it sounds like they are only truly bothered about one thing and that is the revenue that it creates because lets face it, if normal working people like me can find thousands to throw away at these establishments, imagine how much they are claiming on all levels as gambling addiction as we know, isn’t just restricted to people with limited funds.
by putting helplines around and invisible people around for so called help they can justify their actions with statistics. they was something in the news here recently about trying to restrict slots to £2 spins at the maximum instead of £150 spins that there is now but i can’t see it happening for all the reasons you said above.
today was my second day in therapy and i am even more sure that this is exactly where i need to be based on the fact that i feel worse this week than i did last week :). the key i think is that i have exactly the right therapist and i as much as i struggle with some stuff, she is the right person to work with me on that and i find myself being extremely open and honest very easily.
it sounds like you are a very resourceful person, you know what you needed to do and you reached out to anything that was available which happened to be the phone book, was that the point at where your recovery began? it’s a painful process into gambling and it’s even more painful to get out but i think that’s when you know you are in recovery.
thank you for being here…take care