Gambling Anonymous Cork Rating: 5,8/10 487 reviews
- New to Gamblers Anonymous? WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF GAMBLING? Gambling, for the compulsive gambler is defined as follows: Any betting or wagering, for self or others, whether for money or not, no matter how slight or insignificant, where the outcome is uncertain or depends upon chance or skill constitutes gambling.
- If you've heard of Gamblers Anonymous (GA), you might know that as a 12-step recovery program for people struggling with a gambling addiction. Well, Gam-Anon is its counterpart for spouses, family, and close friends of compulsive gamblers.
While the majority of people who gamble can stop when they want, there are some who become addicted and develop problems which can lead to them incurring large debts, damaging families, losing their jobs and even committing suicide.
Gamblers Anonymous is keen to let people know there is help out there for those who need it and the evidence is pointing towards an ever-increasing need.
Numbers of problem gamblers at treatment centres and at support groups like Gamblers Anonymous have been growing this decade, reflecting the explosion in gambling and the increased ease with which anyone can place a bet.
Back in 2002 there were 909 licensed betting offices but by the end of 2007 there were 1,554. Meanwhile, online gambling and casino clubs have also mushroomed in the last few years.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
It is estimated that about €1.4 billion was gambled through bookmakers in 2001 and this had more than trebled by last year — and that’s excluding money bet on-course at race meetings.
This month’s open information meetings — details of which are available on the Gamblers Anonymous website — is aimed at letting the public know there is help for those who need it.
Telephone helplines are also available on daily basis, with somebody on the end of the line two hours a day and three hours a night, as well as an answering machine where messages can be left at any time. Meetings are held at various times including dinner hour and 1pm, every day.
The only requirement for membership of Gamblers Anonymous is a desire to stop gambling.
Gambling Anonymous Cork Ireland
Meanwhile, the GamAnon association is aimed at relatives of gambling addicts, to provide support at times of crisis and information about how to help their loved ones.
While national statistics are not available for the amount of meetings held by Gamblers Anonymous, it’s believed to be about 80-90 per week throughout the country. That’s up from about 20 meetings in the mid-1970s.
“There’s a lot of hard stories to be told and all we want to do is let people know that help is out there,” said a GA spokesperson.
* Contact Gamblers Anonymous on Dublin 01-8721133 or Cork 087-2859552. gamblersanonymous.ie
‘I sat in my car every night’
“THE one thing that always made my heart race was playing cards for money.”
After a turbulent life ruled from an early age by card-games, greyhounds and racehorses, Tom (not his real name) can now talk about the problems that almost wrecked everything he now values as important. But until six years ago they came a distant second to a bet.
It was cards that got Tom interested in gambling: poker, solo, don which he dabbled in from the age of 10 but got serious about when he started working.
He quickly recognised he wasn’t able to have a social game of cards or a bet for fun in the bookies like his friends. For him it was more intense.
“When I was about 18, the guys in the job were going away for a holiday and I said I’d go along. I was after getting the few weeks’ wages and I went into the bookies and I couldn’t stop gambling... I wanted my holiday money but I wanted more. I walked out with half my holiday money and then I had to go home and give my mother her wages... I had a miserable time on holiday. When I came back I decided there was something wrong with me, but I never told anyone.”
As the years went on, Tom managed to curtail his betting and when he got married to Linda there was little evidence that he had an addiction.
For a while everything was fine, until one day Tom and his workmates got two tips for horses.
“They were big prices and they won and I did singles and doubles on them. I got a lot of money... and that upset everything again. I lost all of that money within a couple of weeks and I just kept on chasing. It was the horses and the greyhounds for me, I never got involved in the casinos. It was always the bookie shops. I’d never ring up a bet because I thought, ‘if you ring up, you’re a compulsive gambler’.”
Only now does he appreciate the irony of that opinion.
Always trying to hide his betting habits from Linda, he largely succeeded for a number of years, until the financial problems grew at home, the absences lengthened and the rows intensified.
After his wife caught him in the bookie’s one day she made him give up his wages as soon as he got them.
“The shit hit the fan six or seven years ago,” says Tom. “I knew she had the money in the bedroom... I stole some of the money.”
Tom ended up living in his taxi for about eight weeks, spending the odd night in a B&B if he’d won a bet, and washing in a sports club. After a couple of weeks, he even considered suicide, “but I’m a coward”.
“That’s when the real loneliness kicked in. I was sitting in a car every night and drinking and thinking, ‘what’s this about?’. That was when it sunk... that I had a problem. Here I was, sitting in the car on my own without my beautiful wife and the three kids. That’s when the penny dropped that I had a problem with gambling.”
Tom still goes to a couple of GA meetings every week.
‘It started when I was 8 years old’
AT the age of eight, most boys are occupied by playing football, cycling bikes, chatting with their friends, doing their homework and growing up.
But at eight years old, Martin (not his real name) was a gambler.
“For me it started when my grandfather would stick a pin in the paper to pick a horse for the Grand National,” he says.
“From that moment, I wanted to be a gambler. I was watching people playing cards, I was learning myself and I was playing poker and blackjack and gin. I started early and it went on until I was 42. I remember when I was eight, my granny bringing me to the pictures and in the westerns there was always a poker table.”
Attracted to what he perceived as the glamour of cards, he quickly got caught up in playing as often as he could.
Then, when he got money for doing odd jobs or part-time work, he’d started backing the horses.
He remembers his grandfather writing out the names and sending Martin to the betting shop. Eventually, it was his own bets he was paying for and his own money he was losing.
“I’d tell them the bet was for my grandfather. Even at 13 I was putting them on for myself and it escalated from there.”
A talented sportsman, Martin played football for Dublin teams on tour in England and was told that if he looked after himself, he could make it in the game. But by the age of 21 he had given it up.
Martin also ended up with a drink problem and it wasn’t until he got involved with Gamblers Anonymous and received help at a treatment centre that he began to get on with his life. He is married with four children.
“I just about made it,” he says.
“But it was two or three years before I got some sort of normality about my life, and my wife’s life. Now, I have a great relationship with my boys and my daughter.”
Others weren’t so lucky.
“In 22 years of being involved, 14 people I know have committed suicide.” ‘He even took sons’ money’
LINDA (not her real name) always knew her husband liked a bet, a game of cards, a trip to the bookmaker. It took some time, however, for the true extent of his gambling to reveal itself as a problem which threatened the stability of their family.
Even though both Linda and Tom had jobs, earning good wages, there never seemed to be much money around the house and for a long time Linda shrugged off the shortages as being down to bills and loans.
“He had a good job and was always working overtime, but I was working too and it was my money every fortnight that was balancing the books,” she recalls.
“It just went towards keeping us afloat. I never figured out why we had no money but we had three boys and I was always told I was money mad and always spending.”
As time went on and Linda realised that Tom was spending more and more time at the betting office she questioned him about their finances.
“I said, ‘no, you’re gambling the money’, but then he’d go missing. You could never confront him over anything.”
Their sons grew up, also gradually realising their father’s problem.
“I thought I did a good job hiding it from them, but I didn’t. I never mentioned it to them, until one day the eldest lad told me he knew where he [Tom] was. Things had got so bad that he’d taken money from them.”
Linda remembers the day over six years ago when she got in from work and made a terrible discovery.
“At this stage we weren’t even talking... I got home from work and he’d broken into the bedroom and taken the money.”
It was Linda who took the first step, by getting in contact with Gamblers Anonymous.
Six years on, Tom has stayed away from the betting shops and the card games and their lives have returned to some sort of normality.
Gambling Anonymous Contact
“Things are good today and he’s got a good relationship with the boys.”