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Jonathan

Jonathan works for his local council. He was exposed to gambling from a young age, which included visiting amusement arcades when he was ten years old. When he was 18, he attended a horse racing event for the first time and had a big win. He describes himself as being hooked on gambling from there on. As his addiction worsened, his relationship broke down and he was spending all his wages on gambling. The gambling addiction severely impacted his mental health and on multiple occasions, he tried to take his own life. 

Jonathan experienced a breakdown, after which he returned to Gamblers Anonymous. He received counselling and he says that he was encouraged to try and get to the root of his gambling, which included discussing abuse that he received as a child.

He is now five years gamble free and says his life has changed for the better. He is currently training to be a gambling peer-support worker, where he will use his experience to help others who are suffering from gambling harms. Jonathan says there needs to be more gambling education for children and their parents, and that people with lived experience should be involved in this process. 

Contributions

Show text version

I actually mentioned it years ago to– I think it was going to be brought out within the general practitioner of your local doctors because they can support you as an alcoholic and a drug offender and give you medication for that. Again, these doctors and even someone who’s psychological like yourself, who trained up could work alongside the NHS and help people within this process because like I just said to you, I can go and get a prescription today for a common cold, and people can go and get medication for the heroin addiction, but what can you get for a gambling addiction? More or less if you’ve lost a lot of money, you’re going to turn around and drown your sorrows with a bottle of vodka and all. It’s vicious cycle. You can go from a gambler then to alcohol and then what’s next? You are getting deeper and deeper and deeper. Then it’s protecting the loved ones around you and what state of mind are you actually in after you’ve actually done the things you’ve done? Psychology is a massive, massive part of, which is required within helping people recover from gambling as well.

Jonathan
Change
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I’ve always been a hard worker, and then socialized and things, but I remember getting an apprentice as a carpet fitter. I suppose my eye was on other things as well and life was spiralling downhill. I needed to do something constructive and try and get myself into an area of life where I was going to succeed. At 22, I went and joined the army. I became a Royal engineer, a Sapper. Even when within there, I’d end up in the local NAAFI bar and playing the bandits and just wasting money. You’re on a monthly salary, and it wasn’t a lot of money when you first started, but you’d see your money just dwindle away. Also, with going on tour over to Bosnia for six months, you could save up to £10,000, £11,000 within that six months by not spending, but over there as well, bandits, playing poker, all those sort of things.

Jonathan
Gambling Experiences
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The one thing I was going to say was, this is where I feel it needs addressing within the schools, in the curriculum because they teach you about your sexual education, your drugs, your alcohol, all different substances. And it’s fine a teacher going to do a course but with a person like myself and other people like myself with lived experience, I feel it will come across so much better listening to the likes of myself, the likes of other GA members who want to do this sort of work because I’m thoroughly enjoying the course I’m doing at the moment. This is the route I want to do now. I want to. But nothing could be more credential than a lived experience. Children need to be aware of the factors because I’ve seen it myself. I know even on Xbox my son lost lots of money due to buying different things on I think it was FIFA to have a better football team than his friends. You don’t realize until you get that phone call or you get a letter through saying, “You owe £300 you owe £1000” and parents are going through it. Young children as young as 6 to 10 I would say. The parents can be at fault as well because they’re not blocking their credit card details on that sort of thing, but they need to be aware and with the more awareness out there and the more guidelines for parents, partners. It isn’t just the gambler, it’s everybody else that needs to be made aware of the detrimental effects that gambling has on one’s life.

Jonathan
Change
Show text version

I’ve always been a hard worker, and then socialized and things, but I remember getting an apprentice as a carpet fitter. I suppose my eye was on other things as well and life was spiralling downhill. I needed to do something constructive and try and get myself into an area of life where I was going to succeed. At 22, I went and joined the army. I became a Royal engineer, a Sapper. Even when within there, I’d end up in the local NAAFI bar and playing the bandits and just wasting money. You’re on a monthly salary, and it wasn’t a lot of money when you first started, but you’d see your money just dwindle away. Also, with going on tour over to Bosnia for six months, you could save up to £10,000, £11,000 within that six months by not spending, but over there as well, bandits, playing poker, all those sort of things. I was always a part of it, whether it’s a social side of things or not. Probably that cost me my career in the army as well, because I just wasn’t in a good place at all.

Jonathan
Harm
Show text version

Other impacts I would say, is probably a relationship with my two oldest children as well. They live 70 miles away, but I wouldn’t say we are as close as we should be as father and son. There’s massive implications in life through gambling. It’s like I said before, everybody’s’ is different. Around it all, you’ve got to remember it affects up to 6 to 10 other people, just one person gambling and then with that within like I specified before and I didn’t actually say this before but within an alcoholic, or with a drug addict, you’re taking yourself down with gambling. It’s like a spider’s web. We’re in the middle and then other people are coming out and it’s this tangent of actually realizing the different people all around from a loved one to a grandparent to a sibling, detrimental effect and for the long-term.

Jonathan
Harm

Well, like I’ve just mentioned to you there earlier in regards to trying to withdraw money, this is an area probably where I could have gone down and investigated, but within my mental state, and obviously, though I was drained. I was not a well person after the places where I’ve been. Looking at the pattern of the cycles of people’s betting transactions, this needs to be alerted sooner. If this person’s betting 30, 40 times a day, and this where it can go to another authority for an authority to contact them and to say, “Are you in a good place? Is this affecting you?”

Change

Well, it could start out being fun and you realize that you can be a fortunate one and win a considerable amount of money on your first-ever bet and think, “Yes, I could quite get used to this”. Maybe just once a week at the time, a quick fix, I need to buy, somebody might want money to pay a bill. Somebody might want a new bike, Christmas presents, whatever.

Gambling Experiences

Financially is a massive factor, because I’m still paying off [debts] because I went through solvency through a company because of the £15,000 of the debts, and not just those debts. I had all the debts as well. We get by and one day we do look to go on a holiday as a family, which my children, my young ones now they’re six, seven, and eight, and they haven’t been abroad. There’s one dream.

Harm

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