I gambled and left everyone around me dirt poor and in debt

This is a throwaway account because I post extensively on my main and I post pictures with my face on there.

I didn’t start what I would call heavy gambling until 2023 but that still better to a certain extent because it was sports gambling. In a matter of 15 months my life went from pretty good to absolute dogshit.

I had an account with a betting company for about 5 years before I developed a problem. In that 5 year window, I probably placed 25 bets on sports at the absolute maximum. Never more than $5 each. I made parlays and single outcome events.

Then I would get bored and forget all about it. I didn’t lose more than $100 cumulatively in that entire period.

Fast forward to late 2023 and I fell for the betting marketing on Twitter. I knew it was wrong and that betting on sports was for fools but I jumped in anyway. College football, NFL and a lot of NBA. I’d throw in whatever current event was happening. For example, I believe it was November that year that Vegas had an F1 race and I did indeed place a bet on that. I don’t know why.

I knew I had a problem as soon as I could no longer enjoy a sporting event if I didn’t have a single cent riding on it. I stopped watching soccer because I soon noticed betting on it was even worse than other sports. Not a lot actually happens that’s worth betting on and the odds on regular occurrences were seemingly worse than other sports. I moved from over/under to parlays and in the blink of eye march madness rolled around. I somehow made back all the money I had lost between the time I started late 2023 until then and went into profit $24 000.

Making $24 000 gambling was the worst possible thing that could have happened to me.

When I made my losses back and went into that kind of insane profit something switched in me where I no longer had the ability to care about money I lost and only focused on the money I could possibly make from what I had. I began to solely think in terms of making 25% of my deposit as profit and the like. Absolutely sickening.

I quit my job to top it all off. While making a series of bad decisions for my life, I made sure I didn’t leave the most important blunder out of my vast portfolio.

My girlfriend of about a year was against me leaving my job as we had been living together since June of the previous year and she felt I went into my career in the first place based on wanting to help people to throw it away on a whim. We had numerous arguments about it but I was firm that I wasn’t going back. I couldn’t be at work and do the necessary research to make the best and most educated bets possible was all that was running through my mind.

Needless to say, the next thing that happened was the betting company taking to the cleaners. I went through my profit and my savings so quickly. Somehow each time I lost a large sum I’d be depressed and still be able to deposit again like I was numb to the fact that I was actively messing up our lives.

We couldn’t afford our place anymore and she moved in with her sister and I went to live with my parents.

I wish I could go back in time to kill myself before moving day.

I moved in with my recently retired parents who had a fat bank account and almost immediately started borrowing money. $50, $100, $1 000 and up to $2 000. These weren’t the four amounts I borrowed but examples of frequent amounts. Over the span of 4 months I drained their bank accounts, they had no idea I was gambling and it just seemed to them I kept running into a series of unfortunate events that they wanted to help me out of whenever I came with new story.

As the money emptied from the bank account, they started asking questions I had no answers for. My hours at work didn’t make sense etc. I knew it wouldn’t be long before they discovered I no longer had a job so I decided to jump ship and move to a different city since my girlfriend had left our city to go start a business with mom near home. I thought if I could get away then I would have enough peace and quiet around me to make back their money, my savings, my girlfriend’s money and even the profit I had already lost.

Needless to say, that’s not what happened.

Instead, the company my girlfriend started with her mom because wildly successful and turned made good money.

I borrowed $120 000 when she made $150 000 and she paid for necessities and debts with the other amount. She thought it was for restarting a company with my friend. My friend and I weren’t even on speaking terms as I owed all my friends money and I wasn’t on speaking terms with any of them.

We were living at a nice hotel and had to move out because I lost $120 000 on blackjack. I had graduated from sports months to the devil casino game where I made big wins and even bigger losses.

She made $350 000 and I sure as shit lost $325 000 of it.

$500 000 and I lost $425 000 of it.

She had a falling out with her mom and her friends as they said something is going on with the business I’m investing in because whenever I get the money there’s also. Story that follows why there is no profit sharing happening and I’m not getting paid on a monthly basis. They had to close the business as they were both integral to it.

By the time it was Christmas we were housed at a family style bed and breakfast that was just a step up from a motel. We were borrowing money from people we hadn’t spoken to in ten years and she was under the impression a business payout was around the corner and we would have our lives back soon.

NYE rolled around and we were effectively about to be homeless that night. I called my family for the first time since I had lost my parent’s money, cousins, aunts, uncles, longtime family friends who were like cousins and aunts and uncles etc. They got us housing. And the next day. And the next day. And so on and so forth.

I lied about withdrawing investment payments. I had already done that and lost investment withdrawal one on parlays and the following withdrawals on blackjack. They were waiting on money I knew wasn’t coming.

There’s a lot missing from the story but this long story is basically the gist.

The funny thing is I don’t even like gambling and yet I struggled to ignore the compulsion to do it, especially after I lost my job. Something about being the idiot who lost so much money on something I never had an affinity for over the span of 15 months kept making me want to go back and get the money back.

About 2 weeks ago I had the thought that it might have been simpler if I had just become addicted to either drugs or alcohol and that thought resulted in me going on the website I used, blocking my profile for good and calling the hotline. I couldn’t speak on the hotline and hung up. I didn’t want a voice recording of me saying I was addicted to gambling or the misfortune of someone I knew working there.

I looked up local places that have gambling support and I have been going to a meeting every single day since.

We currently live in the room her friend was using as storage for her extra things but it’s better than waking up and not knowing what the story will be at 11 am when you are supposed to be checking out.

I got in contact with my previous employer and I have a meeting via teams on Wednesday so I hope to get a job again and continue fixing my life.

It’s perplexing to me how I don’t even feel the urge to gamble and I’m not struggling or anything with not gambling. The feelings or urges I’m supposed to be experiencing just aren’t there.

Why couldn’t I stop before I ruined everyone’s lives?