Contributions

It would be something that I did to make it more interesting. Until I could gamble online, I never really had issues with it. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but as my professional experience and pressure, if you like, and earning potential got larger and larger, I became more successful in me work, which led probably to more stress, I would think. I don’t blame that on any of them at all. It was the ease of being able to do it. The fact that I could now gamble online without anybody else knowing was another tangent to that. It changed very quickly for me.

Gambling Companies

Once it started, what I would say becoming noticeably on the road to becoming pathological or whatever term you would use for it. It was like wildfire, how quickly it went. How it made me feel at the time, it became very quickly the only thing I was bothered about, even though subconsciously I was aware that it couldn’t have been right because it then became very, very quickly something that became very secretive. On the outside, I was still gambling because everybody, because most of my friendship groups, most of my, even to a certain extent, professional groups, we all liked to bet. That side of it, and my partner at the time she’d always known that I gambled. That side of it, had to show was still at a certain level whereas it wasn’t, it was up here. It almost very quickly became my own secret.

Craig
Gambling Experiences

It was found that I’d been fraudulent using the business’ money. There was then a period of about three or four months of nothing happening. I could say that speaking of it in that tense, there was all sorts happening. When I look at it now, I’m able to realise that I went through a terrible time then because of the not knowing what was going on, I was hearing rumours from where I worked. There was all sorts of stuff being put on social media. I hadn’t had any contact from the police. It took, I think, 12 weeks before I got any contact from them.

Harm

I was constantly getting special offers and popups and emails and offers because of the sport book betting that I was doing. I had a number of accounts now. Every one of them, from every operator, would be saying, “Do you not want to try and come play our roulette? This looks like it’s something that you would enjoy.”

Gambling Companies

I hid away for a decent period of time without really seeing anyone that was internal stigma without a shadow of a doubt because I was terrified of what people would say to me by me saying the reason that I’ve lost me house and that I’m in the trouble that I’m in and that I’ve had to move back to my parents at 47 and that I don’t have anything left anymore is because I couldn’t stop putting money on Chinese basketball. I’ve already answered that question to myself by saying, “First of all, you sound like a moron. You’re not a daft guy. Why could you not make that decision to do it?” That would be an internal stigma without a shadow of a doubt because I’m already answering the question or already giving me the feedback that I’m expecting to get back from somebody. I’ve got to say Liz it wasn’t true. Once I plucked up the courage and able to then tell people, which then became another interesting door to open for me because I couldn’t stop telling people about it then.

Craig
Stigma

If you could press pause on the industry today, and start again tomorrow without knowing anything that’s gone on in the past, you would have single customer view. There was no two ways about that. You would say, “That makes sense if we all share the information.” If we look at things that you can change progressively like that, then it can only be positive, I think.

Change

If you’ve been found out or for whatever reason if you’ve been noticed before you get there, be kind to yourself, let people be kind to you. You’ve got to listen as much as you can be kind and realize that it isn’t just you. It’s difficult to be objective about it, when you are in that moment, when you’re in that eye of the storm because I know what it was like and I know now, and some of my very closest friends, I’m very lucky to still have them. We can joke about and say, “I used to ask you once a month, ‘are you sure you can afford this? You seem to be gambling more.'” They had no idea what I was doing in terms of what I really was doing. That was only on the surface, but I was already in so much trouble then. That didn’t matter because I just wanted to be able to do what I was doing. The main things I would think would be to be kind to yourself, listen, and as easy as it is to say, is to slow down, I suppose.

Craig
Recovery
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