This is probably the most personal post that I will write – but I think it is important to see how “normal” gambling can become a prop that is difficult to let go of.
I wasn’t an abused child. I was a neglected child. My father never had any interest in me that I can recall – and my mother’s depression was so bad that she could go for days without acknowledging that I was there. I was the dirty smelly kid, the “Pigpen” from the Charlie Brown comic strip, “peanuts.”
I liked to get out and about in muddy pools and into the woods and we didn’t have a bath at home. I never cleaned my teeth. My diet was appalling leading to problems later in life. I had few friends. But, this neglect also had positives – as an only child it meant that I had no-one to answer to, that I could go anywhere and not be missed. It meant that I could escape the northern industrial town where we lived, on my bike and cycle as far as the coast some 2 hours away … Places where there were gambling arcades – but then I only had a child’s pocket money.
That all changed when I left school at 16 and started my first job. After buying a new bike, (it was several years later when I next made a big purchase, as I put all my excess cash towards gambling,) I then discovered pubs – and the UK drinking culture and girls. Eventually one lass found me attractive (she had “beer goggles I think”) and we became an item. Within a few months I found my escape from my depressed mother and I moved in with “J” and her mother.
“J” had her own problems, which I touched on in a previous post and I have to say that I was only in the marriage because I had such low self esteem that I thought no-one else would want me and I didn’t want to let her down. That, of course, was no basis for a lasting union– and through the haze of all the gambling I was doing I came to realise that. She lost her job and I supported her through her career change to nursing, then I lost my job. That led to a chain of events which eventually moved me out.
My first job was as a driver’s mate on the lorries going to the docks. Then they found out I had qualifications, (O levels!) so I was put into the offices. When I was made redundant it was as an Area Sales Manager with my own office and company car with unlimited mileage, (not something I was ever going to reach again!) After a year looking for sales work, (it was the Thatcher era) – I was put on a work programme for shop work in a bookshop – and later I took a 2 week course in career change planning. It didn’t work for me – I still didn’t know what I wanted to do career wise but I had enjoyed the process of looking into different careers so much that I decided to become a careers adviser and so took up the training for that.
It was a 2 year course – the second year being a placement in a careers office and it was at this point that I decided to leave J and go it alone. I moved to the Midlands where I knew nobody and only had the local pub and its slot machine for company. I can’t say when I moved from “normal” gambling into being compulsive … do we ever know? But that time marked a change. I remember being in the pubs most evenings – hardly drinking because that would take up good gambling time … and at weekends I would go into Birmingham and always landed in the arcades or occasionally casinos.
Then my mother became ill – so I moved back north to be nearer to her (by now “J” had found someone else) and that year was when it all blew up. In that one year I moved home 3 times – “J” started divorce proceedings – I changed jobs twice and my mother died.
We had had a row last time we met face to face – so I hadn’t contacted my mother in a couple of weeks. July 16th was her birthday. I sent a card a couple of days before and on the day I planned just to phone her. It was about 8pm when I made the call – and I got no answer. I then knew there was a problem because she never left the house at night, (hardly in the day) so I had to go there.
When I arrived, the gate and door were unlocked (not usual) and I walked in to find her. I dialled 999 knowing that there was no point in an ambulance – but they came anyway as well as the police and a doctor. The inquest said an open verdict (there was no note) but it seemed so set up for me to find her, (birthday – house unlocked,) that I still feel she made it happen. Her unopened card was still on the mat.
I gambled on the day of the funeral. I gambled with the money I found around the house. I sold her house – used some of the proceeds to put a deposit on a house (my best ever move) and to start payments on a new car – and gambled the rest. I think when the last of it had gone and I started to move into debt – that was when I decided that I needed to do something about the addiction I now acknowledged I had. But I will leave the story of my “recovery” for another post.
