{"id":305430,"date":"2025-11-25T07:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305430\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T07:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:20:08","slug":"my-46-year-gambling-addiction-began-at-seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305430\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;My 46-year gambling addiction began at seven&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">John says his addiction harmed his relationship with his three children and contributed to the break-up of two marriages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It took me years to seek help.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For so long I lived in chaos. There was the deceit, the lies, the manipulation of friends to lend money for my addiction. All I really thought about was gambling,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Even as a teenager in the 1980s, John remembers changing out of his school uniform to go to the bookmakers at lunchtime, using his dinner money to bet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Then with the later advent of mobile phones, he says &#8220;everything in my life was gambling-related&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As soon as I woke up in the morning I&#8217;d pick up my phone to check to see if I&#8217;d won or lost the night before,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John says his addiction harmed his relationship with his three children and contributed to the break-up of two&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":["post-305430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305430","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=305430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}