I Was a High-Stakes Chronic Gambler Living a Double Life

This budget meeting of the quarter was dragged on and my boss was pointing at a slide indicating a falling revenue projections the company recently recorded…

My colleagues were diligently taking thoughtful notes. I was also taking notes, but mine had nothing to do with the corporate strategy that's discussed in the meeting. My mind was else where.

My thumb was on my phone screen covered under a polished oak table. Over 2.5 goals. The odds were decent, followed by a quick $5,000 bet.

My heart pounded against my ribs, something more like a drumbeat that no one else could hear.

I felt some kind of sickening adrenaline rush through my veins to my brain in what I knew could never be beaten by a cup of raw coffee.

Whenever, my boss looks towards my side in the meeting, I seriously nod to my boss, established eye contact, and demonstrating my engagement in the conversation while on one hand, I'm holding my mobile phone, as though the whole of my financial future depends on whether a Serbian soccer team could just score one more goal.

This was my double life. To the world, I was a successful marketing director in my late thirties.

I was a fully committed mortgage holder and I also have a loving partner, who thought that our biggest problem was what to watch on Netflix and I had a reputation to being a good dependable person.

However, behind the scenes I was a high stakes chronic gambler, an addict that was losing money, hope, and his own soul in the glowing dark glow of his phone.

When you imagine a gambling addict you would most likely think of some old man at a smoky casino, stuffing his pension into a slot machine. You won't ever picture me in mind.

Also, the kind of betting I was into was not actually the one involved in seedy betting shops .

I don't really go to betting shops; this was more of a sophisticated apps that could ruin your entire life and staking your money on the app feels as clean and simple as ordering a pizza. 

The habit didn't start with a need for money. It actually started with a need to escape poverty.

It was a secret world where I was in complete control, right up until the moment I totally lost it all.

Though, it wasn't the the win that's the problem. It was the action, the stage before the dice is thrown, before the final whistle is blown, and before the card is turned. In that tiny moment of time there is nothing that cannot happen.

All the hope and money disappear in a blink and all the pressures of work, the worries of life, and everything entirely was washed away into the simple, black and white end result of a wager.

It was a world of secrets that I completely controlled, until I lost it completely.

The lies became my second language, and when my wife asks, my response would be that "My bonus was smaller than expected this year," explaining to her why we couldn't afford a holiday. 

I had a credit card that my partner knew nothing about, an account I already mentally labeled "The Black Hole."

Every beep of notification on my phone sent a jolt of panic to my mind. "Is it the bank or a margin call?"

Living this way was a pure, uncut psychological torture.

The worst part of it all is not the losing but the isolation that also comes with it. I was drowning in pain even while I was surrounded by people that loved me. I had never felt this lonely in my life before.

The crash was not a single, dramatic loss. It was actually a quiet, pathetic moment for me.

One day, my partner's car broke down, and she called me, stressed but very confident that I can handle the situation, and she was like "Just put the repair on the credit card, honey,". I stood in the kitchen looking at the wall, and felt like the floor drop out from beneath my feet.

There was nothing left in the account. No savings, and No credit. 

The figure in my account was a joke. Two nights earlier I had gambled away our safety net on a meaningless Australian rugby game.

In that moment, the secret life collapsed, and I couldn't lie my way out of it anymore.

All of it, both the lies and all the irresponsible life I've been living, every of the hollow wining promises, they all came crashing down on me and there in the room, with a loud voice inside me, I said the words with tears streaming down my face.

"I have a problem. I've lost everything..." 

My greatest fear is losing my partner along. Letting the secret out didn't fix anything, not right away. But it did stopped the drowning...

The road back is long actually and the shame is always there. 

I'm happy now because there are no more secrets, like in the previous years. The only thing that was left is the naked, bloody reality, and the thin, desperate possibility of establishing a good life, a true one, out of the rubble again. 

Now if you ask me, I will tell you not to do gamble because it has no good end.

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