How Gambling is a Curse
My life account on how gambling has cursed my life to this day
So in 2008 I turned 18 years old and was finally able to buy lottery tickets. I never really did it that much at all. I would do it every now and then and sometimes had decent results. The real problems for me started in 2016 when I was becoming a streamer.
On twitch, the category “Slots” was a very well sought after streaming category. I started streaming online slots and eventually started getting a ton of viewers. Little did I know this decision would ultimately backfire and destroy me as a human being.
My money situation
I’ve never made a ton of money, I live below the poverty line to stay on disability and state Medicaid. I need to do this to have full health coverage with no costs, due to having schizophrenia and needing to stay medicated. I have severe depression and anxiety also. Plus asthma and hypersomnia. I live on $707 a month plus $330 bi-weekly from work. This is the max amount I can pull in with being able to stay on the system. That is hardly enough money for anyone to live off of. Lucky for me my fiancé makes upwards of $90k a year and covers a lot of costs. I pay utilities, phone plan, and cable. She pays everything else. We’ve been making it work but due to gambling my debt got a bit out of hand and I have a surplus of $75 monthly to cover my gas costs to travel back and forth to work.
She pays for food, mortgage, and everything our son needs. I cannot fathom the despair my gambling has caused my family’s lifestyle.
I was debt-free up until 24 years old. No credit cards or anything. I started opening credit cards then and eventually built a balance so high on multiple sources that I had to acquire a debt management program to help pay off my credit cards. They closed my accounts and made bargains with the companies. I now pay $172 a $330 paycheck to cover my credit cards in the program. That’s half of my check straight to them and the rest to pay off open credit cards and car payments.
The Gambling Trap
2016 while streaming slots I came across a ton of fishy websites that offered bonus codes to use to have a chance to win money. I opened multiple accounts on probably 100+ websites. I had to give a decent amount of personal info too to do this. This never amounted to any substantial winnings whatsoever.
In 2017 I was prescribed Abilify. It amplified my online slot addiction and made me start spending money on it.
I then found a bitcoin casino that was highly raved about. So I started buying bitcoin and funding my casino account. I probably dumped $13,000 in it over the course of two years. I had my bitcoin account closed and my casino account shut down too due to hijacking money from loved ones.
I did “win” .5 bitcoin and sold it for $3500. I cried when I got that jackpot hit. I shook and it was tears of pain and agony, not of happiness. I cried because it felt that a part of me (probably the money) got refilled and revitalized. It felt that all of my months of living on $1 in my bank account had been “Solved”. I felt mesmerized by this feeling once it occurred. It was the weirdest tears I had ever cried and it gave me a bad omen.
I took that $3500 and threw it all right back at the casino to “win more”. I then started utilizing my lady’s money towards it and dumped another $4000 at it. I won $1600 after that and just put it back in my lady’s account. I confessed to her about it and my god am I surprised she didn’t miscarry our child she was pregnant with. It was some of the worst feelings I have ever felt in the world. I stopped gambling then in 2018 but it was short-lived. I live in Pennsylvania and our governor allowed online gambling in June of 2019. This piqued my interest and in July it finally came to fruition with PA’s first online casinos coming online. I felt that since I could fill it directly with US currency, and it being state-regulated that I would have a way higher chance of winning. Boy was I mistaken.
That July I had done a bunch of e-checks for $10 a pop on one of the many pa casino sites. I was running on the timing of the check clearing, new money coming in, and hopefully winning to pay bills. Let’s just say the checks cleared 6 hours before I thought they would. By the time I got money from my lady to deposit into my bank from confessing my bad decision making, it was 10 minutes too late. I deposited a $1200 check and before it hit my account I had accrued 57 overdraft fees all at $37 a pop. That is 370% the amount of each transaction. I called the bank to try to figure out what to do. They waived $999 of those fees but that was the maximum they would do for me, and that’s all they did for me. My girlfriends $1200 went right towards my bank's overdraft fees and didn’t cover anything that it was intended for.
Let’s just say that didn’t even stop my gambling. It halted it for 5 months, but I found my way back into it again. Always chasing a win, always hoping and praying. Always being in the moment and acquiring bonuses that made my heart race. It hurts so much that I couldn’t even stop whenever everything hit rock bottom.
Let’s just say I’m still battling this addiction, my lady found out again and I am about to be booted from her life and my son’s life. I want to die, I don’t Want to live anymore. Everyone has had a bad thought about me. No one likes me, life hurts so much. I do so much work around for everyone, but I hurt so much. I never get the respect I deserve. All of the things my lady has paid for are my main ambition as to why I gamble so hard. I want to pay her back (which I did give her $4000 last month). I just feel I need a lot of money to just throw to her to make her feel appropriately compensated for the life she provided me. Either way, I have a $300 car payment I can’t swing and I’m going to have to work some magic to make that happen.
The Never-Ending Battle
Gambling is a horrible addiction and it sucks when you have genetic variants that make it highly likely to acquire this addiction. My medications probably don’t help my reckless behavior and my lifestyle doesn’t help it either. I don’t know what to do about it.
They tell you to call 1–800-GAMBLERS for help, all they do is advise you to go to a gamblers anonymous meeting to talk to other losers. I wish I had that job. I’m sure it pays decent to say the same script left and right. They are working from home now too. Would be nice. The one time I called I swear the guy was in the bathroom. They have never given me any good advice and every time PA commercializes a lottery product they end with “Have a gambling problem call 1–800-GAMBLERS for help” to justify that if you do play and get addicted, they have you covered. The thing is the meeting is 50 miles one way from where I live. Would it help, I highly doubt it. Would a bullet to my brain work better? Most likely. I tried banning myself from online casinos through the PA gaming commissioners board, but they didn’t even have an option for online baning from casinos, only land-based. So unlawful. I did that, but still have online casinos with my accounts open and still get tantalizing emails saying they gave me a $10 credit every now and then.
Pennsylvania’s governor Tom Wolf is now pushing to legalize weed. If online casinos weren’t enough revenue for them (no one is really winning), I’m sure weed will help. This is just ridiculous. I don’t know how this governor is still in power. He is the sole reason I have such an issue after I had my bitcoin accounts halted!
Bye world, I tired.
Follow and applaud to help flourish my bank account plz. Send help!
