Gambling Habit Stories
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Success Stories. The good news about gambling addiction is that treatment is effective, and recovery is real and attainable. North Dakotans who have struggled with problem gambling have found hope, and ultimately success. Here are a few such success stories. I had been actively gambling nearly all of my adult life, a period. Read bedtime stories to young kids, and share books with older ones. Keep and continue to grow your family photo albums. Get to know your children's friends. Help your kids with homework. Go camping together. Bring your kids to school. Leave love or encouraging notes. Work on common goals with (a) friend(s).
Although gambling might be a tempting activity that you enjoy, for many people around the world gambling can be a serious problem. From huge financial losses to the losses of loved ones and the breakdown of marriages to murdering one’s own family, gambling addiction can have some truly negative and horrific outcomes. It is best to seek help as soon as you feel that you are losing control of your gaming and are unable to stop. There are plenty of organisations out there which specialise in helping addicts deal with their addiction. In our blog post today, we will share with you some horrific gambling stories with the hope to dissuade you from gambling and losing out on more than you bargained for.
Curt’s Story
Before checking in to the Lutheran Social Services’ Gambler’s Choice programme, Curt’s addiction had driven him to suicidal thoughts. He described his addiction to gambling as a serious ‘hangover’, which prevented him from stopping. Thoughts of suicide are severely serious and require instant attention. The fact that Curt wanted to die because he was losing out on so much money as a result of gambling is an indication that he couldn’t cope with the situation. As soon as you feel that your gambling habit is starting to get out of control, contact an organisation such as GamStop right away. They will help you deal with your impulses to gamble and your gambling addiction. Today, Curt is attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings, working on regaining his family’s trust, and is being much more careful with his money than he would previously.
Jodie Nealley
Jodie Nealley is another individual who truly suffered as a result of her gambling addiction. This time, however, she was forced to pay up for her losses and since she couldn’t do so, she was sent to jail. She lost her husband after a sad divorce as well as a beautiful home and a job. Learning her lesson whilst in jail, Jodie is now an Intervention and Recovery Support Coordinator at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling. She has been in recovery from gambling disorder for six years and in recovery from alcohol for 22. The combination of gambling and alcohol addiction is scary and requires a lot of effort to overcome. Jodie Nealley has truly committed herself to a strong recovery and is addressing the symptoms on a day to day basis.
Anonymous 1
According to Financial Spread Betting, Anonymous also has a horror story to share. This time the story is related to credit card debts while at the same time being unemployed. Anonymous started out as a shy gambler who would phone in to bookies and place his bets. However, his interest in placing bets soon turned out into an addiction that he couldn’t control. This led to severe gambling debts being into the thousands of pounds, which he can’t afford to repay as he is currently unemployed and still struggles with the urge to place a bet even though he doesn’t have the cash to do so. Remember to seek help as soon as you notice any of these symptoms cropping up in your experience.
Anonymous 2
Anonymous 2 is another example of a sad situation where gambling has taken over someone’s life and made things exceptionally difficult. In Anonymous 2’s case, the situation led to divorce and having to ask his father for financial support. With four children in the mix, this situation really got out of hand when Anonymous 2 decided to gamble at a casino. With a lucky winning streak, he gambled funds that he thought he could double and even triple. Yet the situation turned out that he lost 15k in the drop of an eye and these were 15k which he didn’t have. A grown adult asking his parents for financial help is an embarrassing situation, but gambling addiction isn’t embarrassing and you need to seek professional help wherever you feel the need as you do not want to end up divorced, where your significant other doesn’t trust you, and where you’re digging into savings that affect your children’s futures.
Tala’s Story
Tala and her husband would go to casinos several times a year just for fun. However, Tala’s love for gambling became a problem that she would hide from her husband and her family as she managed to withdraw all the cash she had available on her and her husband’s credit cards. This led to a situation where her husband was denied credit after applying for it, telling his wife that she had ruined his “good name”. To avoid situations where you’re squeezing out your family’s hard-earned cash, without their knowledge, and to resist the urge to gamble away money that you do not have, seek help as soon as possible.
Murder of a Family
Losing money and your family’s trust aren’t the only terrible things that could happen to you as a result of your gambling addiction. There was a story of a North American man who ran a business whose grave he was slowly digging as a result of his gambling addiction. Things got so bad that one night he strangled his children three, and then shot his wife and then himself. This murder should send horrific tingles down your back as you contemplate this poor man’s situation. Things had gotten so out of hand for him that he simply believed he couldn’t go on with not only his life, but with his family either. There was simply no hope for him; no light at the end of the tunnel. This darkness can be defeated with the right help. If you feel that you’ve reached a point of no return, help is always available. Please seek it out when you feel down! Murders of innocents can be avoided this way as can suicide.
Conclusion
As you can see from these brief examples, gambling addiction can have a range of diversely different consequences and they are all bad. You will be doing yourself a favour if you seek help as soon as possible. Gambling addiction is a very serious mental addiction that makes one think that he or she can make up losses by playing a little bit more or adding a few more dollars or pounds to the game. This assumption is incorrect and there is no evidence that this wrongly-held belief is correct. Better save yourself some trouble, money, and the loss of loved ones and seek professional help. GamStop, Gamble Aware, and Gamblers Anonymous are some important institutions that can help you and support you as you address the void that is created by gambling.
Gambling Horror Stories – What Else You Need to Know?
The horror stories speak for themselves and we sincerely hope you can put them down to experience so that you never have to go through something like this. We give you the crux of the matter with this final section. Quitting gambling takes some doing, but it’s for your own good, so you better start now if you’re having problems controlling the urge to place wagers.
⚽️ Can I get in trouble for betting on sports?
Even shy punters can be in danger of developing a gambling addiction. All sorts of cases are reported daily to Gamblers Anonymous and GamCare. The most important rule if you can't give up on betting, is to do it in moderation. Use the limitation tools available on most licensed sports betting sites.
🔒 Has someone gone to jail due to gambling addiction?
Going to jail isn't out of the question, especially if we are talking about a significant debt. An important lesson can be learned from Jodie Neallyey's case who not only went to jail but also lost her husband, home, and, job while serving time.
🧠 What does gambling do to the brain?
There are a lot of experiments and tests that have been made to identify how the human brain reacts when a person is gambling. There are certain emotions that activate from the back of the brain that are really close to the feeling of happiness, euphoria and satisfaction or anger when the player wins or loses.
🤑 Is gambling addictive?
Gambling is proven to be addictive. People often start playing out of boredom or due to a tragic episode in their lives. Gambling addiction could be also triggered by drugs or strong influence from someone, whether a friend or a relative. Of course, it is not always permanent – there are a lot of ways and a lot of people that have cured themselves and now live a normal life.
💷 Why are casinos so addictive?
There are a lot of myths for casinos, including that there is something in the drinks or in the air in the facility. Both online and land-based casinos are addictive – there are a lot of triggers that get players to dig deeper in then their pockets and play more. This includes bright colours, triggering words and music or ringing when you win and other visual and sound stimuli.
👪 How does gambling affect relationships?
When gambling becomes a routine, it might affect not only your life, but your relationships. There is a high percent of couples that split up because of gambling addiction and all the dept that comes consequently. According to tabloids, this is the main reason celebrities like Ben Affleck got divorced.
👉 Is gambling a mental illness?
Gambling could be considered mental illness. There are a lot of people that struggle with gambling addiction. Therefore, there are a lot of organizations that support online casino sites and prevent gamblers from playing too much. Same goes for land-based casinos. It takes a lot of time, but gambling addiction is curable.
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View all postsFrom amazing strokes of online luck to casino robberies, to fortunes lost, these ten gambling stories may make you think about how you need to play your game.
Ethereum Exit Scam
A player, who remains unidentified, except by the winning address “0xa169DF5ED3363cfC4c92ac96C6C5f2A42fCCBF85” sent waves through the internet when he outsmarted Fomo3D, the popular ethereum game and won about $3 million in 2018. The online gambling experience seemed unbeatable, and is still one of the most surprising gambling stories, because of its Ponzi scheme type design.
However, this player outsmarted the system, including human and bot players by observing purchase times, clogging the blockchain, and getting a key when player activity was low.
Fomo3D is a game where players who use bitcoin to buy “keys” in a pot have 24 hours to keep playing, and the last person to pay under this clock gets all the money in the pot. Exitscam.me, the Fomo3D domain describes the game as:
“It’s your exit scam
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Welcome to blockchain development
Your ICO is over,
The hype is drying up.
Take the private keys; drain everything.
You will guarantee yourself a fortune
You will take everything for yourself
It’s as simple as buying the last key.”
Once a player makes a purchase, 30 seconds are added onto the clock, and the price of the next key gets higher, that is until the 24-hour clock maxes out. With unlimited plays, these “keys” eventually add up, and each player receives a piece of the pot’s earnings, with the last player getting the most.
“It sounds like the winner carefully studied the behavior of the automated [bots] people had managing buy-ins for them. I watched their behavior. Spent days and lots of ETH testing ways to defeat them and found a moment when no other human players were playing,” the game’s inventor told Vice.com.
Tiger Woods Comeback Bet
Sports betting has its share of gambling stories, especially with Golf, as many games are played with bets on wins.
James Adducci, in serious debt with a mortgage and unpaid student loans, used his life’s savings of about $85,000, to wager a bet on Tiger Woods’ game in April 2019, during the final round of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. He ended up winning over $1.2 million.
Adducci had a hunch Woods would win the masters after watching the games leading up to the finals, and upon getting his wife’s reluctant blessing, he made his first sports bet.
“A month before is when I knew I was going to do it,” Adducci told Golf Digest. “I had been thinking a lot about this. I watched Tiger’s performance at the Tour Championship, and things seemed to be going his way. I looked at how well he did there, and some other factors you can’t put stats behind. It wasn’t about the stats for me. The fact that this was going to be his first major in front of his kids, I was convinced he would win.”
The Wisconsin daytrader told multiple publications that he used all he owned, left his hometown for Las Vegas, and even took a shared Lyft to ride to pound the Vegas pavements, looking for which casino would accept his wager.
The SLS Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, which is operated by William Hill, finally decided to take on the wager. A move that resulted in the largest payout to a person on a futures gamble in the sportsbook’s overall U.S. history.
Micheal Jordan
Touted as one of the best basketball players of all time, Micheal Jordan has a documented reputation with crazy gambling stories. His habit was so intense that it is rumored that his exit from the game in 1993 was not due to his voluntary retirement. It was because the NBA couldn’t deal with his gambling habit.
Jordan bet on everything. For example, the time while with his Bulls teammates at a Portland airport, he made a bet that his luggage would come out first, which it did! However, his teammates did not know that he cheated by paying airport staff to load his luggage first.
One of his most daring bids was when he lost $300,000 in golf betting. This infamous bet was written about in the book “Michael & Me: Our Gambling Addiction… My Cry for Help” by Richard Esquinas, and later on confirmed by gambling cohort Charles Barkley.
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Pastor Robbing
A pastor in Las Vegas, Gregory Bolusan, was arrested in 2017 for robbing the M Resort Casino in Henderson, Nevada three times! Though not directly related to placing bets, this still goes down in the hall of fame of wild gambling stories. This is straight-up gambling with life!
According to KSNV News3LV, the first attempt happened when Bolusan, in a white 2010 Toyota Camry with covered plates, demanded money holding a gun and backpack. When the employee at M Resort ran off, Bolusan walked away empty-handed.
Bolusan returned about a month later, with the same car, wearing the same clothes and parked in the same spot. This time when he demanded money at gunpoint, he fled with over $29,000.
He returned a month later, this time wearing different clothes, and almost made off with over $33,000. But on this occasion the casino’s staff apprehended him, leading to Henderson police arresting him.
The police revealed that he was a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Las Vegas. Also, they said his gun was fake! Bolusan was charged with felony charges, including robbery and burglary.
In an update to this story, Las Vegas television station KNTV reported that Bolusan’s wife was a shift worker at M Resort, and could have been key to the multiple robberies.
Gambling for Robbery
Kerry Johnson faced bank robbery charges in West Virginia in 2016, after police said he was gambling at a blackjack table. According to reports, he left to rob a bank and came back to the casino to continue playing.
According to WJLA, Johnson was arrested in Nitro, W. Va., after police reported in a criminal complaint that he robbed a City National Bank around 3:30 pm on Aug. 26, 2016.
The complaint filed in Kanawha County Magistrate Court, W. Va., said that when Johnson was playing blackjack at the Mardi Gras Casino, he strategically left the table. He was seen leaving a $25 chip at the table.
Johnson then went to the bank and demanded cash after telling an employee that he had a bomb and a weapon on hand. Upon receiving the money, he fled in a green Mazda Miata. He then returned to Mardi Gras and continued gambling.
After detectives put out this tweet on Twitter, Johnson was identified, but during questioning he denied the accusation, stating that he was gambling at the Mardi Gras from 10 am to about 4.30pm that day. When police, in turn, searched his home, they found a wad of cash stuffed into a couch.
Upon further investigation into one of the most bizarre gambling stories, Nitro detectives discovered some camera footage. It proved that Johnson left the casino at the time of the robbery, which was around 3.30pm. This video proof led to his arrest.
According to WJLA, “The money taken during the robbery was recovered at the same table where Johnson was seen gambling.” Johnson was charged with bank robbery.
60K Roulette
One of the boldest moves in recent gambling stories was when top U.K. poker player Jake Cody bet his winnings from a tournament, about £42,670, or $59,992, and won!
In February of 2018, Cody was at the top of his game at the U.K. Poker Championship at Dusk Till Dawn casino in Nottingham, England. He won the game’s payout. Instead of being satisfied with what some would consider a modest year’s salary; he decided to bet it all on a game of roulette.
Dusk Till Dawn himself – Rob Yong – was the one to spin the ball and decide Cody’s fate,” reported a Sport Bible article.
When the ball fell on Black 22, the crowd went wild, with Cody walking away with £85,340, or $119,882. As you can expect, the story went viral on social networks!
From 14-cents to $1,300
When sports lover Kevin Maselli made a small, recreational $0.14 parlay on an NCAA tournament game, he never expected to win so big!
The 29-year-old teacher from Asbury Park, NJ, would usually bet in small amounts, from pennies to 10-cents on the several tournament games, with selections that all have to add up to be correct to win. “It’s weird, but placing these cents parlays is something I’ve always done,” Maselli told ESPN.
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According to the ESPN article, after Maselli and his girlfriend Leah DiNardo spent time walking along the Jersey shore, they discussed their choices for the round-of-32 games on tap. Maselli took his girlfriend’s advice and returned home to place a lot of penny parlays strategically. With only 14 cents left in his DraftKings online account, Macelli placed a parlay with odds that were 10,000 to 1.
“Kentucky and Michigan covered the spread, with both games staying under the total. Michigan State, Florida State, Baylor, and Purdue all came through for Maselli. Auburn-Kansas would decide the parlay, and he needed the Tigers -1.5 plus the game to go over 146.5 points,” the ESPN article said.
Maselli was ecstatic when he received a congratulatory email from DraftKings at 12:45 am the following morning. He told ESPN that he screamed, “Boom goes the dynamite!” Once he confirmed that he had won $1,345.78 from his 14-cent bet.
As far as gambling stories go, this one has a romantic twist… Maselli plans on putting the money in a ring fund for when he proposes to his girlfriend.
Making $1 million from $5
Harold McDowell, 85, of Lakewood, New Jersey shocked his wife when he won $1 million from $5.00 while gambling at the Borgata Hotel Casino in Atlantic City.
“I happened to be playing next to my wife. I had my back to her.” McDowell told The New York Post. “I turned around and said, “I just won a million dollars.” “She told me, “You’re full of crap.”
It was a Saturday afternoon when McDowell bet the $5 on a 6-Card Bonus on a Three Card Poker game. He was stunned to see a royal straight flush of diamonds when the dealer laid out the cards. This hand was 1 in over 20 million odds.
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It was an even sweeter win as far as gambling stories go because his wife was declared cancer-free a day before. She went through several surgeries and treatments for liver cancer, while also dealing with colon cancer for years. “It must be luck of the Irish,” McDowell told The New York Post. “They’re both great news.”
Gambling Habit Stories Podcast
“He bet $5.00 on the Three Card Poker “6 Card Bonus” bet and hit a six-card Royal Straight Flush of Diamonds for a $1,000,000 win. This was the first time this bet hit at Borgata and experts at wizardofodds.com confirm that the odds of hitting the Bonus Royal Flush are 1 in 20,348,320,” the Borgata Casino said in this Facebook post.
Gamblers Remorse?
Not all gambling stories are about incredible wins: for many, gambling is an addiction. This man from Australia, however, blamed his prescription medication for his lavish spending.
The man, whose identity was undisclosed and protected a complaint he made to by the Northern Territory Racing Commission in Australia, lost about $400,000 in 24 hours. In the gambler’s claim, he said that he had a “medical reaction” to the painkillers, which in turn led him to make bad decisions. He then placed a bid, asking for his money back.
According to an article in abc.net.au, he stated in his complaint to the commission that he had doubled his prescription drug use over the weekend that he lost the money to Ladbrokes while horse betting.
“[It was an] extreme medical reaction to prescription [medicine] and [I] was gambling while incoherent and unable to control any inhibitions or limits due to the prescribed medication, along with a severe head injury from approximately four years ago,” he told the commission.
The gambler’s doctor also backed up his claims, stating that his mental health had deteriorated due to increased back pain, while the gambler was previously camping.
While the commission investigating the case found no foul play from Ladbrokes, it did discover that the gambler had previous winnings of about $3.2 million from Ladbrokes since 2014.
Ladbrokes saw a red flag when a few months before the loss, the gambler raised his monthly deposits into their account from $1,886 to $124,581. The company then checked in on him with a phone call.
According to the commission, the gambler responded in a recorded conversation: “[I had] an extra couple of dollars on my hands and thought we’d have a go or two.”
The commission eventually said that the gambler was “responsible for his betting activity.” His Ladbrokes account has since been suspended.
Major Online Roulette Loss
Online betting has its share of crazy gambling stories and losses. A self-proclaimed gambling addict recently revealed that he lost £127,000, or about $155,270 in 26 minutes of playing in an online roulette game.
In an ITV interview with the British sitcom actor Ross Kemp, Alex, the 35-year-old U.K. gambler, said he has been gambling online since he was 17, and that the habit since then has cost him significant relationships.
“I” ve lost friendships, jobs, relationships – I was engaged, I don’t see my daughter. I’ll never get back some the friendships and relationships I’ve lost,’ said Alex, in this video recording with Ross. “Online has a completely different impact on it, its phones, its laptops, smart tellies. It’s just crazy it just so scary.”
According to an article on the U.K.’s Daily Mail website, Alex claimed that all the money he earned that day vanished in just ten or eleven spins of an online roulette game.
Alex told Ross that he has had to exclude himself by living off the grid and is trying to recover from addiction. “I can never bet again. I would class myself as an addict if I were clean thirty years down the line – still class myself as an addict.”
Alex also told Ross that he is currently in gambling rehabilitation.
Some of these stories may come as a surprise to you, but there are many more interesting stories out there. Hopefully, these stories give you some perspective on what to do and what not to do in regards to gambling.
It is essential to treat gambling as a casual form of entertainment and bet only what you think you can lose. If gambling excites you, set budgets and enjoy it as an activity.