Warning: This article contains discussion of gambling addiction and suicide which some readers may find distressing.
A man who lost as much as £40k to a gambling addiction said it left him 'dying inside' before he sought help and turned his life around.
Like many people, Scott Johnson's gambling started as a weekly event with friends where they'd each stick a quid on an accumulator ahead of the weekend's football.
But it wasn't long until this casual weekend bet spiralled into a deeply damaging addiction that resulted in him losing thousands of pounds.
Advert
The 38-year-old told LADbible that when going through a tough time, 'you find some sort of medication to help you' and in his case it was 'drinking and gambling'. But while his bets started off small, he was quickly using his life savings to feed his habit.
"You get your big win and then you think it's going to be like this all the time, and then obviously it ain't," Londoner Scott tells us.
“You become reliant on it as something to keep your mind occupied, but it takes over a lot of your life."
'I always had no money'
Scott's betting expanded to the likes of dog racing, horse racing and fixed odds terminals, and he was eventually forced to start borrowing money from people and even selling his possessions to pay for the high.
The father-of-three's watch collection was picked away bit by bit, and even if he found a few coins worth of change, he'd use it to put a bet on.
"I always had no money," he admits. "I was getting paid on Monday, and then the money was gone by Wednesday, and then I was borrowing and then it was a circuit and just kept repeating itself.
"Looking back, it's crazy, but it just shows you the level of desperation I was at at the time just to try and turn a tenner into £200 every day.
"It just shows you when you're in that addictive space, you just do anything, and you don't realise until after what you've done."
Reckoning he spent 'probably between 70 and 80 percent of what I was getting paid' on gambling, Scott had no money to spend on his family at Christmas and birthdays or for holidays.
'Dying inside'
He's not certain on the exact figure but reckons it could be as high as £40k over the years, explaining that from time to time he'd win a bet and then put the money back in on another bet which he'd lose, putting the amount he lost 'definitely in the thousands'.
“It would have been probably £10,000, £20,000, £30,000, maybe £40,000 over the years," Scott said as he revealed the toll it was all taking on his life.
The man would tell himself he was doing alright as he had a roof over his head and a partner who was 'not going to let him starve', but he was 'dying inside'.
He dreamed of making around £200 or £300 a day from his bets, which would allow him to pay off his debts and get out of the hole he'd gambled his way into, but each time he put any money he made back into bets, he ended up 'just losing more'.
Attempts to stop himself from putting on bets were soon thwarted, as Scott would tell friends he'd been locked out of his account and ask them to put bets on for him, and when he sent his picture to local bookies, he'd 'get on a bus 10 minutes in any direction' to ones which didn't know him.
'You become a bit of a master manipulator'
During the pandemic, when he couldn't travel far from home, he just went to the places he'd been banned from with a facemask and nobody stopped him.
He said: "There was probably five or six [bookies] close to me, but I could get on a bus 10 minutes in any direction and find another five.
“So it didn't really matter, so I could always go further afield.
“What I was doing in Covid because people were wearing masks and I couldn't bother to go that far, I just put my mask on and just go in and just carry on as normal really.
"I think that's what happens when you do gain some level of addiction, you become a bit of a master manipulator and a bit of a liar. It's one of the really horrible traits of it."
Addiction 'was going to end me'
Saying he reached a point where he thought the gambling addiction 'was going to end me' if he didn't stop, Scott ended up at a train station where he thought about ending his life.
Instead, he called the charity GamCare and spoke to their helpline. Within a few days, he had an appointment to talk to someone and ended up getting weekly sessions to help get his life back on track.
It wasn't the first time he'd sought help, with him telling LADbible that even though he'd contacted GamCare before, he hadn't been ready to get help until then.
He said: "I think if you talk to anyone with any sort of addiction, it needs to be on their terms when they're ready to do it.
"Those other times would have been off the back of probably quite big losses maybe, and I just had thought 'nah, I'm going to get support sorted out', but in reality I wasn't ready for it.
"The support I had from GamCare previously was also amazing, but it was just the wrong time.
"That last time I'd done it, I just had that realisation it was time, I was actually at the bottom, and there was nothing more for me to do other than get support or become unfortunately one of these statistics out there about male suicide because I was definitely going to be heading that direction."
For some of his family, the first they heard about Scott's gambling addiction was when he started talking about it more online, but when he spoke to his partner about getting support, she told him she knew.
He said: "My missus was the one that I spoke to face to face about it and she was like 'yeah, I pretty much knew anyway, I'm glad you've taken steps to do something about it'.
"But the other members of my family probably only found out through social media because I was very open and honest about it on there because of the stuff I do now. So they found out more that way."
'I've got that power to walk away from it'
In an effort to help other men, he started The Proper Blokes Club, which was only planned to be a small thing for a few men, but has grown to the point that there are 30 walks a week going on across London.
One man showed up for the first walk, but more soon joined Scott, who said he wanted to create a 'non-judgmental environment' where guys could stretch their legs and have a place to talk about some of the things on their mind without pressure.
"There's not a day that goes past where I don't walk past the bookies, and it just sort of lights up in my head just for a second, but then I walk away from it.
"I've got that power to walk away from it and I know what's important in my life, I know where that's going to lead me so I can make a better decision.
"I go past the pub and I can taste it for a moment but then I realize having one drink, where's that going to lead to like having one bet, where they're going to lead to so that voice in my head that's making better decisions is a lot louder than it used to be."
Please gamble responsibly. For help, support and advice about problem gambling, contact the National Gambling Helpline anytime on 0808 8020 133
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123 or contact Harmless by visiting their website https://harmless.org.uk.
Topics: Gambling, Mental Health, UK News, Money
Joe Harker