I once lost £200 online gambling.

I come from a family with a long history of addicts; smokers, alcoholics, gamblers. And I myself have always felt this inability to quit while I'm ahead ever since I can remember. The first real addiction I ever had was caffeine. I started drinking this energy drink from Tesco called Kick at the age of 14 (I think), and then after that was Relentless and Redbull. I was drinking about 400ml of caffeine every single day. But then I found coffee and made the switch and I no longer have energy drinks on a daily basis. I mean coffee is still not the best thing one could be drinking but it is definitely better than energy drinks, in my opinion. Then, my second major addiction was tobacco which started when I was 19, which I recently gave up and have been smoke free for about 3 months now which feels really fucking amazing as I thought I would never be able to quit. Obviously, being human I have my slip ups on occasions, but they have been very few. I have had other minor addictions in between but they weren't highly vicious. Now, from the title of this blog you'll probably assume that I had a gambling addiction. Well, not really, and if one would consider it an addiction it was the shortest addiction of my entire life.

Despite knowing that I have quite an addictive personally, I still felt the need to try my luck at some online gambling games, and for that entire day I don't know what came over me but I. Could. Not. Stop. No matter how hard I tried I just kept playing and playing, and losing money and losing money, until my bank account had been completely wiped clean. I wasted about £200 in one day. And I felt so fucking stupid. I should have known that most of those forms of games are scam, but I couldn't stop playing, and the fact that it was a video game and I am a sucker for video games meant that I was instantly hooked. In my first game I had won £500, but, I wanted to win more so I kept playing. Instead of withdrawing the money I had already won I just kept thinking "I want to double it" and so I kept going and before I knew it, the money I had won had disappeared and out of frustration I added £100 from my own money in order to try and win the £500 back. But, after loosing yet again and my frustration getting worse, I added another £100, to try and win back my £100 that I used to gamble.

At the time I felt so fucking stupid, I had disappointed myself, my parents and my girlfriend. Tons and tons of people on this planet struggling to make money and I threw away the only money I had left in my account. For the rest of the week I had to ask my parents to pay for my groceries and my bus trips to University, and for anything else I needed help with until I got my next income. I felt annoyed that I let myself get that bad, especially in SUCH a short amount of time. But, now, I see it as a lesson I had to learn. First of all, being as gullible as I always have been, I learnt that just because a website or any other form of advertising says that I could win over £1,000 does not mean that it is necessarily true. Secondly, if I know that I have an addictive personality, which I know that I do, and if I know that I can become highly focused and instantly hooked on games, especially video games, then it should be my responsibility to avoid things that involve both of those things all together. I also learnt that, not every time I find myself in a situation where I have failed does that mean I should keep trying, sometimes the first time I fail at something may be the universe telling me that it is not the thing for me or that it does not enable or help me progress in anyway whatsoever. Gambling is definitely one of those things that I think does not enable or develop anyone. It took me one day to realise this, and I'm glad it only took me a short time to do so, there are people that take years and years to learn that lesson, and I could have just as easily been like that.

I think the reason why it took me less time to figure this out, before I had lost complete control, is due to the fact that, well, for one I have an extremely understanding and supporting girlfriend who wants the best for me and helped me put things into perspective. And second, and most importantly, that my parents taught me from an extremely young age that gambling is bad, and that addictions take away our freedom. And the fact that I already had this knowledge instilled within me made it so that I was a little more aware, when I started that this could be really dodgy and I could be placing myself into a situation where I could unnecessarily become highly addicted to something that was not going to help me grow as a person. Now that I look back and try to think as to why I tried it in the first place I cannot even remember why I headed down that route anyway, but I definitely know that it is not a route I wanna head down again. I can't even explain the feeling that came upon me when I started winning money, it felt quite evil, it felt like I was gaining power and I wanted more of it. Which I guess is why people with tons and tons of money sometimes go off the rails or why politicians just want more and more power, because you do tend to lose a sense of self and it goes from being something so innocent such as making money, or playing a game to needing as much money as possible, or wanting as much of that feeling of empowerment as possible. Which is not healthy, at all.