularly gambling and then gets invited to go and watch the races and then by gambling more, they get access to all areas or whatever to the horse racing.

Then there’s that incentive to keep gambling and that lifestyle that comes with it. Going with guys to the races and having a few beers and everything. It then sort of becoming a lifestyle so to speak but then that period happened, I’d say when I was young going like pre-teens and then it happened occasionally, but as it was more apparent that it was a problem that all that thing stopped but then that’s why I do not know whether he was betting on the horses online or whatever. I’d say that it started as being this escapism social activity. Just want to get some more money for my family to then be like, oh well, if I gamble more then I get invited to these places or this is quite nice and this is my own.

Emily

I talked about what it was he gambled on, which I pretty much knew anyway, but it’s horse racing. It started out as a very social activity on a Friday afternoon with the work lot, going down to the bookies, putting a couple of bets on the horses to see if they can bring anything in for the weekend. I think, from what I understand, it started as a social thing to do and then started to become a Friday ritual. My mum always said that she knew when he’d won, and when he hadn’t, because he’d come home and he’d be like, “Let’s book a babysitter. We’re going out, or we’re going to take the girls away.” Or like, “Let’s go out for dinner with them.” Or something like that. Then other times, he would just come home and wouldn’t say anything. My mum was like, “Oh, great. Well, that’s not good news.” He told me that it was with horses. I also remember when I was younger going into pubs and playing on the fruit machines. We would play with him as well, thinking it was a game. Sometimes we’d spend, I remember seeing him putting money in. I was very young and at that age, you think adults have all the money in the world, do you know what I mean? It’s only when I look back, trying to remember that far back and actually how long did we play for, how much money did go in then and stuff.

From what I understand, hasn’t been online. I think it’s more in-play betting, sports focused, not like casinos or anything. I had that chat with him. When I spoke to him about it, he was giving information, but then also he said like, “It wasn’t that bad. I didn’t lose millions of pounds.” Obviously, I now know it doesn’t need to be millions to qualify you as someone with a gambling addiction. Just the fact that if you can’t pay your mortgage or even just for the weekly shop or that’s your last £5, that’s enough.

Emily

Gambling more could be to occupy time.

Not having stuff to do and just sitting around bored. He’s not smoking anymore so the times that he’d go outside for a cigarette, he [00:43:00] wasn’t doing that anymore. If it was raining, they all sat in the van all day, there was nothing else to do, so boredom really and not having something to occupy him. He’s not someone that can sit still. If he’s not got something to do, then he’ll find something and his thing was gambling.

Addicting

Affected others describe how gambling seems to have developed from something the person did a little, to them getting more involved, to the point where gambling seems to take over their lives. They also described how gambling is turned into a whole experience and is designed so people do get hooked, so they spend more and more with gambling companies.

One parent describes how his son could not think about anything else but gambling. They were consumed by non-stop thoughts, images or sounds of gambling in their heads.

What I know from [son] is that he said I can’t think of anything else other than gambling. I can’t close my eyes to even try to go to sleep because if I do, all I see is a roulette wheel, flashing round. I can’t relax. So as a human being, when we are tired, when our body is drained of energy, our normal coping mechanism is to sleep, to let our body recover. But for someone who’s in this addiction, they just can’t do that, and they will not sleep.

Gambling stops being about the money. It is the experience and feelings that come with gambling that leads people to keep gambling.

He would say it isn’t actually about the pursuit of more money. He didn’t feel like there was ever a point where there could have been an amount where he would’ve been satisfied. He knew very logically, if I just didn’t do this, I would have a salary that would allow me to do anything that I wanted to do. I do not need extra money, but it’s more about this thrill of it.

People are on a constant “rollercoaster” of highs and lows when they are gambling. There is always the promise of another win. They cannot stop and are unable to get away from it because it is everywhere.

When I look or think about how [my brother] was, it seems to me almost like living on a permanent rollercoaster of emotions. There’s that incredible high moment, isn’t there, where you get something and for that brief moment, life might be all right and there’s a life at the end, that light is there, and then it’s quickly snatched. It’s like living on that, I can’t imagine what that is like. I think it’s just all-encompassing of everything. You can’t do anything else. Because it’s so in your face, there isn’t really an escape.

Gambling was his life, his priority, his passion, his buzz. He was a compulsive gambler. We were both in denial. Life was never the same. I gave my all however I was not happy. It was a continuous rollercoaster relationship. He was happy as he was gambling and getting the buzz.

Some people describe the person close to them as tending to get hooked on things. Partners especially would worry about what they saw as a pattern in the person’s life of getting pulled into things and doing them a lot.

I said, “I’ve woken up to you and you’ve sent me a Candy Crush invitation at three o’clock in the morning.” I don’t play Candy Crush. I didn’t realise what was going on was a lot more sinister that he’s got this addictive personality. I worked that out pretty quickly that he has got an addictive personality. A few months before this all came out, he was just on his phone all the time. I’d said to him a few times, “Are you spending any money on that game?”

He was playing a poker game, a bubble thing, a gem thing, all different games. I said, “Are you spending any money on that?” “No.” Okay. A couple of months later I say, “Are you spending money on that?” “No.” Well, when the gambling came out and I went through his phone, he was putting £10, £20 a week on these games, buying tokens. He was addicted and he was playing those all night long on just these games.

Anyway, a few months again prior, his son had said, “Oh, I’ve got really into cryptocurrency. It’s great.” I’m like, “Okay.” He was like, “Oh, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it.” I was like, “Whoa, hold on.” I said, “Okay, we’ll do it, but we’ll put in £50 each.” Because his son opened his account up for him as a birthday present with £20 in. I don’t like this because of this addictive personality.

Again, I didn’t know he was gambling, and I didn’t know anything about gambling. Cryptocurrency wasn’t a gambling flag for me because nothing would be. It was more an addictive personality issue at that point because I’ve really, really got to grips with this personality of his. I said £50 each, that’s it. I will play with that £50, but don’t put any more money in. All right. Well, my God, he was on this app constantly, on this cryptocurrency app, Coinbase.

He was on it constantly, and I’m not joking. He’s supposed to be working and he’s on his phone all day and all night. I said, “Have you put any more money in that? “Only 100”. I went “Don’t put more in.” I thought we agreed on this.” He’s like “Oh, no, no. I won’t.” One day I caught him red-handed on the app, and he put in about £350 and he could not put his phone down. He was checking it every few minutes.

Angie

In terms of for him, emails, notifications, I don’t know about anything like that, if they were keeping him interested, but I don’t think it would matter. He’s also the type that money will burn a hole in pocket. He wouldn’t even have to really have the temptation right there, he’d probably just go and find a temptation.

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