‘Growing plants saved me’: Ex addict describes road to recovery<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n He said nothing could tear him away from the gambling table, not even the most basic needs.\n<\/p>\n
\n James continued: “I would even wet myself and sit there in my own urine.\n<\/p>\n
\n “When I did eventually get up from the table, I would stagger and struggle to breathe.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It\u2019s like I was draining the life out of myself.”\n<\/p>\n
\n His addiction also affected his relationships, including a holiday in South Africa where he insisted on visiting a casino every night instead of enjoying the trip.\n<\/p>\n
\n James went into rehab in September 2019 after being he started fighting with people and ended up being arrested.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “It was a wake-up call.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I was completely out of control and had suicidal thoughts.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It was either rehab or die, and it was my mum who eventually took me there.”\n<\/p>\n
\n After leaving rehab and becoming homeless, James was supported by Hope in Bournemouth, where he began attending AA meetings and rebuilding his life.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “I love it here.\u00a0People come to Hope because of all different kinds of problems in their lives, and I get such joy from playing a part in helping them grow and make positive changes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Cooper, now a support worker at the Bournemouth-based homelessness charity Hope, began gambling at age 17 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-437481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}