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Chris

Chris is 40 years old and works as a commercial manager. He is also the trustee of a gambling charity and is a peer support worker. He started gambling when he was 30 years old betting on football, but his gambling worsened when he was cross sold more addictive products by the industry. He recently received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which he was not aware of during his gambling. He has reflected on how he used gambling to escape and cope with how he was feeling at the time. 

Chris attends Gamblers Anonymous where he says he met other people who understood what he was going through. He would like the gambling industry to ban VIP schemes and conduct affordability checks. He wants others to know that it is Ok to ask for help; the industry develops addictive products, and it is Ok to reach out for support.

Contributions

Show text version

In fact, when did I, when were the times I stopped gambling? The times when I stopped gambling was if I ran out of money or I had run out of time. When I mean run out of time, I mean, like, I’m three hours late getting home from work kind of run out of time. It was never oh look at that, I’ve placed that bet, and I won that bet and now I’m going to go home. Or I’ve placed that bet and I’ve lost that bet. Now I’m going to go home. It didn’t matter if I won or lost, I couldn’t stop. So, to know that you’re somebody who is consumed like that and thinking about it twenty-four hours a day, you don’t understand why. I couldn’t understand why that was the case when the world and you know, I’m watching the telly and it’s like people are out having fun according to adverts. You know, the mates are walking down the road talking about putting these bets on together. So why am I sitting in this isolated state feeling horrendous and deserving to feel like this? doesn’t make any sense to me. So, yeah, I just felt like there wasn’t other people like me because the world wasn’t showing it. So that made it incredibly difficult to talk to anyone about it, and it was only in 2015 when I first went to the problem gambling clinic that I suppose my dad then started to realize that there was more to it than kind of me messing up regularly.

Chris
Stigma
Show text version

Whatever day I felt uneasy on the way to work, so I never planned to get off. I always planned to get to work, and I had this feeling the other week and I put a tweet about say, I’m on the train I feel uneasy but I’m getting to work. This is like a wonderful feeling because I wouldn’t have to been able to do this in the past. I just couldn’t stay on the train. I’d get off in Romford, and I’d get off at about eight o’clock in the morning. The Wetherspoons didn’t sell alcohol to 9:00, so I started going into the bookmakers. This is how it started in Romford was I’d go into Paddy Power. I don’t know why I chose Paddy Power because there was Paddy Power, BetFred, Coral, and Ladbrokes, all in a little square. And then there was a Wetherspoons next to that, and there was another Wetherspoons just down the road and it was just like pubs, and it was pubs, bookmakers, across the road a little loan sharks. Thank God I never had to go in there. But you know, it was that kind of set up and that kind of environment. And also, interestingly, right next to one of the worst train stations for suicide in the country, which, you know, which I’m not surprised, I’m not surprised about. So, I started going and gambling in bookmakers in some sense because it was necessary for me to do something before the beer was served, actually. And then when the beer was served, sometimes I would go into the pub and then go back to the bookmakers, or I would just go into the pub and get my laptop out.

Chris
Harm
Show text version

I self-referred myself to the Problem Gambling Clinic in London, which was great and would have been fantastic for me had I really put my heart and soul into it and wanted to be there. I was in a bad place where I’d already told my family twice before that there had been gambling problems, and I’ve been bailed out of debt issues and stuff. When I say bailed out, I was always paying them back. But, you know, my dad always looked at the financial side at that point, he didn’t realize that – he does now, actually, he’s on my podcast if you want to listen because he’s on and he talks about like from the family side and what he realizes that he should have done, rather than what he did do. Where he was just worried about the financial side and truly believed I wasn’t going to gamble again, didn’t realize the addiction side of it, you know, the illness side of it. And I went to a Problem Gambling Clinic because I think I thought I have to. I’ve got to prove to my family this time I’m doing something about it. Went there, it was a 12 session CBT course. It was really good. I didn’t go to all the sessions; I didn’t do the homework. I spent some of the time in a pub instead of going, the Toucan, quite often around the corner in London which is a nice little Guinness bar. That’s where I would be some of the weeks. And the reason I didn’t stop gambling was because I was too scared to stop drinking is the honest fact. I couldn’t stop gambling until I stopped drinking

Chris
Recovery
Show text version

But a very good way I found to knock yourself down very quickly and for other people to see the consequences very quickly and for you to feel absolutely horrendous when you tell them is to gamble. Because I knew that I couldn’t stop gambling. I wasn’t doing it to win. I was doing it to escape, like I said at first, and I was escaping at first, but then I started to feel the consequences and when I felt the consequences, I felt like I deserved the consequences, whether those consequences be not being as good at work, not getting the promotion that I deserved. You know, just missing family things, feeling crap about myself. They were feelings that I felt – it’s weird, feeling crap about myself I felt comfortable with. I feel like it’s where I was supposed to be.

Chris
Gambling Experiences
Show text version

I sent an email saying I need to self-exclude. They sent something back which said, well, actually, I don’t know the exact words, but you need to through the website or you need to go and fill in this form or whatever. I didn’t do it. The next day, I went back to them and asked for more free chips, and what they did was they came back and said we want to bring your attention to the email you sent yesterday. That was the only thing they did. And I sent one back and said don’t worry about it that, I’ve self-excluded from some others so you’re now my favoured casino. Somebody there should be going this guy, look at what he’s been betting, and we should have already intervened, but we didn’t. He’s now asking to self-exclude. He’s changed his mind. There is an issue here. They said, “OK, no worries”, and they gave me a matched bonus. I then gambled for another 12 days, or something I then managed to stop.

Chris
Show text version

In fact, when were the times I stopped gambling? The times when I stopped gambling was if I ran out of money or I had run out of time. When I mean run out of time, I mean, like, I’m three hours late getting home from work kind of run out of time. It was never oh look at that, I’ve placed that bet, and I won that bet and now I’m going to go home. Or I’ve placed that bet and I’ve lost that bet. Now I’m going to go home. It didn’t matter if I won or lost, I couldn’t stop. So, to know that you’re somebody who is consumed like that and thinking about twenty-four hours a day, you don’t understand why. I couldn’t understand why that was the case when the world and you know, I’m watching the telly and it’s like people are out having fun according to adverts. You know, the mates are walking down the road talking about putting these bets on together. So why am I sitting in this isolated state feeling horrendous and deserving to feel like this? It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, yeah, I just felt like there wasn’t other people like me because the world wasn’t showing it. So that made it incredibly difficult to talk to anyone about it. And it was only in 2015 when I first went to the problem gambling clinic that I suppose my dad then started to realize that there was more to it than kind of me messing up regularly.

Chris
Gambling Companies

The first thing is they need to take that onus off individuals. And there’s talk about safer gambling. I don’t want safer gambling, I want safe gambling.

Change

There’s no ombudsman, there has to be an independent ombudsman. I have got my subject access request from some online casinos. I can very clearly see the issues with them, as can they. I’ve written to them, and I’ve said this is what you have done wrong, these are your failings against your licence conditions. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. No, we can’t do anything. Unless you want to take us to court, we won’t do anything, and this is the point. If there was an independent ombudsman, whether or not I was to get some redress or not, at least somebody independent has looked at it and I think that’s so, so important because at the moment, they can just do whatever they want. And it’s just totally unacceptable.

Change

I mean, research, education and treatment there needs to be like a mandatory levy so that money comes in. It’s crazy, you know. They don’t put any money back to help, really, you know.

Change

I took out a 25 grand loan that night because I lost all the money for the builders. Fortunately, we’d paid a lot of it before, but there was still thousands and thousands to be paid to the builders. And then I took out a 25 grand loan and I put £22,000 into that Casumo account in two hours and 11 minutes. And nobody stopped it. I lost. I lost everything. And I stopped. I was like thank God it’s gone, and something hit me at that point it was, you’re going to kill yourself? Because if you kill yourself, you’ve left them with nothing.

Gambling Companies

And, you know, if I’m on a lunch break or at work and I’m next to a bookmakers it was easy to pop in. I think when I really got into the bookmakers was after I self-excluded from the casino because the casino really came in a lot more before the bookmakers. And that was because, you know, like I said, I’d gone in there just to drink and stuff. But then I found the slots and I found the tables. I realised I could do them. and once I’d self-excluded from them, I guess I got more into horse racing as well so I went into the bookmakers, but the big thing was when I couldn’t go into casinos, I then went into them to use the fixed odds betting terminals.

It was easier to start online because actually I was told to start online by the advertising, really. And then it was easier to do because I could feel my own way through it, and there was no pressure going into a bookmakers. It would feel like there’s more pressure because you’re not really taught how to fill in betting slips and stuff, you know, and you hear people talking about lucky-15, like what are they talking about?

Gambling Companies

And that’s one of the most important things is I want the world to know that it’s all right to ask for help. You know, if an industry develops products that are addictive, don’t feel like you shouldn’t get addicted to them because it makes a lot of sense that you are, so ask for some help. And don’t feel like I did. The thing that gets me as well is I’m kind of from a demographic where I’m expected to gamble. I mean, I’m a middle-aged white man from a Catholic background, we drink, we bet on the horses, and this kind of thing, and I couldn’t say anything. I still couldn’t say anything. So, I think about those people out there who are from different cultures, different backgrounds, who actually it’s far more difficult for them even than it was for me.

Stigma

It was so hard to talk about it, and it’s hard to talk about it because it’s so normal. And my dad’s gambled in his life, you know. He doesn’t now, actually, but he didn’t have – when I say he gambled, you know, it was rare, but he’d go in the casino if he was on a cruise or if he was on a holiday somewhere and really enjoy it but leave when he wanted to having spent not a lot of money. And he would sometimes play on fruit machines but that was it. I was very different to that, and I guess as well, I couldn’t work out why, you know, why can’t I stop?

Stigma

It’s mad. It really is a crazy thing. Like how? How can you harm yourself and your family? Oh, I know, lie to them and lose all your money. Yeah. Crazy, but yeah, I know I felt like I deserved it, and I don’t feel like I deserved it now. And this comes back down to that industry narrative of putting all the onus upon the person who is addicted. You know, you play responsibly, you set these limits, you self- exclude. And what I needed was somebody to say, crikey, this isn’t okay. You need to stop them. What’s going on in your life? Why do you feel like this?

Stigma

I was a vulnerable person without realising it maybe. Somebody who now knows he’s got ADHD and as soon as you open a gambling app wow, what a place to hyper focus and take your attention away from all the stuff in your mind, which I didn’t realise then but I’m seeing now. No wonder this got me when they’ve got these addictive products available 24 hours a day and there’s me and my head all over the place, and then there’s this place I can go, which allows my brain essentially to calm down is how it felt. It can’t, because I always imagined my brain as like a computer, with lots of different tabs in and I can’t stay on one tab. I’ve got to keep moving. Except when open that gambling tab, you know, it was different. I could stay there.

Gambling Experiences

And this comes back down to that industry narrative of putting all the onus upon the person who is addicted. You know, you play responsibly, you set these limits, you self-exclude. And what I needed was somebody to say, “Crikey, this isn’t okay.” You need to stop them. “What’s going on in your life? Why do you feel like this?” And then I might have found out.

Change

But other things you know, they need, they need to ban VIP schemes or anything. If it’s not called VIP, but it is VIP, it needs to go. They are incredibly dangerous. I mentioned reverse withdrawals, which I believe are changing anyway but that kind of practice is unacceptable. Affordability checks, you know, how do you check that somebody can afford to do this stuff? That’s so, so important as well, so I’d say affordability checks, VIP stuff and treatment as well

Change

But I took out a 25 grand loan that night because I lost all the money, all the money for the builders. Fortunately, we’d paid a lot of it before, but there was still thousands and thousands to be paid to the builders. And then I took out a 25 grand loan and I put £22,000 into that Casumo account in two hours and 11 minutes. And, you know, nobody stopped it. I lost. I lost everything. And I stopped. I was like “thank God it’s gone” and something hit me at that point it was, you’re going to kill yourself? Because if you kill yourself, you’ve left them with nothing. Well go and get help. And I did.

Harm

I’ve tried to do stuff to stop being scared, and then I’ve done quite well, or very well with my life. I’ve been very lucky. But why should somebody like me be that lucky? I don’t deserve to be this lucky, and it wasn’t lucky it was hard work. But in my mind, it’s like you don’t deserve this, you don’t deserve this, and as soon as I found the gambling, I could just bring it right back down. It’s like the bloody army going in and just bombing quickly. You know, it’s terrible, terrible harm really, really quickly.

Harm

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