Hi everyone,
I haven’t posted or logged in for a good while so I thought I would check in as it were. It’s been nearly a year actually and a lot has gone on for me in that time. I’m now a dad and have a wonderful baby boy but unfortunately for me his birth coincided with another major gambling binge which has lasted about 4 months now.
It all started when I got an email about a horse racing advisory service based in Manchester around 4 months ago. I’d been a member of this type of ‘service’ before, with a variety, of success but managed to convince myself that by only gambling on bets chosen by the service I would retain control and make a nice long term profit. I had had a good break from gambling at this point and felt ready to go back, Anyway the service offered a free month so I took it.
The first bet came through a couple of days later, I used the advised staking plan and bang it won, very nice I thought. I had opened a new online account to provide added ‘control’ so when the next bet came through I took the same approach. The second horse also won and I had a tidy profit showing in my account.
The online bookies that I opened the account with had also offered a sing up bonus and I therefore decided to try my hand at some of the online games, not really my type of thing, but what the ****, I was on two weeks paternity leave and I wanted to gamble without leaving the house and at ***** when there was no horse racing on.
As usual I adopted a a cautious approach at first, carefully selecting stakes and stopping quickly if I lost. I therefore also began to show a small profit on the online games and added this to my horse profits and I had a nice bit of money building up. I also managed to convince myself that this was a much more controlled way of gambling, no more 20 page bank statements in the post that had to be ripped up and hidden as soon as they arrived in the house so not to raise the suspicions of my partner. I I had only had to make one £200 deposit into the online account and, so I told myself, all further bets would be made from this ‘betting bank’ (or so I thought).
Anyway, by my second week of paternity leave I had received a few more tips from the service and had had more success. The staking plan had gone out of the window by now and I regularly placed large bets of hundreds of pounds on both horses advised to me and other ones I chose myself. I had also become an avid listener of William hill radio on my mobile phone. I would therefore have my partner and new born baby in one room with me in the next supposedly doing stuff for them but actually pumping my brain with horse racing info and races commentary.
Now at the same time as having my son I also had to write an important research paper for a local university. I therefore said to my partner that I would go to the university for two days to finish writing it, no distractions just get it done. I therefore found myself in front of a computer in a university library, but instead of having a head full of creative ideas, my mind was swamped with horse racing. I had begun to gamble compulsively again, and lost a couple of thousands pounds in one afternoon. Gripped with anxiety I placed a very large bet on an Irish race based on a tip I had read on a website. It was a late race and I got nothing done waiting for the race to begin, this was it I thought, if it goes down I’ve lost everything again-typical why do I bother.
Anyway, unlike most of my experiences with this type of all or nothing bet it won, and not only had it won the price had drifted and as the online bookies offered a best odds guarantee I was paid at the larger odds. I went home that night with a spring in my step. My gambling was finally beginning to pay- I was making serious money and could already pay some of the debts I had from years of compulsive gambling.
I returned to work after paternity and during the next few weeks I was swept into a serious gambling binge. All my good intentions and dos and donts went out of the window but I was still making money. Large bets were followed by larger bets. One afternoon I lost £9000 sitting at my desk at work but the next day won it all back and some. I was on a roll!
I fantasised about what I was going to do with the money, I,bought a few new things, and gave my little brother a ridiculous amount of money for his birthday. He was shocked and didn’t known what to say but I could tell he was wondering how the **** could I afford to do this. That’s the problem with gambling money, even if you win, you can’t really do anything with it as that would mean admitting you are a degenerate gambler to people who love you.
I had won so much money in the 6 weeks since my son had been born that I started mentioning having a loft conversion done on our house! My partner just looked at me in disbelief, there she was with a new born baby and I was talking about ripping the roof off our home. Don’t worry I told her, just let me save the money and we will get it done. Lunatic!
I promised myself that I wouldn’t lose what I had won, I paid credit cards, loans and the taxman and for the first time in a long time I could keep my wages and I felt the stress of always being in debt leave me.
By around 10 weeks after I placed those first bets the money was leaving and entering my bank account in serious amounts. I was gambling like a fiend and had one bank statement with over £50000 going out in a month. I was also playing roulette for a hundred pounds a spin on my mobile and was getting away with doing the bear minimum at work.
Such high risk taking could end one way and I sustained some serious losses eventually, like all compulsive gamblers I chased and chased the losses and as the winners dried up I began to fall back into debt. I feel disguised and ashamed of some of the bets I’ve placed and the obscene amount of money I’ve lost. I have have dug myself out and back in to a serious amount of debt and have the best part of nothing to show for it now.
At ***** it’s been like having the most amazing thing in my life, the buzz its given me ive been shaking in disbelief. Ive also lost weeks of my life to this problem and can’t take the pain anymore. I just want to stop and build a life with my new family without it.
Thanks for reading this entry, I hope to learn from this relapse.
Simon
