Last year, at the start of the pandemic, I decided to admit to myself and more importantly my loved ones and friends that I had a problem with online gambling, specifically with roulette but i also played most other gambling games that were available, from poker and blackjack to football and sports bets to even the National lottery which seems so innocent but actually is one of the worst!

It started as a bit of fun about 5 years prior, but then slowly escalated to becoming a habit and then a major problem as i started to lose more and more money and in higher and higher amounts. I tried all the safety features available by the online companies such as taking breaks and exclusions and even shutting down accounts but I always seemed to manage to find a way back into the world of gambling! There are literally so many sites out there and if your addiction is still very bad these tools normally have little effect as they can be bypassed, as most gamblers well know. Begging your wife to open an account in her name being just one of them!!

I don't necessarily have a gripe against people being able to play these games as a form of entertainment or as escapism however I don't feel that enough is being done by the companies who are making huge sums of profits from problem gamblers / addicts like I once was, nor from government who should be protecting it's citizens and helping to curtail the ever growing cases of online gambling addicts in our country and around the world.

It surely should be a moral obligation and duty for the state as well as the gambling companies to educate their customers about the risks and dangers of what they are getting themselves involved in when they start to regularly place bets online especially when they start losing larger and larger amounts of money and then turn to crimes to finance their addictions all while the gambling companies themselves are turning in massive profits at their expense?

What I propose is a very simple idea which stems from something that has helped me during moments of weakness over the past year in my fight to beat my addiction and which to this day I still have to employ (as it is fair to say addiction is something that will probably never fully disappear but needs to be managed and tempered with a host of tools and techniques)

Whenever I found myself wanting to have another fix, I would somehow manage to come across an online article or a news bulletin prior to entering the devils den so to speak, detailing a tragic story or fact related to gambling. This has literally prevented me on numerous occasions from placing a bet and potentially falling back into my old ways. 

I would like to see on every gambling website before you can log in to it, a short optional video or article, advertising a real life story of someone affected by gambling, whether it be someone who has ended up in prison or tried to commit suicide or lost their livelihoods etc to act as a deterrent or a wake up call before you actually enter their site. Like I say if it's optional then it shouldn't be infringing on people's liberties as they could bypass watching it by choice but for people like me who have recognised their problem but who sometimes are faced with the urge of their addiction it could act as a timely reminder of why they are trying to change the course of their lives and perhaps save them a whole lot of misery further down the line.

I would like companies to be accountable, to be challenged to take responsibility and to play their part in promoting safe gambling across the board instead of pretending and I feel this is the least they could do considering the vast profits they make at the expense of people's lives!