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Steve

Steve is a lifelong sports fan. Steve’s gambling worsened after placing an in-play bet ten years ago. He found himself placing more and more in-play bets and using money from his employer to fund his gambling. He contemplated suicide but instead told his employers what had happened, which resulted in a custodial sentence of 27 months in prison. Steve placed his last bet in July 2017 and now works in a role where he supports others who are experiencing gambling-related harms.  

 

Contributions

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You know, this is something we don’t choose, the gambling addiction. I’ve gambled most of my life without a problem. And when I did, when it did become a problem, the operators knew that I had an issue and instead, instead of acting, they just fed me, you know. If I didn’t have a bet for a day or two, they would stick up to £5,000 sometimes into my account with free bets, because they knew it would just get me going again.

Steve
Gambling Companies
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But I just remember one day I was up and there was a match on the telly, which I was sitting watching with my mates. And there was one team way on top and one of the lads said they’re going to score. And I just thought, well, I remember Ray Winston in the Bet365 ads, so I thought, let’s have a look at the price for the goal. And I decided to put my first ever in-play bet on and literally I hit the submit and put the bet on. The tick came on the account, and I looked at the telly and they scored. And then there was that immediate ‘bet successful’ and it was only £80 or something that I’d won, but it was a weird feeling, something that I hadn’t felt before with gambling. So, I would say that’s probably ten years ago when that’s happened, and I would say it probably took me six months to get hooked on in-play betting. And then I spent the next six, seven years just progressively getting worse with my gambling.

Steve
Gambling Companies
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I don’t think about gambling a great deal, but it still happens. A couple of weeks ago, I was just in the pub, and it was a Saturday afternoon and, you know, the telly’s are on and it’s the scores coming through live. So that was a trigger for me because my mind always goes to in-play betting. A goal would come at 2-0 after ten minutes and my brain just started going ‘more goals, more goals this half’. And my hand went straight on my phone, you know, it’s just an automatic reaction, to get my phone out and have a look at what the price would be. So, you know, I just got up and moved seats, away from that telly, and sat next to a telly that showed the horse racing. Horse racing didn’t trigger me. I still associate it with gambling, you know. I just messaged somebody, you know, just a WhatsApp message, saying crikey, you know, this just happened. And it’s that automatic response from somebody who knows exactly what you mean.

Steve
Recovery
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Everything was just going badly, but I couldn’t tell anyone that I had a problem. So mentally it was pretty awful, and I just didn’t know what to do with it. My thoughts were like going to some bad places, and one day I decided I drove from the Midlands to the East Coast. I used to take the kids there in the summer holidays. So, it was a place of good memories. I just sat on the beach one day, lovely sunny day in the summer, and I just thought, can I do this? Can I just swim out in the sea and just keep going I couldn’t swim anymore? I think it took about three hours and I decided I could do it. It was a solution. And then I asked myself “do you want to do it?” That was another three-hour conversation with myself but luckily, I decided I didn’t want to do it. And that’s when I sort of thought I’ve got to do something about this. So, I drove back home. The next day, I told my work what I’d been doing, and I uttered the words for the first time “I’ve got a huge gambling problem”.

Steve
Recovery
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My job meant I had access to… part of my job was I created this new system to get money back to the council, that I hadn’t done previously, and that gave me access to the funds when I came back. And I substituted one day my account details for work, and that was the start of something bad. I did it once and I didn’t do it again for about another 10 months. But then I just got in such a hole, and I hadn’t been caught. I thought, I’ve got to do this again. And that went on for another three years, and I think whilst all this was happening, nobody knew I had any sort of gambling problem. I think a few people suspected there was something not quite right, but my wife was suffering, and I was in a new relationship and that had suffered. Everything was just going badly, but I couldn’t tell anyone that I had a problem, so mentally it was pretty awful, and I just didn’t know what to do with it.

Steve

Then also the education, prevention and treatment, it’s got to be a public health right and it’s got to be via a compulsory levy rather than the current voluntary levy.

Change

There is literally just a saturation of gambling advertising. It’s so normal. You know, my team are sponsored by FUN88, and so I go up to St James’ Park and it’s just on there, their tops and all over the football ground. You know, there’s probably 10,000 kids in that stadium who see this and just see it as normal, so I think that’s got to stop.

Gambling Companies
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Obviously, I’d been sacked, and I had a court case to look forward to. That came along in February 2018. By this time, because I cooperated with the police and my work, we calculated pretty quickly how much it was that I’d stole. So over the four years, it was just under £192,000, that I’d stole. So I knew that was going to result in a custodial sentence, and that came in February and I was sentenced to 27 months imprisonment, which in this day and age means you’ve got to serve half the time, and I knew pretty quick that I was going to be entitled to home detention with a tag. So I was released in November of the same year. So, I did just about 10 months inside, which, you know, I don’t think you ever hear good things about prison. What you hear, it’s a hundred times worse. But I survived it. When I was inside, obviously there’s proceeds of crime involved where the Crown Prosecution Service, CPS, go after getting the money back. So, I had that to deal with whilst I was inside.

Steve
Harm
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My job meant I had access to… part of my job was I created this new system to get money back to the council, that I hadn’t done previously, and that gave me access to the funds when I came back. And I substituted one day my account details for works, and that was the start of something bad. I did it once and I didn’t do it again for about another 10 months. But then I just got in such a hole, and I hadn’t been caught. I thought, I’ve got to do this again. And that went on for another three years, and I think whilst all this was happening, nobody knew I had any sort of gambling problem

Steve
Harm
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So, you know, I had a decent job. I was well paid. I had some savings, and which over time all went and I started to use credit cards. I think at one time I had about six. Which were pretty much all up to the hilt. You know, if I had a £5,000 limit on it, I would spend £5,000. I then moved on to payday loans and borrowing off friends and family, anything to get money. And it wasn’t so much to gamble as such, but it was just to try and live life normally and get the bills paid. But eventually, you know, it wasn’t even to do that, it was just to gamble.

Steve
Harm
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I think the only way I can describe it, the way I look at it sometimes, it’s like the last thing you think before you go to sleep is, “I’ve got to stop doing this”. And then you get up the next day and you start doing the thing you don’t like. See, it’s getting up every day to continue doing something you don’t like all day and then just thinking “I’ve got to stop”. But never being able to do it. That was it for me. It was just the constantly repeating the same thing all the time now, it’s doing real damage. So, to me, I was just trying to act in a way and it just became a self-punishment every day that you couldn’t get out of, you couldn’t stop, just repeat Groundhog Day. It just chipped away at you. Every day, another piece of what you are is eroded and gone. And I think that’s the best way I can describe it. That’s what it felt like for me, just shit, here we go again, here we go again – everyday.

Steve
Harm Gambling Experiences
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I would still put coupons on and still get tips on horses and, you know, some of them are good ones and I’d win some decent money, but that money would then just go straight to in-play. So I look back on some of the subject access request that I got. And it’s pretty horrific, really, my alarm would go off at 06:00 and my first in-play bet would be at a minute past 06:00 and the last one would be just before I went to bed. So I’d literally have my account open all day. And I think the most I ever did was 460 bets in one day. So it was horrendous. I mean, like I say, I think in the January I did an analysis of one month, so that was January 2017, six months before I stopped and I sticked £111,000 that month. It worked out an average of 280 bets a day.

Steve
Gambling Experiences
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You look back on things, and I know people who had huge traumas in their lives which led to gambling. I don’t think I ever had anything like that. I was a bit down at the time and that win on that in-play bet triggered something in my mind. You know, it was a huge hit of dopamine.

Steve
Gambling Experiences
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I went to the doctors this week for something, and they automatically asked about my drink and drugs and tobacco. They didn’t ask about gambling. It should be as normal as that, I think. So, screening there. Anybody presenting in the criminal justice system should be asked, when asked about alcohol and drugs, they should also be asked about gambling.

Steve
Change

I remember when I told my daughters and my oldest daughter just said “Dad, thank God there’s a reason for the way you’ve been like you are because we thought that you just didn’t like us anymore”. So that’s hard to take, knowing that nobody really mattered because all that mattered was gambling.

Gambling Experiences

But there was some counselling offered through the [organisation] up in the Northeast. It’s a company called [organisation]. I think in the first couple of sessions, I got the impression they were happy for me just try and reduce my gambling and I just didn’t get that.

Change

Some of it you’ll never get over, if I’m honest, you know. It’s not so much the money, it’s some of the things you did to get money. That’s the difficult thing to live with. And, of course, the time. You know, I would do anything to get out of things so that I could just sit and gamble. I remember when I told my daughters and my oldest daughter just said “Dad, thank God there’s a reason for the way you’ve been like you are because we thought that you just didn’t like us anymore”. So that’s hard to take, knowing that nobody really mattered because all that mattered was gambling.

Harm

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