Justin's story

I have been gambling for roughly 12 years now. Started in high school playing card games on the weekends, would either win roughly $100 or lose $50. Then I started playing poker online and did fairly well in the beginning, would win some extra money for college. Big wins were a few hundred bucks and losses the same. For a few years I did not gamble much at all, maybe one to two times a month for a few hundred dollars.

Then I got hooked up with a bookie. I made $5000 over one season betting randomly, then I got hooked and started playing every day. I ended up losing $11,000 in two months and self-excluded myself from using the bookie, betting bigger to chase my losses. I swore I was going to stop because I was starting my own business and not making money in the beginning.

Then I started to make some serious money in my business and also found online bookie sites to place bets, bigger bets just to chase the high of winning. Within a few months I lost $20,000 and felt numb to it. I was down $30,000 for the year and sick to my stomach. The problem is I had the money as I made $100,000 my first year in business.

Well here we are today. Exactly five weeks ago I was down $60,000 for the last year and ended up hitting a $28,000 four team $2000 parley. I told myself I was done. The rush was awesome. I had a hard time cashing out all the money at once, only allowed $3000 at a time. I knew I was in trouble. Within the next four days I lost all of it, and within the last three weeks I lost another $20,000. That is $80,000 in the last 18 months.

I am addicted. I try to stop. I read all these stories, self help books, exclusions from online, etc. But I'm addicted and it makes me sick. I am not broke as I will make roughly $250,000 this year and a very successful business owner. It is not about the money, its about the high, just like a drug addict. Makes me sick. No one has any clue how much I have lost and I'm so ashamed to tell anyone.

Today marks my start on the journey. I just need to find happiness with what I have. My advice is to never start gambling. I could be driving the best cars and traveling all over the world, but I choose to light it on fire with online gambling. I still have that chance, I just need to focus. Good luck to anyone else reading this.