Gambling addiction

I graduated from King’s College, London with a BSc in human biology so I’m not a stupid man, and I’m aware of some of the psychobiological science behind addiction. Despite this, I am evidently capable of stupid acts; illogical, irrational, and emotional acts that undermined my future, my relationship, my family.

I’m 32. I am a financial services head hunter—a well paid job if it goes well but risky too as deals that would generate big fees often fail at the last minute beyond my control. I have a love-hate relationship with this type of stress as it’s 24 hour but also exciting and full of possibilities. The clients and candidates I mix with often run global franchises and earn millions, and this rarefied environment became the norm I aspired to. I undervalued what I had in my life (for example, health, family, relationships, job) and overvalued what I perceived I didn’t have (success, money, material things).

My earliest memory of gambling is playing the children’s card game “top trumps” at primary school, in which the winner takes all. As a child I spent a lot of time at a working man’s club where my alcoholic father took my brother and me. In a large smoky room, we’d play 20p stake dominoes with Frank, “Doughnut” (the baker), and their old cronies. They were happy to have us in the game. Sometimes we’d win and they’d complain that kids shouldn’t be gambling. It was all light-hearted and is a fond memory. Later, my brother and I started to play on the fruit machines. My brother had a system relating to the sound the coins made in the tubes that signalled a “payout window,” and a specific route of pubs he’d visit with the same type of machine. As an adult and as part of my job I would sometimes go to casinos with colleagues and clients. I enjoyed those times. Casinos have an attractive air of wealth and success. A mix of decadent relaxation and stress relief, they are also exciting and full of possibilities. I started gambling more and more.

My gambling cycle was as follows:

• Lose, chase a loss, lose again—then I’d feel awful, angry, disappointed; I’d lie and deceive to cover up the loss, which led to damaged self esteem and ego, depression, hopelessness, chronic anxiety, lack of focus on anything other than the issues around gambling losses, fear, loss of enjoyment in other things and so on.

• Win some—but never as much as the total loss, so although I may have felt a very swift uplift in mood, it didn’t really feel good as I knew there was still a debt to service. What’s more, those wins would be either pocketed and returned another day or simply bet again there and then and lost.

• Return to the casino—to repeat the same cycle of warped logic that I could “win” back the losses.

Gambling quickly became no longer a bit of fun but a means to an end—the only way to get back to zero. I didn’t feel special anymore. I wanted only sanitary transactions—sit, bet, win, leave. There was no interaction with the croupier, no stories with fellow gamblers, just the job of winning it back. My bets would start small and increase without a discernible strategy. Most of the time I felt numb, emotionless, and robotic. At other times I felt depressed and “doomed to lose” but irrationally felt that it was the only way out of this mess and so continued on to the inevitable outcome.

I risked as much as I could. I lied to myself and my partner and spent our money as though it was my own. I unilaterally made decisions that materially affected our lives and led my partner to make painful decisions, like cancelling our wedding. I knew what she didn’t know: that I’d spent our money and owed large sums on credit cards. I could think of nothing else. I woke up and the first thing I’d think about was the debts and the lies. Daily conversations inevitably revolve around money, either directly or through its requirement to do things: visiting family, shopping for food, drinking with friends, travelling to work, and so on. I desperately tried to avoid conversations with any connection to money. I longed for each day to end so I could go to sleep and just get through it.

I became utterly deceitful. I changed our joint account to online banking so nothing was sent to our home address. I made my partner feel bad about opening anything addressed to me in case she accidentally found one of the statements that was sent to me at home. When we went shopping I’d send her off to get something so I could pay for the shopping on a credit card while she was away as I knew my bank card would be rejected.

Within a few years I ended up with £28 000 of debts. That doesn’t include interest paid on credit card balances, overdraft fees and breach charges, 0% credit card transfer fees, and so on. So the number is probably closer to double that. I reached the point where I couldn’t afford to gamble anymore. I was forced to disclose the depth of the situation and my lies to my partner.

Once I’d told her of the debts, I felt a sense of relief. Needless to say there was a whole panoply of emotions. Good days. Bad days. Sometimes tears, sometimes shouting, sometimes nothing—and everything in between. She didn’t leave me. She came very close to doing so and still questions if she should for fear of becoming an enabler of a problem, but we’re together for now.

I wanted to do everything I could to rectify the situation for the benefit of my relationship and myself. I went online and found Gamblers Anonymous. It was encouraging to read comments on forums describing similar experiences and familiar thoughts and feelings. I booked a date to attend one of their meetings. Sadly, that wasn’t a wholly positive experience for me. I met a large number of people (60 or so), but it felt a bit religious/cultish. There was definitely unspoken peer pressure to conform to their way, which is a little too attractive to people addicted to that kind of rehabilitation environment, I believe. However, I met a couple of people who left a real impression on me, and I learnt a couple of key points that stick in my mind as proving useful in my own journey. One of those is, “I cannot win if I cannot stop,” a thoroughly rational, objective view, of which I’m always mindful. The other was the Gamblers Anonymous motto, which is essentially “Change the things you can, ignore the things you can’t, and understand the difference.” This has implications in life generally aside from just gambling rehabilitation, and it strikes a chord in me. It makes me feel powerful and potent enough to make significant changes for the better but rational enough to focus only on those things I can change.

Still searching the internet for ways to understand and approach a gambling problem, I found a self referral link to the eight session cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) group at the gambling clinic in London. As I have a basic understanding of CBT and neurolinguistic programming this appealed to me and I approached the clinic. Following an interview I was accepted on to the course, learnt strategies, and built a toolkit to understand stimuli, impulse control, defining positive alternatives to gambling, and so on.

This pragmatic and forward looking “what now?” approach has proved to be wholly complementary to the retrospective “why?” approach that psychotherapy has offered so far. Now I’ve gone 10 weeks without gambling and, for me, the clinic defines the “change the things you can” part of the motto. This clearly illustrates that things can be changed by the individual, but the clinic also offers practical advice on what the key things to change may be and what techniques can be used to break old patterns and create new, positive ones. The rest, the hard work, as always, is up to me.