{"id":158739,"date":"2025-09-21T07:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T07:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/158739\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T07:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T07:20:13","slug":"wife-on-surviving-her-husbands-gambling-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/158739\/","title":{"rendered":"Wife on surviving her husband\u2019s gambling addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhen my husband was gambling, he\u2019d gamble around family events. He always did it coming up to Christmas because he knew he\u2019d get away with it, right? He knew I wouldn\u2019t be able to face the family without him. I wouldn\u2019t be able to face them and say \u2018oh he\u2019s done it again\u2019, because I didn\u2019t want people to judge him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those are the words of the wife of a man who suffered from problem gambling. She spoke of the enormous strain and impact she and her family felt from his addiction, describing the \u201cstigma and shame\u201d she endured as a result.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">At an event in Dublin to mark the launch of the Gambling Awareness Trust\u2019s annual report, Nicola Keating said she would sleep with money under the pillow and be thousands of euro in debt while her husband was receiving treatment for his addiction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI am outside with no support and thinking &#8216;where am I going to get this money?&#8217;,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cSometimes that\u2019s where families are lost. It\u2019s very isolating for family members walking out of [residential centres where their loved one is receiving treatment].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The event heard that, for every one person who is a problem gambler themselves, around six to 10 further people are affected by the fallout of their gambling, including family members and friends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu caption\">Casinos and poker machines<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Keating said her husband was addicted to  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/arid-41538659.html\">casinos<\/a> and poker machines, meaning she never saw betting slips from a traditional bookies that might have informed her there was a problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI remember thinking \u2018was he having an affair?\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t put my finger on it [at first].<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cA friend of mine said to me: \u2018Nicola, you\u2019re actually killing yourself, you need to get some help.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n            And that was when the penny dropped. It is me that needs help too\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Her husband is in recovery for many years now, but Ms Keating said it continues to have an impact on her even though things have vastly improved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cA decade ago, if he was 10 minutes late, my stomach would be doing somersaults. I\u2019d be watching finances. Controlling the finances. As a man, he\u2019d have to ask me for the money for a cup of coffee. I said: &#8216;This has to stop.&#8217;\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She said families should seek out support for themselves and their loved ones, as help is out there and can make a real difference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Also speaking at the event, Grainne O\u2019Kane, the founder of the Wellbeing Consultancy, compared the impact of gambling addiction on a family to the invasive Japanese knotweed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt\u2019s like a shallow shoot that you don\u2019t even really see,\u201d she said. \u201cFamilies will talk about things being \u2018not quite right\u2019, or \u2018they\u2019re not quite present\u2019. There\u2019s something they can\u2019t put their finger on. They can\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cBut Japanese knotweed goes really deep rooted and then goes for metres underground. Which is really fracturing and breaking the whole family foundations, much like gambling addiction does, until it just erupts.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen my husband was gambling, he\u2019d gamble around family events. He always did it coming up to Christmas&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[82909,49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-158739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-irish-examiner-instagram","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}