Recovery
Recovery (person who gambled perspective)

Support from others with lived experience

For many affected by someone else’s gambling, an essential part of recovery is connecting with others who have faced similar challenges.

There is generally a lack of understanding about the experiences of those affected by another’s gambling, leading them to feel isolated. Connecting with those who have similar experiences allows people to feel more understood and able to open up. It’s important for affected others to have their own safe space to share and discuss their experiences.

Both affected others and those who have gambled often share their stories through Gamblers Anonymous, Gam-Anon, other support groups, and social media platforms.

We took him to his first meeting at GA. And when we got there, we also joined the GamAnon rooms, and we have been there ever since… And I think [son] would say that night he walked into GA was the night that changed his life for him. It was the first time he’d ever sat down with other people that he felt could understand him. Up to that point, no one had understood him.

For me, going into the route of family’s room helped me to be accountable as well. It helped me to offload, but it also helped me to be accountable to other people about what I was doing because you do crazy things yourself when you’re involved with somebody who’s completely out of control. You do things that you’re not proud of yourself.

My mum and I joined a family affected other group with GamFam. That has absolutely helped my mum understand that the trust issues that she has and her complex around money stems from the relationship she had with my dad… I think for us, it was definitely eye-opening, in fact, that we knew that there’s a lot of things that’s still happening now that happened then. It’s helped my mum in that sense. For myself, I think just being a part of this community, it’s just awareness enough and to actually sympathize with my dad a little bit more.

He tried a couple of things like going to the doctors, doctors couldn’t help him because they didn’t really understand it. They sent him away and said we will look into it, see what support there is. There wasn’t really anything. He tried various different things, but it never really worked. Then this just carried on as a cycle over the years. I feel like everything’s all right, and then it’d all start again, and then eventually we found Gamblers Anonymous. He would always make excuses why he couldn’t go. Eventually, he did and that was probably the best thing for him, but for me, I was still suffering. It was the trust, it was the money issue because we was in a part of our life where we wanted to get a house, we wanted to have a family. We were already married. It didn’t make sense how we’d gone from the relationship we had to what we’ve got now. How close we were to how much of a different person it felt like he was because when he was gambling, you didn’t really notice it at the time, but you look back at it and you think his behaviour did change. He’d be snappy, he’d be withdrawn. He’d be staying up late at night. One of the things that made me laugh is when I found out that I could go for support at Gamblers Anonymous and I was a bit like, why do I need to go? I’ve not got the problem, but I did need to go because I needed help. Eventually, I did go and I met people that was going through similar situations, they were either partners, brothers, sisters, mothers, whatever, children of gamblers. It was something someone said that always resonates with me, she said, “For years when I didn’t realize, but we never got any post.” That was the same for me because this was before COVID, so I went to the office to work. He worked as a landscaper in the local area, and I never even twigged that, there was never any post for him, but actually, there was, he was intercepting it. He’d be going home at lunchtime or he’d see the postman and he’d hide it and that’s how I found things because I said it was just simple things like opening a door and there’d be a letter in there like, “Oh, what’s that all about?” Or I found something that didn’t make sense and I would do a little bit of digging, “Oh my God, he’s been gambling.” Then I’d challenge him about it.

Clare

It’s that being able to open up and not be judged but having people in similar situations and see that you can get there. There’s people that go that one of them’s 40 odd years where they’ve not gambled, but they still go [to GA], they go religiously to the meetings. Knowing that he can get help, he can talk to people without being judged.

I think it’s unfair for me to comment about treatment but for us it wasn’t effective. It wasn’t until we got to GamAnon where we actually spoke with people who got what we were talking about. We isolated ourselves. We never spoke to anyone about it. We carried it all on our own and then when we got GamAnon and were surrounded by people who had that genuine empathy for us rather than that insincere sympathy is when our recovery started.

By accessing structured peer support, and I mean going beyond six to 10 sessions of counselling, I’m talking about long term to medium term aftercare has enabled us to really, really work as a family. And I would say now we are very, very fortunate that as a family now, we’re in a better place than we are pre gambling. But we don’t take that for granted. We know tomorrow could easily go the other way. But look, if he did gamble tomorrow, I’d like to think with what we’ve learned is it would just be a blip and we would now be better equipped to deal with it and we wouldn’t be going back to day zero.

I just I had this weird feeling, and I’ve asked other affected others if they’ve had a similar feeling, if it’s all real because it just doesn’t seem possible that a betting shop could allow someone to be addicted in the way of losing their life, their life that, you know, multiple hours every day, hundreds of pounds every day that the shop, the people that work in the shop could allow this to happen, that the companies themselves could be allowed to happen, that legally this could be allowed to happen. But, you know, somehow, it’s true and it kind of has been sort of a gaslighting sort of feature in my mental health I guess up until that point.

Then as I started to look into it, I realized this is a whole big issue that the industry has managed to sweep under the rug and I mean, we could talk all day about all the issues that there are. Yeah, I think that sort of gets me to where I am today. And as I’ve started to look into the issue, I managed to work with others. At first, I was anonymous, so I came out of the gambling crisis and that was my way of sort of promoting awareness about the issue. I didn’t realize that there were others trying to do the same. As I started to go on Twitter, I realized that there were many others doing the same. I met up with a few. I started to build a sort of community of people that I could trust and friends and then eventually I de- anonymised a couple of months later, I think about five- or six-months in. I changed my name and that’s as part of the podcast The All Bets Are Off podcast. So that came about and that’s when I started sharing my own experience in a similar way to, as I have done today. And several months later, we ended up setting up talk gen, and now we’re a charity called Gambling Education Network, and that sort of leads me today

Kishan

Some report negative experiences when they have looked for help or support online. For example, forums that view the person who gambles negatively.

I tried to get some advice from some online forums for affected others and didn’t have the best experience with those. I found them quite negative places to be, a bit toxic, sort of very much leaning towards the you can’t stay with this man. He’s never going to change. You’ll never be able to trust him again. You’ll literally have to count every last penny that you have in the house and all these kinds of things, and it absolutely terrified me… I quickly came off those.

I tend to steer away from the forums because I find that they’re kind of like gambling hating people a lot of the time. I’m sort of a big advocate for the fact that everybody’s journey is completely unique to them.

Get Support

If you feel like you need support or someone to talk to about your own or someone else’s gambling, there are several organisations who can offer help, support and answer any questions you may have.

Take Part

We are inviting people to share their experiences of any kind of difficulties due to gambling.
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