How Gambling Destroyed Her Life

By the time you read this letter, I will be gone.

Hopefully, I will be in a better place, free from the terrible addiction that has held me captive for five years.'' These were the words she wrote before taking her to a near-fatal close of tranquillizers.

She felt life was not worth living.

After four days in a coma, she woke up in the high-care unit of a local hospital.

Her suicide attempt had failed, and her worst fear was about to become a reality. As a young person, she never understood how anybody could become addicted to anything. or why would they want to, be it alcohol, drugs, or gambling.

In her eyes, only weak people succumbed to such things.

A young woman who considered herself a well-balanced being and a model citizen. Until one fateful day when a ''harmless'' visit to a newly built casino changed her life forever.

Where else could one make a profit in a couple of hours?

At that stage, she was a successful businesswoman.

She owned two small businesses had shares in two more businesses and worked part-time to finance the expensive lifestyle to which her family had become accustomed; including private schooling for her twin boys aged eight.

Financially things were going plain. Her marriage though had been unhappy for several years.

Excessive and compulsive gambling is one of the most destructive and expensive forms of addiction there is on the planet.

For the five long years after her first casino experience, she lived a double life. Every time she withdrew cash it was nothing to her, she did not feel a thing about how she spent it or abused money.

Thousands of dollars at a time were withdrawn and the money was through the morning. It was easy to do because the casino accepted bank cards for large withdrawals.

It didn't take long for me to get into serious trouble. Desperate not to have her family find out about her problem.

She took on extra business clients many of whom were personal friends and began borrowing money to recoup her losses.

The woman confidently renegotiated with suppliers to extend her credit terms, and in this way bought extra time.

At that point in her life, she was on good terms with the bank manager, so she simply had her overdraft limit increased and applied for and all was granted easily.

The several personal loans and credit cards from various banks were all updated, and credit was allowed freely. Little time was spent at home; the gambling took her away from her friends and family.

Often her children were left with a neighbour.

As her losses grew her interest in everything around her vanished and nothing mattered more than her gambling. Neither her children nor her marriage, home or family mattered to her anymore.

There was an enormous strain on her body as a result of the stress and insomnia. She lost weight from not eating properly and was permanently bad-tempered.

Her car was almost repossessed, her credit cards and chequebooks had to be returned to the bank and her overdraft facilities were suspended.

She owed lots of money. The worst day of her life came when her children's school principal telephoned to ask her to remove the twins from school.

Their school fees hadn't been paid for four months. None of her family knew about her problem.

She came up with reasons for not having much cash, she told everybody business was slow and had a couple of bad deals.

One morning when she was yet again at the casino trying to recoup her losses her husband's acquaintance saw her.

He, of course, told her husband the next day that without her husband saying a word to her he went to the casino. He gave them her Identity number and requested activity statements profits and losses and past transactions.

She later found out this kind of information was given in to him on numerous occasions thereafter, despite her request that nobody is given access to it.

They were divorced two years later and for the first time, she realized how much help she needed to get her life back on track.

She was alone with two young children to support. She had no choice but to have a self-exclusion policy initiated at the casino to prevent any further gambling she banned herself.

She called a gambling helpline and decided to see a therapist who specialized in addiction.

She began her healing process. In the months that followed she slowly started to get her life back on track and it was good to have a sense of normality again. Debts, however, mounted by the day and she missed the gambling terribly.

Though she kept on seeing the therapist her urge to back to the casino was overwhelming.

Six months later she suffered a devastating relapse. She applied to have her one-year self-exclusion order lifted as she was convinced, she had learned a lot from her gambling habit under control.

She believed this time around she would do things differently and would not become greedy for money.

Well, this time her losses were even greater and the urge to recoup these losses was also greater. In the eight months from the lifting of her self-exclusion to her attempted suicide, she had gambled away more than half a million dollars belonging to clients, friends, and family.

On the day the gambler almost ended her life she had yet another big loss. She just couldn't take it anymore.

This person felt worthless, a burden to her children and a total misfit.

She simply couldn't carry on, so she decided to end her life, but it didn't work as she planned.

After the fatal suicide attempt, she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility where she spent two months in intensive therapy. It was tough for her to go through the procedure.

Before she was discharged from the rehabilitation centre her ex-husband told her entire family about the gambling problem which caused many issues between her sister and herself, and this kind of rift will never be bridged.

Her parents wanted nothing more from her and even the children had been poisoned against their mother. The light at the end of her tunnel came in the form of a friend who loved and supported her through all this time, through thick and thin.

The one who always believed in her despite the worst odds and eventually helped her through her ordeal. She will forever be grateful to this person.

She now has a lifetime self-exclusion order at every casino in the country and would be arrested if she as much as tried to enter the premises of any of these gambling halls.

A woman who has so far managed to repair her relationship with her children and her self-esteem is gradually improving.

In the five years, she had gambled not only did she lose half a million dollars but also her twenty-three-year marriage, her two businesses, three jobs, family and friends, and almost lost her kids.

This story may sound like an extreme example and even she would never have thought it possible until it happened to her, and you may not think you can be a victim of such an addiction.