Andy’s story: my recovery from gambling

Content warning: this story mentions suicide, gambling harms and alcohol use.

I started gambling at about 9 years old.

Most people will say that’s too young to have a problem. But by 13, my mum had called in Gamblers Anonymous. I was going to the arcade every day after school. I would take money from a big bottle at home. I’d take all the pound coins out, put the lid back on, tape it up.

At 14-15, I was a straight A student, playing county cricket, working after school. But gambling grew and grew to the point that I was struggling to even turn up to my GCSEs. I wasn’t turning up for work. I wasn’t playing cricket anymore. Everything was just taking a tumble.

A whirlwind life

At around 18 I joined the Navy. I’d never thought of joining the forces. I’ll act on impulse – like the impulsive nature of my addiction or gambling in general.

There were about 40 fruit machines in the Navy’s automat and there were two or three people at each machine. They’re laughing, they’re joking. I’ve been told for nine years what I’m doing is wrong, but I’ve just met a load of people who are doing this. This is normal.

It wasn’t. All that did was increased my gambling tenfold. Within four or five years, I was £30,000 in debt with three young children. What that leads to is emotional and financial abuse. Your partner doesn’t know how much you’ve got in the bank from one day to the next: it can be thousands, it could be not enough to buy milk or nappies. But also the mood swings: they’re not knowing which version of that person is coming home that day.

Life was a whirlwind. My drinking escalated as well. If I lost, I would drink to forget and to commiserate; if I won, I would drink to celebrate. So alcohol become that secondary addiction.

After leaving the Navy, I ended up working in a finance department and that’s where I was convicted of fraud. The court gave me a two-year suspended sentence. But my behaviour was still horrendous. That resulted one night in an altercation with a taxi driver. I’ve had way too much to drink and I’ve committed an assault. That’s when I ended up in prison.

Understanding addiction

In prison I asked for help, only to be told that gambling was a secondary addiction. “We deal with substance misuse only.” Now for someone like myself – where gambling has dominated and ruined my life – that really just hit me hard.

I’d already had one suicide attempt when I’d won £127,000 one night and lost it within three hours. Now to hear that there was no help, to have it minimised like it was: I was done. I didn’t manage it and I came around.

And that’s when I first encountered PET.

I decided I needed to try and help myself – to dig deeper into my life and understand a bit more of why I do what I do. So I applied to PET for the Understanding Addiction Level 2 Certificate.

Prison put every one of my triggers in front of me: boredom, low self-worth, lack of purpose, lack of drive. Those things would drive me to need to gamble, because then I’d forget about everything going on. But when those course books landed and I knew I had a purpose the next day – to be able to get up and get on with some work, to actually achieve something that I could be proud of – honestly, it changed the whole outlook.

About halfway through the course, my whole perception of why I was doing it changed too. What I noticed in prison was there were a lot of people that were very, very broken and struggling. I thought, actually, I can use what I know and what I’ve been through to hopefully help others.

Stopped from making a difference

On getting out, I had every genuine intent to do well. I got offered a job as a support worker at a residential addiction treatment centre, only to have that withdrawn at the very last minute due to my conviction. I wasn’t even going to be able to use my lived experience, so I crashed.

I found a secretarial job on Facebook. I just wanted to contribute at home. I just wanted to feel normal. But I was already back playing free spins.

When people say gambling is about money and greed, it’s really not. If you ever have a big win, it’s a short-term loan. The bookies know that. They could give me £100,000, knowing that in a month’s time they’re having £100,001 back. Within five months, I’d taken nearly £200,000 from my company.

I could not cope with prison again, so I planned my suicide. I drove home in the hope that I would tell my mum and my children what I’d done and they would tell me to get out of their lives. They didn’t. My children said, “We think you’re amazing when you’re good. When you’re gambling: absolutely horrible. We just want you to get some help.”

So before going back to prison, I went to a 14-week residential rehab. My therapist had lived experience – the most amazing man I’ll ever meet. From that day, I absolutely nailed it.

Looking at the bigger picture

The prison governor was another amazing man in my life. I had written a book, HMS to HMP: 33 Years of Gambling Addiction, that he had read before I got there. He supported me to set up gambling peer support groups and allowed me to carry out one-to-ones.

But I knew that I still needed to understand more about drugs and alcohol because the comorbidities with gambling are severe. I also had a dread of 4pm coming around, because in prison everything closes off. I’m in my cell and I want to get on, I need to be doing something. So I approached PET for Drug and Alcohol Counselling Level 3.

That course gave me such a drive that, as soon as I finished it, the prison’s Distance Learning Coordinator Linda said, “Well, what about another one?” So I went on to do Level 3 Agile Project Management with PET.

All of a sudden, from prison I had a fistful of certificates that I could use. I was able to say, I’m not just bringing lived experience, I’ve got something to back that up. And people took notice.

I now work for Beacon Counselling Trust on their Armed Forces Gambling Support Network Programme – delivering awareness and prevention training to serving personnel, veterans, families and the wider armed forces community.

I’ve been visiting prisons too. Whilst I was serving my last sentence, I carried out a survey: 51% of that prison population said that, “Somebody has told me my gambling is a problem”. It is huge. So hopefully we can do a mentor-type programme – we need the prisons to buy into it.

“I am capable”

It may look as though it’s just a level two or level three qualification, but it’s not. It’s far, far more than that. That person, when they pass that module, they realise, “I am capable of it”.

That’s what PET is giving people in prison today: the hope, the drive and just a day where they can feel that little bit normal and that: “I’m OK”.

You have played a massive part in my story. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If you need someone to talk to, whatever you’re going through, you can contact Samaritans – day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.