@themadchef saw you mentioned your thread to me in another one so popped over to have a read.
The poster “Mr B” and I may have disagreed about a lot, but for all I don’t buy in to conspiracy theories about rigged games or widespread dirty tricks, I definitely agree gambling is a fundamentally dangerous enough activity all on its own, even in its most legitimate forms.
Before I ever played online, I had a major FOBT habit for 10 years and before that it was the first generation of £500 jackpot B3 machines in the arcade. During that time there were many months I lost an entire month’s wages within 24 hours of getting paid. In the past, I’ve begged, borrowed and lied to friends and family to hide what I was doing and keep myself afloat. I’ve experienced the dizzying highs and nauseating lows. Incredibly, over 10 years during which I was never on an annual salary higher than £30k before tax, I managed to lose something I’d estimate in the region of £150k just on £500 jackpot machines. I had days where by noon I was a grand up, but couldn’t tear myself away from the bookies and by 5 o’clock was a couple of grand down. This was never roulette, just slots with their £20 mega spins. Despite getting myself in to debt, I always managed to stay on top of rent and critical bills. I had many, many months where I left myself four weeks from my next payday with no money for so much as a loaf of bread, but somehow through borrowing, through lies, through god knows what else, I always managed to just scrape by.
I eventually kicked my FOBT habit, but only because I discovered much lower stake, better games on the internet casinos. Online I had better control, until I started winning on the slots, found myself a few hundred pounds up and started having punts on live roulette. It was just one day late last year where I totally lost control and for the first time left myself unable to pay my rent, let alone anything else. Horrible day, I was chasing a small loss, hundred quid or something, on the live roulette and kept depositing and re-depositing, every spin it was like the wheel was consciously mocking me, landing literally next door to numbers that would have paid me big. Only stopped that night because I didn’t have any money left in the bank – didn’t even realise until I tried to redeposit for the umpteenth time and my card got declined. I signed up to Gamstop because I didn’t believe for a second I would be strong enough to resist going back.
My losses aren’t quite to the extent of yours, but I have not a penny in savings, slowly paying off what currently stands at about £15k of debt, my credit rating is so shitty even a payday loan company wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole and I find myself mid-thirties, earning good money but still always skint and probably renting for the rest of my life. The thing that really hurts me is knowing I’d be owning a nice little home if I’d saved all the money I gambled over the years, wouldn’t even need much of a mortgage.
And the silly thing is compared to some people like yourself, I’ve got off relatively easy.
Where I disagree with Mr B and those of the same opinion is I don’t think it’s right for me to blame the industry or the law for what I’ve done. I did it all because I liked it, because I was depressed for years, because playing those games was a way of both escaping the world and would give me a real adrenaline rush, like I could actually feel something. Even when I’d lost a month’s wages, it felt horrible, it made me feel sick but at least I could say I felt that. Most of the time I didn’t feel anything.
But so as you’d expect, I came to rely on slots to feel something. I’d convince myself it was relieving my stress when in fact it was the biggest cause of it.
No one ever made me do that, I did it because I was weak. One of the points I tried to make in one of Mr B’s many threads was that actually, I’d love to be able to say it wasn’t my fault, that I was manipulated by clever psychology and flashing lights, or that the games were rigged and I was playing expecting a fair chance they weren’t ever going to give me. It would be so much easier for me to emotionally deal with the damage if any of that stuff was true but it isn’t. I knew how shit the FOBTs were when I played them, I knew how unlikely it was I was going to win anything, I knew full well and very consciously that even if I did win, no matter how much I won, it would never be enough and I’d keep going back and keep spinning until I lost it all. It was always me, it was always my choice and I did it because I trained my brain over a long time to believe it was something I needed, to the extent that even I believed I couldn’t control it. But that’s bullshit. We always have a choice. The truth is if you stop doing it, nothing happens to you and if you stop doing it long enough, eventually the pathways in your brain change shape again and the urge to do it fades.
I hope you’re in a better place now, thank you for sharing your story – if there’s one thing I believe can give strength to people who are struggling and help them face what’s going on in their life, it’s knowing they’re not alone and that the anguish they feel is shared by others who understand too what it’s like.
cookies for all pahahaha
