{"id":312334,"date":"2025-11-25T07:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/312334\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T07:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:42:08","slug":"my-46-year-gambling-addiction-began-at-seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/312334\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My 46-year gambling addiction began at seven’"},"content":{"rendered":"

John says his addiction harmed his relationship with his three children and contributed to the break-up of two marriages.<\/p>\n

“It took me years to seek help.<\/p>\n

“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,” he says.<\/p>\n

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

Then with the later advent of mobile phones, he says “everything in my life was gambling-related”.<\/p>\n

“As soon as I woke up in the morning, I’d pick up my phone to check to see if I’d won or lost the night before,” he says.<\/p>\n

Eventually after depression and suicidal thoughts, John turned to his GP in March 2024 for help and was referred to the newly established NHS East Midlands Gambling Harms Service., external<\/a><\/p>\n

He says this was a “massive step” where he took part in group therapy sessions with other gamblers and one-to-one sessions with psychologists.<\/p>\n

“I was buzzing. This was my fresh start and they really helped me to understand why I did this stupid thing so often.<\/p>\n

“They helped me understand why I gambled and the triggers.<\/p>\n

“If I had money on pay day I’d want to gamble with it. If I lost money I’d want to gamble more to recover it – it was a vicious circle.”<\/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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-312334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}