No going back

Rory - East Sussex

My problem with gambling started when I was 20 or 21 and still at university and things were beginning to go a bit wrong. My results were not as good as I wanted them to be and I think that's the first time I noticed that gambling was something that I was starting to do more and more of and it was becoming a problem.

To begin with it was very much online with the offers of, ‘sign up and get a £10 free bet’ and that was obviously very enticing when you're at University and are offered free money and the opportunity to win more money. That certainly stimulated me and seemed exciting.

It’s also a social thing with your friends doing it as well, and the way it’s advertised is so laissez faire and sexy in one way or another. Lots of friends gambled in a responsible way and placed small bets every now and then, but the gambling companies have managed to make it a kind of cool thing to do, as opposed to the sort of depressing, dark thing that it really is.

I’m quite aware that I've got an addictive personality and so my problem took hold pretty quickly. I had a big win early on and once you've done that once, how are you not going to do it many times over again? So that was the beginning of the end really; very quickly I became hooked on it.

I began placing bets a lot and would spend hours a day doing it, because when you're not placing a bet, then you're watching a bet or tracking a bet to see if you can cash out and it completely consumes all your time. Then if you have a bet that you feel is getting close then you have sort of bad emotions, because you're feeling stressed and anxious, but then there's the element of excitement too. Very quickly you spend far too long doing it and I did this for the next 5 years.

Then it begins to have an impact on your job, family and friends. Job-wise it definitely had an impact. Time that you should be working, time you should be focusing on doing your job, you're not because you've placed a bet. You're thinking about it and you're engrossed, so you lose either way, because your mind isn't where it needs to be. So, it absolutely has an effect on your job.

There are so many areas that end up falling down. In terms of friends, I got into debt with them and as a result it put a massive strain on my relationships. It has had a huge impact.

“That was my first interaction with the course and off the back of that I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, get me on it’.

It put strains on all relationships. I'm very, very lucky to have an unbelievably supportive family, but I abused all of their trust and took advantage of them in many respects. So, there's no escaping the fact in terms of job, family and friends, it massively impacts every area of your life.

I was renting a flat in London, but I had to let that go. The amount I had coming in didn't cover the amount going out and I was slipping further behind. When you owe a friend money as well that adds more pressure, because that's pushing you even further behind; it's such a dangerous spiral. I lost my job last July so I have gone back to live with my family.

I have a very, very, very loving mother and I had a big conversation with her where I broke down. So, my mum looked into a lot of different options and eventually found out about you guys at The Recovery Course and heard some of testimonies and stories from people who had done the course. As a result, she thought it would be a really good fit. So, I watched two or three of the talks on Youtube. That was my first interaction with the course and off the back of that I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, get me on it’. So having looked at it, I was keen to come on it and that's how I found myself in the first session 5 months ago.

I’m not overly religious, but it's definitely something that I am considering more and more and I'm open to. I've never been a completely closed book by any means, but when you understand that you are powerless over your addiction, having that religious side I think is absolutely vital. So, I have become more and more open to it; it’s huge, it’s fundamental to my recovery and I absolutely accept and believe that God is a huge element in me being honest about myself and becoming the person that I want to be and me recovering and focusing on what matters in life.

Arriving for the first session I instantly felt supported and very comfortable and felt I was on the right path. I was really looking forward to it. I was apprehensive about how much I shared at first and how to speak about my problems, my issues and what I was feeling, but we know we’re all in this together. We all know we have a problem, we have an addiction, we’ve all got here one way or another, but we have support straightaway. To be greeted by a friendly face is fun and very, very comforting, so that makes a huge difference.

When I started the course I was still using every day as I had been for the previous five years and this continued for the first two months of the course. I then gambled away £300 in a day. It was an absolute disaster, everything lost straightaway, and I just said to myself, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. We actually had a session that night and I said to myself I’m not going to gamble again and the next day I didn’t. Then the next day was perfect too. Then by the time I got to seven days we had our next session and I still hadn’t gambled and I remember speaking about it, and that was fantastic; it felt really empowering. Then I said to myself, let’s get to next Tuesday, and then let's get to next Tuesday, and then by the time we got to the end of the course it had been two months, which was amazing! So, I'm coming up to three months without gambling now. And day by day you know and believe that you’re really on the right path and I have a smile on my face thinking, why would I want to go back and do that?

The change really surprised me. When you’ve been doing the same thing for so many years and then you take the plunge and quickly realise how much better life is without constantly worrying about gambling and which bets I’m going to place, and researching who is on good form, and wasting my life….it really surprised me that that was what I did. It was an instant change in my life; I suddenly had hours back in a day.

I had a good friend who was very kind in helping me out when I was financially struggling in my addiction, but as a result of that I ended up owing him a lot of money that I was unable to pay back at the time and that damaged our friendship. It has been hard paying stuff back when I haven’t had a regular income coming in. That's been one of the biggest problems; you have a friend who says, ‘why can't you pay me?’ and I’m thinking, ‘I'm not making any money; how am I going to pay this money back?’ Any money that I do have coming in is to try and live on and without a job there's very little left over and that creates stress and anxiety.

But the most amazing thing for me is that I managed to pay him back yesterday, every last penny! Borrowing £1700 from my best friend was a huge amount of money for me and it has taken me 18 months to pay it back and that put a huge strain on our friendship. He’s still my friend, in fact more of a friend now than ever.

I've been very lucky that I’ve maintained lots of friendships and now I'm very open about the addiction that I've had and lots of people are very understanding and I think bridges have been rebuilt. I put some friendships in jeopardy, but I think all my relationships will be restored.

I'm in between jobs at the moment, but I have some interviews coming up, so I think 2023 is an exciting new chapter.