Recovery
Recovery (person who gambled perspective)

Turning Point

Affected others describe a turning point in both their own and the other person’s recovery journey. People tend to reach a breaking point before they stop gambling. This often involves affected others. They may find out about the gambling for the first time, or be involved in an emergency, such as the person going missing or being suicidal. It can also be the person is motivated to stop gambling because of the loss off or potential to lose the relationship. For affected others, it might be when they end the relationship or seek support for themselves. This often occurs after both affected others and the person who gambled have experienced a great deal of harm.

Turning points for the person gambling

Relationships can be very important in helping people to stop gambling. Affected others often encourage their loved ones to seek help. In some cases, it is only when the affected other leaves or is close to leaving the relationship that the person is motivated to access support and to stop gambling.

We were going to GamAnon, which is the family support version of GA. We dragged my son there basically and said, “right, you’re going, non-negotiable”. I think he went there for us. He’d been a couple of times before that, but with no real conviction but then something clicked for him.

At the moment, he has legitimately been more or less gamble-free for a year. That came about because I actually ended the relationship, just couldn’t handle it anymore. Then this brought about a really huge life-altering change on his part that included, yes the gambling has stopped.

Immediately after we had broken up and he was really not in a good place and was very willing to say, “I know that this is my fault and I know that gambling is the core problem,” he then accessed some free counselling through work. I think it did touch on the gambling problem a bit…In the points prior to that, I had really tried to persuade him to go to a group or go to a counsellor or someone like that.

Affected others often said that the person who gambled reached a period of crisis before stopping. This crisis might involve the gambler going missing, leading to police intervention, or it could be a result of running out of money to gamble with, having exhausted all avenues to obtain funds. Affected others were often caught up in these crises.

I was glad that the police forced the issue really. Because what they were saying is, look, we’ve had this guy as a missing person that many times now, with a threat of suicide. He has got to be seen. Fair enough, he wasn’t admitted. I would’ve liked it better if he had been. He wasn’t admitted but at least it meant that he got the ball rolling for some intervention, which was helpful in the end.

He was on a late shift, so he would have been working two while ten, so he wouldn’t normally have been home until about 12:45 because he used to get the bus. But he didn’t come home, and I hadn’t heard from him. I’d been sending messages on WhatsApp, but we weren’t delivering, they were just having one tick. His ex had even text me because I think she’d not received any child maintenance, so she text me to see if I had spoken to him. His Mum had text me to see if I’d spoken to him. And at this point, I was starting to get a bit like worried. Gambling did not cross my mind. I was just thinking, maybe I’ve done something wrong, maybe he was angry at me for something, we’d had a fallout and whatever, or his phone had broke. I honestly did not know.

But when he didn’t come home, then I was really worried. So, I woke up. It was probably about 2:00, 2:30 when I realized that he wasn’t in the room, and I went downstairs, and he wasn’t there, and I rang his phone, and it went straight to voicemail. I thought right, this is a bit strange now. So, I text his mum to see if maybe he’d gone there, if maybe we’d had a row or whatever and he’s gone there. And straightaway she text me back saying can I ring you, which at 3am in the morning is a little bit strange. So, she rang me, and she just basically came out with it and said that she discovered that he’d been gambling again and that she’d said to him that if he didn’t tell me she would and that she wasn’t sure how long it had been going on. But it seemed as though it had been going on quite a while.

And, yeah, I literally sat there in the bed, and I describe it now as like a jigsaw puzzle, it just like came together in front of my face but quite quickly. All I was thinking was, oh, that’s why this didn’t happen. That’s why we didn’t go on that holiday. That’s where that money went. That’s why I didn’t move in. That why, you know. Because I couldn’t get in touch with him and I rang his work and they wouldn’t tell me whether he’d even been there or not, I didn’t even know, we had to file him as a missing person. So, after a few long hours of us trying to figure out where he might be and everything kind of coming to light and whatnot, he finally made contact the following morning just before dinner time.

Charlotte

The crisis point was literally he came back round with his wife to see me and his mum. He was broken. I’ve never seen someone just sitting there so broken. This wasn’t the time after he said he was going take his life. This was about six months after that period. His wife had contacted me then saying, you know, [son] is talking about taking his own life. We then went to speak to a GP. He saw his GP, he was given some support, treatment as such. Again, you then think Oh, gosh, that’s good. It’s now dealt with. You see all these steps as things as an affected other, oh yes, that’s been dealt with now, that’s the problem solved. But actually, the medication was helping him, but it hadn’t solved the underlying problem that he had.

So about six months after that period of being where he’d been suicidal, he was gambling with the intent of taking his own life if he managed to get the amount of money that he felt he needed to leave his wife and his kids so they could live without him. But he lost it all on the final bet, so it’s the only time I could probably say I was glad he lost probably over £100,000 or £150,000. Not many parents would probably say that, but if he hadn’t lost that, I’m not sure if we would be having this discussion at this moment in time. But because he lost it, he was suddenly in that position that a number of gamblers find themself, which is I’ve got no money. I’ve got this debt to pay. What do I do? and I can’t get any more money now, so what do I do? So, it’s a case of I expect talking to someone, you feel you can talk to. Which was me and my wife. And that was a really difficult time because I could see he was just broken. He just did not know how to deal with it. And obviously, we had to sort things out. He had outstanding, large outstanding bills to pay to the builders which had to be paid so that’s something that me and his mum had to sort and then to manage through.

But at that point my wife said there’s something more to this, and then she found details of GA and literally the next night 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 over the last four and a half years. 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.

John #2

Turning points for affected others

Affected others often reach their own turning point, usually at the moment they realise they cannot control the other person’s gambling and need to prioritise their own needs.

I think as a dad you go into rescue mode, don’t you? And you try and solve it and you try to solve it logically by paying him off and bailing him out, different things that went on. And then you get angry, and then you get frustrated because you couldn’t solve the problem. When really, it wasn’t my problem to solve. Going to GamAnon and realising that I had no control over my son’s gambling was probably the start point of our recovery.

We attended Gamblers Anonymous, made the GP aware of his addiction. Immediate family were told basics as were some close friends. They were proud of him as I was. However I did not seek help myself as I thought I was fine. I was oblivious to my needs… I continued to give all I had to repair the damage the compulsive gambler had caused… In hindsight, I should have sought help at this critical time.

Some reflect that, with their current knowledge, they might have supported the other person differently.

Sometimes learning a bit more as I have done now, I almost certainly would have dealt with the situation slightly differently.

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.

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