People went from gambling a little, to getting more involved. People find that the more they gamble, the more they want to gamble. Their need to gamble grows. Their gambling spirals out of control and they get to the point where gambling has taken over their entire life.
This happens because gambling is physically and psychologically addictive. To say that something is addictive means that it leads to people losing control and continuing to do it even though it is causing them harm. People’s experience is that gambling works like an addictive substance, like alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.
People had not understood how addictive gambling was and they ended up ‘sleepwalking’ into addiction without realising it was happening.
Physical urges and intrusive thoughts
People describe how gambling caused physical changes to the circuits in their brain, the part of the brain that reacts to rewards. They describe this as having their brain ‘hijacked’ or rewired, so they become hooked on gambling. This means the demand for the ‘dopamine hit’ from gambling is so intense it will override sensible decisions.
You feel like you are a passenger in your own body. You’re doing stuff that you don’t want to do. You feel like you’re sort of looking at yourself from the outside sometimes, like, what are you doing? And you’re just powerless to stop it, you. You want that buzz because you get like a dopamine hit or whatever every time you do it, and your brain just wants that so much that all common sense goes out the window. You’re just powerless to it, completely powerless. And you can’t think of nothing else. Your brain is just going 100 miles an hour, go and have a bet or if you haven’t got any money, where are you going to get money from, get money. So, you just try everything to get money and then like, it takes over… It’s like someone takes over your brain and they’re holding you hostage.
They have overwhelming physical urges or compulsions to gamble.
I think it’s quite hard to explain to someone that hasn’t had any addiction problems the feelings that come up because I don’t think there’s anything that you can compare it to or replicate to get that sort of empathy from them, really, if they haven’t experienced that compulsion, that need, that desire, that waking up at two o’clock in the morning shaking because you haven’t put a bet on or you can’t find £5 to put your next bet on. I think it’s quite hard to actually explain to someone that feeling without them having experienced it themselves, really.
They are consumed by non-stop thoughts, images or sounds of gambling in their heads.
I don’t really know how it escalated because it was a little bit of fun and then it just got to the stage where I was thinking about it all the time. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop gambling either, I couldn’t stop doing it. I knew I didn’t enjoy it. It was strange. Knowing that you don’t enjoy it, you sit and then carry on doing it. It just got to the point where I didn’t even know. I couldn’t even think straight. When I was working, thinking about that all the time. That was where it got to in the end when I owed £1000 and it just makes you depressed because you can’t control it.
It went from something that was a bit of fun and a buzz to something that just became all consuming. It literally took over your day. So, when you’ve got a gambling addiction, you don’t wake up and think Right, I’ll have a bet at six o’clock. You wake up thinking, Right, what am I going to have a bet on today? How am I going to get this? I lost £2,000 yesterday, how am I going to get that back? And you have your phone stuck to you because that’s all you’re doing. You’re thinking about it. You become anxious; you get depressed. You start taking other things.
All people wanted or needed
Gambling gives people pleasurable, absorbing experiences. Gambling changes how you feel. As a result people use gambling to try and fulfil all their needs and to try and cope. This means that they become psychologically dependent on gambling.
People end up being driven to gamble over doing anything else. They neglect relationships, and work.
In hindsight, now, she said to me at the end, she said, “I wish you were having an affair”. Because I’d been not wilfully neglecting her, but accidently, I’m going to say accidentally neglecting the relationship, but you know oh, we’re going out on Friday with, you know, with Jane and Charlie, “Oh, no, I can’t. I’ve got to do a report for work”. I didn’t have to do a report to work. I was gambling, you know, and a whole host of what I was calling porky pies at the time because I was more interested in the gambling than going out with her. It wasn’t anything that was wrong with the relationship. It just meant that gambling meant more to me at that time than what the relationship did.
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.
People can end up gambling non-stop.