The women gambling with their marriages, careers and even their lives
... and it starts with ‘harmless’ smartphone games, warns a top addiction therapist
THE WOMAN sitting in front of me was an attractive 38-year-old with a career in the City, a loving and supportive husband, three beloved daughters and a Victorian home in a smart London suburb.
But in her eyes, I could detect a deep well of self-loathing, a sense of failure. Sure enough, she wrung her hands and avoided my gaze as she sobbed: ‘I’m a freak. I’m scum . . . I’m beyond help.’
The reason for this pitiful outburst might surprise you as much as it still did her. Fiona Smith was £100,000 in debt, because of a five-year gambling addiction.
What began as a fondness for free-to-play video games on her phone during her daily commute had grown into a casual flutter on online slot machines. And ‘fun’ had quickly morphed into a craving.
Historically, gambling has been seen as a male problem, but the accessibility and anonymity of online gambling has changed all that. A study this month revealed that 44 per cent of online gamblers now regularly bet using smartphones — up from 22 per cent just four years ago.
The research emphasised fears over addiction in the young, with bookmakers gaining an extra 1.6 million customers under 35. And while attention often focuses on teens, many working women and young mums are also affected.
As a leading British therapist in female gambling addiction, with practices in Harley Street and the City of London, I have seen a huge increase in the number of professional women seeking help over the past 15 years.
British gambling charities such as Gamble Aware do not have statistics on the number of women involved. That’s probably because such women do not want to risk their lives and careers by speaking out. But I see them, and their tears, every day.
Most of the men I treat use gambling as a cocaine-type drug. They’re chasing a high. Women, however, use gambling like methadone — to numb pain, anxiety and depression. They want to switch off their emotions.
But gambling has the potential to be as destructive as heroin. I’ve helped women who have smashed their kids’ piggy banks to pay online gambling debts — or even, in the most extreme cases, turned to prostitution.
Fiona’s problem began six years ago for a variety of reasons. As a little girl, she’d been taught to please everybody around her. As an adult she was exhausting herself trying to impress her boss, clients, husband, kids and friends on social media.
When her mother died of cancer and soon after she caught her husband sending a flirtatious text to a woman he met at the gym, Fiona reached breaking point. Then a cartoon advert for a gambling site popped up on her phone.
Fiona clicked on the advert. These slot machine sites look and operate just like online games. But the player loses track of money as well as time.
She thought: ‘What could be the harm in upping the stakes, just a little?’ After all, she could afford it. She tapped in her credit card details and began playing with stakes of £10 and £20 a time.
While she clicked away, she found her anxiety evaporated.
‘I thought I had been playing for about half an hour and was horrified to find I’d been on the site for two-and-a-half hours,’ she said. But that first time, she broke even. It seemed harmless.
Within two months, her card was refused in Jigsaw. By then she was easily losing £300 per train journey.
Meanwhile, her husband Paul, 46, a high-flying professional, became suspicious when Fiona started hiding bank statements. He investigated and was horrified by what he found.
By this point, five years after her first foray, Fiona owed £ 100,000, which included a £40,000 inheritance the couple had been saving to fund their three daughters’ university education. Fiona says she will never forget the look on his face as he confronted her: a mix of tearful sorrow and accusation.
Fiona approached her GP, who threw up his hands at the mention of gambling. Addiction counsellors would not help because gambling was not recognised as an addiction. In despair, Paul trawled the internet and found me. When we first spoke, Fiona felt beyond help.
But you can stop gambling within four weeks by following a programme I have devised. That is not the end of your work, though. You need to uncover what has made you so sad and scared that you wanted to lose yourself in this way. Then develop healthier coping mechanisms.
The effects of gambling can last a lifetime. If the habit has been a woman’s way of avoiding the things that upset her, there’s always a risk she will return to it if she encounters difficulty again.
Mother-of-one Kelly Field’s gambling story is so extreme that the ITV drama Cleaning Up (with Sheridan Smith as an office cleaner addicted to online roulette) is based on her experiences.
Kelly, 36, also turned to gambling to block out anxiety in 2013. She says: ‘There were work problems spinning round in my head when I saw a daytime TV advert for a bingo site and clicked on it. It felt good because I won first time — that’s how they suck you in.’
Six months later, Kelly, a waitress from Wigan, was gambling up to £500 a day and was £10,500 in debt. It was a figure that eventually soared to £70,000, which she will be repaying until 2021. ‘I just kept spending on cards, maxing out one and applying for two more.’ Kelly’s partner of 15 years, Iain, a 41-yearold sales manager, was supportive when she finally told him. They tried to find help, but there is little provision for women because it’s still very much considered a male problem. Kelly’s partner offered practical help: ‘He put a block on the laptop. And I got a basic phone without internet access.’ But she still found ways to gamble. ‘I’d be driving home, thinking about logging on, the way I imagine a heroin addict thinks about getting the next fix.
‘I felt so worthless and helpless. It’s like being stood in front of a big black mountain. You can’t get over it or around it. You can’t believe you will ever get to the other side,’ says Kelly.
She continues: ‘People found it hard to believe I had lost so much because I’m thrifty. I buy clothes in charity shops and hunt for bargains in the supermarket. But it’s not about the money.
‘Of the £70,000 I lost, I put £30,000 on cards and the rest was wages, overdraft and savings. A lot of it’s a blur.’
Kelly’s partner sent her to the GP after she blew £1,600 in an hour. She says: ‘I became so upset and angry I snapped up the credit card and started scratching away at my wrists with it.
‘By then I was thinking suicide was the only way out. It took all the courage I had left to go to the doctor. All I could do was cry. He referred me to an NHS counsellor, who never turned up.’
Kelly only began her recovery with the help of charitable gambling addiction service Beacon Counselling Trust. ‘They listened,’ she says. ‘And talking it out
helped.’ Kelly’s recovery involved speaking on behalf of campaigns to stop gambling companies advertising on daytime TV.
Her son only found out when she went on Good Morning Britain in 2014. She says: ‘He understood, but we don’t speak about it much. It’s the elephant in the room.’
Kelly’s faith in counselling is echoed by Sarah Grant, 32, an ex-kitchen manager. ‘I was a girl who dreamed of being a midwife. I only wanted to help others. But at my lowest, I couldn’t even help myself,’ says Sarah, from Cardiff. ‘In therapy, I learned it started in childhood. When I was seven we’d go to the seaside and I’d be sent off to the arcade while my parents had a drink. It felt like the machines were babysitters.
‘ My parents kept giving me stacks of coins. The money had no value. I just kept going.’
Sarah’s habit continued into adulthood. Working as a barmaid, she was playing slot machines and buying scratch cards — sometimes 100 at a time. It soon escalated.
‘I didn’t like who I was,’ she said, ‘ and when I was gambling I stopped feeling anything.
‘On the first online site I played £20 and won £200. Very quickly it became something I did day and night on my phone.
‘Once, I put £200 on at midnight. By 3am I was up £9,000 and by 6am I had nothing. When you have a problem, you can’t stop. And you have very little memory of it. It’s a form of self-harm.’
Sarah barely remembers the dark day in 2016 when she stole from a friend’s bank account. She accessed the online account after her friend left her laptop and mobile phone with her while being treated in hospital.
‘I remember transferring the first £100 and then not much else until the card was declined.’ Over three days, she’d stolen £1,900. She was found out when her friend checked her online banking days later.
Sarah was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison and served nine. ‘ I’d never experienced anything like it — I’m not the kind of person who has had their fingerprints taken before. It was horrendous.
‘I tried to hang myself and ended up on a mental health ward with murderers. There was no help for gambling addicts. I was made to feel gambling was a stupid “choice” rather than an illness.’
By the time Sarah came out of prison, her self-esteem was so low she continued gambling.
‘I had to pay back all the money. That was important to me. But it’s ridiculous that I thought gambling would help me do that. There’s no logic in a gambler’s brain.’
SARAH finally sought help from a local addiction charity: ‘I had to end the addiction like a toxic relationship. I wrote a letter saying what I had loved about gambling and what I would miss. It was a grieving process.’
At recovery retreats, Sarah says she has met many successful professional women. This certainly reflects what I see in my practice.
You might know women with gambling problems without realising. I treated one who drove an expensive sports car. The fuel gauge was always in the red because she couldn’t afford to fill it up. In order to maintain the façade, she refused to sell the car.
As for Fiona Smith, a year on, she has changed her stressful job and is now appreciated at work. She is rebuilding trust in her marriage. Slowly, she’s allowing herself to feel happy again.
And, most important, she’s uncovered what makes her scared, angry and sad and knows how to deal with those problems — instead of venting them via gambling.
GAMBLING Addiction In Women: Four Weeks To Freedom by Liz Karter (CreateSpace, £9.99).