Jake's story

4 June 2016

I am Jake. I started gambling when I was 19 and have been gambling on and off till now. I am currently 35. I vaguely remember how I got started, I was invited to a friend's birthday party and we ended up going to the casino and played Black Jack. I started with $100 and walked out with $500. At one stretch I won ten hands in a row. At the time I was enrolled in university. And at the end of my third year I had missed enough classes and exams to fail almost all my courses and got put into academic probation. Not only did I mess up my academic life but I also lost my full scholarship and student loans. Upwards to $30,000 at the time. Lucky for me I had really supportive parents and they paid off all my creditors.

After I left university, I starting doing two full time jobs to save up and try and pay my parents back. However, I was still heading to the casinos from time-to-time and seems like the more I made the more I lost. I eventually took off and went to live at another city with no nearby casinos for a year. That helped me get back on my feet only to once again lose all my savings on a week to Vegas.

My story is probably the same as everyone who is reading this. Stay away from the casinos for a while and save up a bit, then go to the casino and drop it all there only to tell yourself after that you will never step foot into a casino again.

I am 35 now and I just did a 24 hour gambling session and lost all my savings again. My RRSP and TSFA account changes like a roller-coaster ride when it slowly goes up right before it takes a huge drop.

This is a list of some of the horrible stuff I have done to enable my gambling habit.

Empty out all debit, credit, line of credit accounts.
Stolen good around my parents house to pawn for money (sunglasses, leather jackets, watches ... everything)
Wrote fake checks to deposit into my ATM to get funds (this is really bad ... do not do this. Lucky for me the bank didn't move forward with criminal charges)
Went to multiple payday advance places. At one point I was faking my pay stubs to read I was earning $2500 a paycheck.
I worked two full time jobs. One washing cars and the other waiting tables, working over 100 hour a week, all to support my gambling habit.

This has to stop. I am the only one that can make this happen.

Thank you for reading. Please stop going to the casino if you are reading this. Recover starts today : )