[John12]

Hello,

My name is John, i am dutch and 22 years old. i started my 2nd study in university 4 weeks ago after working a full year prior.

The title of this topic is hard for me to write, i have always acknowledged that i have an addiction. However i recently discovered that it is actually a problem which will cause my downfall.

 

My addiction has been going on for several years and i must say that in the last 2 years i’ve googled ‘gambling addiction stories’ around 4 times, each time after losing a big sum of money (for me) and wanted to quit and looked up stories of people who are way older than me and have literally lost everything before starting back up with their lives, as ultimate goal of scaring myself off from going back to gambling. But ultimately my addiction was too strong.

 

Everything started back in 2008, i was only 12 years old when i asked my father what game he was playing on the computer, he played poker, still does. However as persistent/young/curious as i was i wanted to know everything about it. And soon enough i had my own account, with fake details which said that i was atleast 18 years old etc.

I played poker with free chips, every hour you would get 10k chips for free is what i recall from that time.

 

I used to play it for fun when i was bored and not doing something with friends or whatever else, but eventually i was introduced to real money, my dad was playing on a poker table which had blinds of 0.01$/0.02$, and after asking many time i eventually got given my own 10 cents to play, and this is when it all begun really.

 

I used to play poker on and off for about 3 years, nothing major really, but when i was 19 everything kicked off.

So i knew about betting on football which people sometimes would talk about after having won a tenner on it or whatever so i eventually tried it out myself, it started off really innocent but slowly progressed into something that i had no control over.

 

Now i did enjoy gambling alot, i wasn’t (and am still not) very socially and it was literally my escape room from everything, although i had it good.. i couldn’t complain about any aspect of my life.

The game that kickstarted everything was blackjack ironically, i do clearly remember that this was during the summer of 2016 as the olympics were on during the time, and everytime i had won alot i would bet a stupid amount on a random olympic sport that i had no knowledge of.

 

I used to work partime at this restaurant which i ended up working fulltime for in my gap year, and everytime i went home i jumped on my computer and bet 10$/20$ on blackjack continuesly, i had won alot, lost it al land kept reloading 50$’s into my gambling account to a point where i was shaking and telling myself that it was not right. I was 19 at the time.

I was emberassed of myself and almost cried, which made it so hard for me to make the decision to walk up to my father and tell him what i had done, i forced him to have control of all of my finances as i admitted that i was a mess.

 

That was that and some time did pass, my online friend which i knew from a game did bet and, just like me, loved football, he kind of dragged me into the betting scene and soon enough we both used to do bets together (not always) on the football.

When i was at work and my first selection of the bet had lost i would instantly whatsapp my friend, paypal him the money and get back to it.

I would bet 10 euro on a football accumolator which had odds of around 1/100 everytime, eventually from dec to jan 2017 i had gambled 1.5k and so had a debt of 1.5k on one of my bank accounts which i had asked my dad access for a couple months before (assuming i didnt feel the need to gamble anymore)

Once again i came up to him and told him what i did, i was absolutely broken as i was too afraid to talk about it with anyone else but literally had to explain where that 1500 euro went.

 

Fast forward to the summer of 2018, i had finished my study and wanted to take a gap year to work, it was easy for me as i had already been working part-time at the job.

I still loved betting however found several distractions that kept me away from it, until then.

I would be working all the time and in the 2 days that i had no work id be bored out of my mind, i did love watching football but betting did give it that twist of more excitement.

I would ask my dad for a tenner to bet on the football every now and then, that tenner became 20, that 20 became 30, that 30 became 40, and i didnt bet on it occasionally anymore, no i bet on it everyday. I bet on football during work, when i was driving home from work, when i was going to sleep. I ALWAYS WANTED TO BET.

 

I did realise that it really wasnt about the money anymore, it was about the excitement of having a high risk bet on a football game, ALL THE TIME.

I was waking up checking my phone if there were any interesting games with interesting odds on that i could possibly put my money on, i bet on ABSOLUTELY everything, denmark 3rd division, cup draws, you name it.

 

I still had to ask my dad for the money as he still held all my finances, and everytime i did not win i absolutely hated going up to him having to ask for my own money to gamble ita way, he knew about it he advised me not to, but the caring father he is he let me live my own life and had given me what i wanted.

 

As i went to uni and went to a different city i asked my dad for access to my bank account as i had to pay my own rent and food, and i do still remember very clearly, the moment when my dad gave me access back, the first thing i did was put a bet on a bunch of australian football games.

 

I am not going to lie, i did love betting… it truly made my day better to watch a football game with a bet on it, hell i even looked forward to it, but yesterday i once again won around 1000 euro on the football, and literally gamble it all within a day on football/blackjack because i can not help myself, knowing very well that i don’t have any money to waste at this point.

 

 

 

 

I write to you, anonymous person that i do not know, as a student who has a gambling PROBLEM who finds himself disoriented from uni, who has gambled all of his money and is living off his student loan. I think that i have gambled around 20.000 euros over the entire course, which for me is a lot of money and i want it to stop, i won’t allow this to get any bigger.

I’ll be honest, I think of myself as a strong minded individual, i am very introvert yet very confident, the other 3 times that i browsed these gambling sites and scrolled through all these topics on gambling addiction i thought i was strong enough to deal with this demon myself and would not need to make a topic like this, but apparently i am not.

 

I wanted to write as most as possible of what i can remember down to empty my heart and what i struggle with, also because i want to take this very serious and i wouldn’t be able to take myself nor any replies serious if it was only a 7line topic.

 

It is currently 4:32 AM as i write this to you, having gambled a mere thousand euros today and in line to skip uni today aswell, but hopefully this will be the last time that my excuse will be my addiction.

 

Thank you for reading

[finding_laura]

Hi John,

that took a lot of courage to put plainly in black and white. We hope the insanity of it staring us back in the face will make us change. But the addiction often barely skips a beat and takes right over again.

A lot of courage is required to protect any remaining funds you have from your gambling self. There are ways for rent to be paid without handling it yourself. Perhaps your father will help with your banking once again.

Is there any counseling support through the university that can help you begin to sort this out? Can you reach out to the help desk here in the day time to see if any support can be given through gambling therapy? Are there any gambler’s anonymous groups near you?

It will take a lot of effort to overcome an addiction like this. You didn’t ask for it. But now you know you are a CG, you can ask for help.

Please do!
Laura

[CraigMac6]

Hello John,

Like you i have an addiction to sports betting and i find the thrill of betting on a game as great as it can get. Over the years, i have lost a lot of money as well betting on sports and many times i will make bets on games i have no clue about just to get some action. I say this to yoy because i can relate to everything you have said. The best advice i can give you is to find something positive that ypu enjoy to occupy your time instead of watching/betting in sports. I have been bet free for 10 days and i have made an effort to not watch games or scroll on espn to check scores. I realize that life was miserable and stressful so its time to move forward. You have made a good choice by posting because just like me, we cannot beat this addiction alone. We must have support. You can do this John, just take it one day at a time.
Keep strong brother.

[John12]

Hey Craig, i’m glad you replied and mentioned that you can relate to everything i said, even though sports betting is so similar to all the other gambling things out there for me its just a different experience.

When playing poker or blackjack i knew the house always had an advantage which kinda put me off on it, however i somehow convinced myself that with sports betting i am the guy in control. apart from having multiple accumolators on which had a duration of a couple days i always used to bet on in-play games, were the odds 1.70 at halftime? id make a treble including games in which the odds were in my favour.

My entire day used to revolve around sports betting, i’d check livescore atleast 20 times an hour, i could not let my phone rest on the table for 2 minutes without checking betway for in-play matches. My main motive was literally just boredom, which is why i’m currently looking for an active job again that i can combine with uni.

I would spent a couple hundred euro on winning big and when i did i couldn’t resist but bet bigger trying to chase my losses, in my mind it was OK as i was only gambling my winnings, yet i had wasted a couple hundred on it in the first place, the cycle went on and on and never could beat that feeling of winning those 800 euro bets, truly i felt great…for an hour, until my addiction told me to continue and win more and more.

Goodluck on your journey pal, i’m sure you’ll get through this.

[John12]

Hey Laura, thank you for your reply. 

I’m not struggling with paying my rent as my studentloan comes in on the 24th and literally instantly transfer it to my shared bank acc instantly, although my parents would always help me out incase i needed it.

Just last week i asked my dad 5 times in 3 days for 30 euros which were all intended for gambling purposes, it’s gotten to a point where i’m just emberassed about my addiction towards my parents, who are the only people in my life that know about it too.

I’ll be honest with you, i never considered counseling sessions nor do i know if they are at my campus, i’m sure they are but i’m not sure if its necesary, i find myself a strong minded person and do truly believe that i can get through this myself (even though ive said this for the past year, yet got dragged back into it everytime). I have for the first time ever closed all of the betting accounts that i have along with asking them to stop E-mailing me with their promotion spams.

I do see writing all of this up and giving it a place and audience a step into the right direction, i do understand that what i did wasn’t healthy and has to be put to a stop, boredom was my main motive for gambling in the first place, i hope that with common sense and alot of distractions i can overcome this demon.

Thanks once again for your reply.

[CraigMac6]

You still with us John?

Let us know how things are going if so

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