I was recently talking to one of my close friends about gambling and my struggles. He finds it hard how people can make such 'irrational decisions'. Naturally, irrationality will be hard to understand for a rational person. Yet personality tests show that I'm a strong rational / logical thinker, so how is it that I can make irrational decisions?
By irrational, I mean that I continue to bet even though at the end I know I'll lose. I could be up £1,000 or £100,000 in a week, but fast forward a month, I know I would've lost all that money. So to continue betting, when you know based on past experience you're going to lose, doesn't really seem to make sense on the face of it. Whenever I start betting I start as a completely level-headed guy. I have modest targets. I may start with £1,000, and if I win £500 with it, that's enough to stop. Why? Because it pays for that one 'unpayable' bill this month. It covers the interest on a credit card, so I feel better about my gambling debt, because this month it's like I'm not in trouble or paying interest - all because of this additional 'free' money I've been able to win. That's my rationale for gambling. Well, that and the fact that I think I'm going to win the bet. And we must all think that...I mean, no one puts on a bet on knowing 100% they're going to lose. Fast forward a few bets - let's say a few wins, and all of a sudden I found I've exceed my targets. I may now be up to £2,000 including my original stake. Great...made £1,000 profit. But in my mind I know that I've blown £100,000 of my own savings, and god knows how much profit made from previous betting phases. I start to think more about my losses, and the debt that I'm in. £2,000 is merely a splash in the ocean. I need an awful lot more money to make a dent in my debt, to make a difference. I start to focus on the next bet and the returns. On this basis, that sure bet that win's me a 10% return, doesn't really seem worth it. I need to double my money. So because I'm focussing on wiping out my debt all in one go, rather than thinking 'every little helps', I've set myself up for a fall. I've rationalised why it's okay to take a more risky bet. Why it's okay to keep gambling. To keep betting. Now for any rational person, you'd think 'hey, I'm in trouble. I'm struggling to pay the bills. If someone offered me an extra £1,000 this month to pay some bills, if I find £1,000 in the street, then I'd take it. I'd use it wisely. It'd help me this month with my debt'. Makes complete sense right? So now let's apply the rationale that I use when gambling - with my thought process, I'd turn down that £1,000. I'd say well hey, that's not enough. It won't make a difference. If I make £50,000 then that might make a difference. So I need to work towards £50,000. Anything less doesn't seem worth it. When I'm gamble free, or when I've lost my last bet, I know the £1,000 was a good opportunity and it would really help. But I lose my sense of rationality when gambling, without realising it. You find when gambling you become over confident, and this over confidence allows you to rationalise things in your mind. you convince yourself you're doing the right thing, and that it makes sense. You therefore rationalise your irrationality, and convince yourself you're making a rational choice. Of course this isn't true. No matter what I do, I always fall into this same trap. And that's how I know that no matter what I do, even if I am lucky with a few bets, in the long run I'm never going to come out with more money. The only thing I'll have more of is debt. Debt and disappointment. For me, I've learned this the hard way. For those following my blog, I'd urge you to think back in time about how much you've put in, and how much you ultimately come out with. Sure, I've been up at times and withdrawn this from my betting account. I've used it to pay off some credit card amounts. But fast forward a few days, weeks or months, and that credit I paid off ultimately ends up back in my betting account. And with time, my betting account, and my bank account, show the dreaded £0! As mentioned, when gambling you'll be able to rationalise your decisions. You'll look back to past wins and think you can win again, and that you just need to be more disciplined and take money out when you hit your target. That you promise you'll never put this back in your gambling account once you've withdrawn it. But how often has this happened? Extend the period you're looking at and how much are you 'up' overall? I had to take a good hard look at myself and think about my losses. No matter what I did, what I told myself, what I thought I would do differently this time, it never happened. Only by thinking about this can I accept I won't win my money back through gambling. And that hurts. It hurts because I thought I was good at gambling. Didn't my past huge wins show that? The wins where the odds were massively against me but I won convincingly? Well my bank account balance shows the true story. The black and white. Not all the other things I tell myself to make myself feel better. I now accept I can't win back my money gambling, and only by really understanding and believing that, can I reach the next step in my recovery. Some people say gambling is only a problem when you’re losing, but to me this statement isn’t true. Gambling can be a problem even when you’re winning, although you may not yet know it. If you’ve been drawn in to gambling, you enjoy the thrill or it’s a distraction from something else, then in my view it doesn’t matter if you’re winning or losing. You’re hooked. And I’m testament to the fact that no matter how much you win, you can lose it very quickly. I mainly bet on sports through various online gambling sites. There’s so many offers when you open an account – be it a ‘risk free’ bet (returned stake if you lose), a matched first deposit, or even just a completely free bet where no deposit is required. My gambling journey started with me opening a number of these online accounts. I thought I was quite sensible about it; I maximised the free bets available from a number of sites, and after the first bet, I then withdrew my initial deposit. This let me with any winnings from the first bet or a risk free bet / matched deposit bet from the account offers. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t be any worse off. And it all started so well. I was up about 500% on the amount I put in originally (and which I subsequently withdrew). I withdrew some of my winnings, but looking back, I was already hooked. Hooked to making a quick buck. Hooked to getting bets right and ‘beating the house’. Hooked to the thrill of a close winning bet. Around 7 years ago I remember losing £1,000 of my own money through gambling. I was trying to win back my winnings. This had failed, and eventually I found myself trying to win back my losses. I lived with my parents at the time, and told them about my loss because I felt so crap about all the money I’d lost. Rightfully, they gave me a hard time, and their stern words and the disappointment I saw in their eyes was enough to make me stop…for a while. After a short break, I then started gambling again. Not much. Not getting into debt. Losing money still, but losing money that I could just about afford to lose. The more and more I lost, the more I wanted to win it back. Chasing my losses really started to set in. Fast forward a good 5 years, and after more sustained losses, I finally went on a winning streak. I started with around £1,800, and I remember telling myself that if I get to £2,500 I’ll stop. Then £5,000. Then £7,500. And so it continued…I wanted to win more and more. I was so focused on winning back my losses before as my motivation for gambling, or at least that’s what I thought. But when push came to shove, I continued to gamble. I was hooked to winning. It was more than just about winning back my losses. Within one week (of very intensive gambling – at least 18 hours a day, including setting my alarm for 3am/4am to wake up to bet on matches I thought I had a chance on!), I had turned this initial £1,800 into over £500,000. At this point, I was withdrawing money from my account. One day that week, I phoned my mortgage provider to ask to pay off my mortgage. I was told I needed a formal letter sent to me with the calculated repayment costs. This was fine – my mortgage with heavy repayment fees was about half of the money I had in my account. By the time the letter arrived, I didn’t quite have enough to repay, I’d had some huge losses. When you win a lot, betting sites tend to limit the size of your bets quite a lot, so the maximum I could bet on the majority of matches was around £1,000. Not enough to easily win back the extra £20,000 I needed to repay my mortgage. But, one game with even odds allowed me to bet a large amount. I therefore decided to bet the majority of money I had left, in fear I wouldn’t be able to win back enough on other games if my bet sizes continued to be restricted. Of course, I went on to lose this bet (more details of which are in ‘the man behind the journey’ section of my blog). I also had invested some of the money in the stock market, and in premium bonds during that time. As the losses started coming in, I then sold these to fund my attempt to win back my money. Any money I could get my hands on then went into betting as I was so caught up in the vicious gambling circle. Although a very personal story, I wanted to take you through my own brief journey of despair, ecstasy, and then ultimate despair once again. Looking back on this, knowing the trouble I’m in, I would absolutely say if I could go back in time I’d stop when I was up a significant amount of money. Maybe even when I could repay half my debt. But deep down I now know that I’d do exactly the same thing again. I was so caught up in gambling that I was able to rationalise anything. Have spoken to a few of you guys and having seen the comments in the survey, I know some of you have a similar feeling. It’s like you’re a different person when you’re gambling. And it doesn’t matter who you are; there have been comments from professionals with PhD’s, hedge fund managers, even company CEO’s who have been through the same thing. Gambling affects us all, and we’re never going to win back our losses through gambling. Gambling can’t be the answer, no matter how much we want that to be true. In summary, it was the ‘winning’ feeling that got me hooked to gambling. That gave me the idea that with a ‘bit more luck’ I’d be able to win more bets. That eventually I’d be successful. But it was that ‘winning’ feeling that got me hooked to gambling. To make me act irrationally. To be overly optimistic. And ultimately to be in over £100,000 of debt. Day 2. I’ve been here a lot. Mainly because I tend to relapse and end up back on day 1. In my first blog, I talked about ‘that’ feeling which I get when I lose my final bet. I’m not sure if everyone else is that same, but do you tend to find yourself being overly optimistic? That you believe you’ll find your way out of trouble. That you need to spend that last credit you have on a sure bet as that’ll kick start your revival? In the build up to the last few points in a tennis match, or the last few minutes of a football game, I start to breathe heavily, my heart pumps harder and harder, and I can’t concentrate on anything other than the game (or usually the ‘in-play’ screen on a mobile app, so I’m not even watching the actual game itself!). If the bet comes in, and it’s been a close match, for all of about 10 seconds I’m excited, I’m happy, I’m joyful. But after that, my attention turns to the next bet. On what next to win more money. What I find particularly strange is the feeling for bets that aren’t close, but that I win. The football match that’s a 3-0 win, or the straight sets tennis match where the person I’ve bet on hasn’t even faced a single break point. For these wins, even if it’s a £50,000 win, there’s about half a second of excitement when the final result comes in. But the overarching feeling is neutral. That I knew I was going to win that bet. That I SHOULD have won that bet. No real excitement, no joy. On to the next bet that I must win to be able to pay the bills. To be able to survive. To remind myself of these feelings as a visual representation, I have created the following chart. It’s not based on any formal statistics or anything like that; it’s simply a rough estimate of the ‘power’ of the feelings I go through following different betting outcomes. I define power as the length of time I have the feeling for and how ‘strong’ that feeling it – how does it affect me, overcome me, or how is it able to distract me from other things. I think having no joy, but a horrible sinking feeling for any loss, is self-explanatory. The same is true for the final loss, meaning the last cash or credit you have available to bet. Although any loss is bad, you still feel you can win this back, and therefore when you lose your last bet the realisation of what you’ve done, and that you can’t dig yourself out of the problem, really sets in. For an easy win, the horrible feeling is still greater than the joy. I knew I was going to win, but I HAD to. I HAD to win to pay back some of my debts that I’ve got myself in. I’m still in debt overall, and remembering this means that the joy doesn’t outweigh the sadness. For a close win, I lose focus on everything else. I forget, in part, that I’m in lots of debt. I focus on this one bet. When I win, I’m so happy, so excited, so relieved. And that feeling of relief outweighs the sadness. I think ‘what if’ I had lost. I’d have no money. I wouldn’t be able to pay those bills. Thank you gambling gods for letting this bet come in. But the joy is short lived. For 10 seconds I’d say the above graph is correct. Thereafter, I’m back to thinking about the debt I’m in and the problems I have, and as such, over any long period, this is probably a more true reflection: I wanted to include the visual representations so every time I think about gambling again, I can refer back here, and remember the extent of the low feeling, without having to actually go through it and suffer it again (or at least here's hoping). Does anyone else have similar feelings, or is this just me? Let me know your thoughts below: So, here I am. My first blog. And hopefully the last time I'll ever bet. But I seem to have said the same thing all too often over the past few years.
Again today I got THAT feeling. When the realisation that you lost your last bet sinks in. That you have no money and no access to cash to be able to win back those losses. And then I remembered all those bills I promised to pay this month which I now have nothing left to pay them with. Up until that final loss I always think I’ll be okay. That I’ll win the next bet, and the next one. That I’ll take some money out my account to pay those bills after a couple of wins. But no matter how many bets I win, how much money I win, I always want more. Ultimately the only thing this always leaves me with is nothing. Nothing other than a horrible sinking feeling. A feeling where I just want to be sucked into a hole that I can hide in forever and never come out of. Because if I do, I’ll realise I’ve let down the friends and family that trusted me to never bet again. Those friends that leant their hard earned money for me to pay some of those otherwise unpayable bills. I’ll realise I still have a problem. An addiction. And admitting this problem, whilst an important step, won’t help me pay the pile of unpaid bills that still sit by the door mat. Needless to say, I’ve struggled with a gambling addition over the past few years. Apparently saying that out loud or admitting that to friends or family is supposed to be a step in the right direction. To be able to admit and recognise you have a problem. To want to do something about it. But that hasn’t worked for me. I have a deep belief that I’m able to spot that one bet that everyone has missed, with the odds that will allow me to put down a ‘risk free’ bet. To allow me to meet those interest payments on the credit card this month. To start paying off some of those credit cards or the friends that have lent me money. Whenever I lose, I put this down to the fact I was unlucky. My biggest ever bet, which I lost, I attributed to a spot of bad luck (see ‘The Man Behind the Journey’ section for further details). More than a spot of bad lucky actually…significantly bad luck. My luck had to turn at some point, right? A few years on, I’ve kept the same mentality. That I can win back my money. Or at least enough to pay a few bills. And sometimes I’ve done well. I’ve doubled £100 which would allow me to pay off a few bills. I’ve turned £100 into £1,000 to pay off some credit interest. I’ve even turned £100 into £10,000 on a number of occasions. But no matter how much I go on to win, I’ve always ended up losing it. And because of the few odd wins, I think I can do this every pay day. Every day I have an hour to myself, home alone, with some time to spare. The majority of the time I lose the £100, £200, £1,000 on the first few bets. Even if I do win initially, I need to recognise that no matter what I tell myself, I AM going to lose that money. And that’s the purpose of this first blog entry. To remind myself of that horrible feeling. Of the people I’ve let down – including myself. To put in writing that no matter how much I win, if it’s through gambling, I will always end up losing it. That my belief that I can always win or spot a ‘risk free’ bet is unfounded. That it will take a very long time to pay off my debts naturally – there will be a lot of hard months to come. But that gambling is not, and can never be, the answer to my gambling problem. As logical as the last sentence is, I always fail to remember it… |
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