Hi,
Never spoken about this before so thought this would be a good place to start.
Over the past few years I have had a gambling problem. All stemmed from betting 50p accumulators online when i was 18/19 which slowly grew to £5 here and there. I remember being distraught when i lost £20 on a game. About a year later, the money grew to £100's and the inevitable "chasing the losses" crept in.
I gambled constantly through university, spending pretty much most of my bursary, and many late nights (until 6am) trying to recoup losses. I remember once gambling on an early kick off (Swansea v Liverpool) at 12, and then having lost hundreds throughout the day, I stayed awake until 12 the next day, trying to recoup money from sports like basketball and aussie rules which all started early in the morning.
I had savings of about 6.5k which went on football, tennis bets, had a 5k interest free loan which i took out from work and gambled that away. Enough was enough, I cancelled my online account permanently, and told myself i will never, ever bet again as it's an idiots game.
After this, I inherited about 10k from family. Needless to say, I opened another account up, I then had the fortunate (unfortunate in hindsight) luck of working my way up to 20k . Having earnt about 500-1000 a day for a month, I started 2017 with more money than i ever had in my account at one time. However, i never withdrew it. I kept constantly telling myself that "keep going like this and I will have 100k in no time". Then the day came, where Federer @ 1/7 lost to Mischa Zverev in the tennis. I had placed 7k on a sure thing, and when Federer won the first set, he became 1/18, so i placed another 3600, to get a nice little 200 pound on the side. Then the inevitable happened. Zverev won a second set tie break before winning the third very close set.
I had lost about half of my bank balance in a day. This is where i started really letting gambling control me. I ended up losing my head completely, placing silly 4/1 accumulators trying to get back up to 20k, I never once took a step back and thought where the 10k came from, and how much i needed it. It has also got to a stage where i punish myself when a bet loses by punching my leg, pinching myself throwing stuff round the house (idiotic i know, but in the moment it just happens)
I am now in a place where my credit card is maxed out at 1750, debit card is in 2900 overdraft and my AMEX card is 3200, completely in debt. Luckily I have an income of about 1600 a month (due a 1750 bonus next month). I can't imagine a life away from gambling anymore. I need to get out of debt, but i keep getting into more debt gambling trying to get out of debt.
My family know nothing of this and I am living day by day, saving up to pay bills until payday comes about and i can pay off my AMEX bill. I am sick of staying up until 1/2am every morning staring at the ######6 computer screen , watching some Brazilian team concede, and losing more money.
I always thought i was in control, even when spending thousands. Any help would be very, very appreciated.