Hidden and secret nature of gambling addiction

My personal experience with gambling is that it has been very difficult to be open about the problem as people often don't understand, they perceive you as weak or stupid, or greedy, or all of them. Thankfully today this is changing although sadly this has a lot to do with more problem gamblers emerging with the explosion of gambling in the high street and on the internet and other technology platforms.


I have lived with this problem for more than 25 years of my life and for most of those years few people have known about the problem. For example as a leader of more than 100 people in my professional life how do I integrate my gambling problem with my professional life? Will it impact my career? Will it impact the way people perceive me? These are all worries that I have had to contend with. In the end I couldn't cope with living dual lives and as a result I recently had to give up on a great career opportunity.


In my gambling life although I wasn't gambling most of the time (three setbacks in four years) the impact was always there. I live in Slovakia but I am British, so the language is not my native. Four years ago I blew about 100,000 Eur of borrowed money and savings over the space of about three days. Unfortunately in Slovakia there are not strong consumer help organizations. No citizens Advice Bureau, Money Aware (debt help charity), Grasp, Gamblers Anon (Gambling self-help org) and no financial restructuring mechanisms like IVAs and Bankruptcy for these circumstances and so i have had to fight this battle alone. For three years I have tried to negotiate with banks and creditors to find solutions and to keep up debt repayments where I could. Then without support it all became too much, and something had to give, that was my job unfortunately.

A gambler can to all intents and purposes go about his/her daily routine for many years before the problem gets out of hand and becomes noticed or the gambler himself/herself faces up to having an addiction. 

The below video is part of an advertising campain run by GRASP to raise awareness of problem gambling and secret addiction.

Gambling Addiction - Problem Gambling Awareness - Ad Campaign #2 

Uploaded by The GraspGroup - Gambling Reform & Society Perception. Charity to raise awareness of problem gambling & reform the industry. GRASP is not anti gambling but is anti problem gambling.