Let's Talk About CBT

In this episode of Let’s Talk About CBT, Helen Macdonald speaks with James from the charity Gambling with Lives about the serious impact of gambling addiction, its links to mental health, and the role of CBT in recovery.

What We Cover in This Episode:

🔹 How gambling has changed – From a backstreet niche to an industry making billions through addictive products.
🔹 Gambling addiction and mental health – How gambling harms go beyond financial loss and can lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicide.
🔹 The neuroscience of gambling – How gambling rewires the brain, making it difficult to stop.
🔹 Recognising the warning signs – What to look for in yourself or a loved one.
🔹 The role of CBT in recovery – How cognitive behavioural therapy is a key treatment approach in NHS gambling addiction services.
🔹 Breaking the stigma – Why gambling addiction is not just about personal responsibility and we need to talk about how it can harm people and the amount of gambling advertising that is out there.
🔹 Getting help – Resources for those affected, including training for healthcare professionals.

Resources & Links:

Find out more about Gambling with Lives: gamblingwithlives.org
Visit Chapter One for training and resources: chapter-one.org
NHS gambling support services: NHS gambling support
If you or someone you know needs urgent help, reach out to Samaritans at 116 123 (UK) or visit samaritans.org

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Credits:

Music is Autmn Coffee by Bosnow from Uppbeat

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This episode was edited by Steph Curnow

Transcript:

Helen: Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About CBT, the podcast where we talk about cognitive and behavioural psychotherapies, what they are, what they can do, and what they can't. I'm Helen Macdonald, your host. I'm the Senior Clinical Advisor for the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies  

Welcome to today's episode. I'm really pleased to have James with me today. He's from an organisation called Gambling with Lives, and I will ask him first to introduce himself. Hello, James.

James: Hi Helen, thank you for having me on. I'm James. I live in Stockport, originally from Norfolk, hence I haven't got a Northern accent, but I'm here today representing the charity Gambling with Lives. The charity was set up by bereaved families who'd lost loved ones to gambling related suicide and I now oversee our prevention work, which includes education, training, information, and resources. And a lot of that stems from my own lived experience of a 12-year gambling addiction, which started as a young person, and which I'm sure we'll touch on today.

Helen: Thank you, James. And so I'm very aware that a charity that's been very much grounded in the experiences of bereaved families, there's going to be some difficult things to talk about here. And just to say for our listeners, there will be links to where to find help and support on the show page and as well as anything that we talk about during today's episode. So can I ask you just to tell us a little bit more about gambling? What is it? You know, how people might get themselves into trouble with it, maybe?

James: Yeah, it's a big question. And the first answer that comes to my head is that gambling is not what it was. I think a lot of people have a perception of what gambling is, and that's a weekly bet at the horses or going to the bingo on a Thursday night, or the football pools. Gambling has absolutely transformed over the last 10, 20, 30 years. And it all really started from a point in 2005 when the Gambling Act was created by the Labour government at the time, which changed gambling from being this thing that was, you know, quite hidden, quite behind closed doors, wasn't promoted, was quite hard to go and do, wasn't that easy or available or accessible, and that Gambling Act changed that completely and allowed for relentless advertising, sponsorship, marketing, and allowed for bookmakers in the high street to have really addictive electronic machines in their premises. And they were things like the fixed odds betting terminals, which were roulette machines, which at the time were called the crack cocaine of gambling because they were that addictive. And that was not what gambling was. I remember when I was a child, in our town, I'm from a quite a sleepy, small town in Norfolk. And the bookies in our town used to be this like really dingy, horrible place to be honest behind in a back alley that I used to walk past it and think I'm never going in there, that is a place not for me. It's for old men, smoke coming out the doors, did not have any interest in that. But then when I was 16, which was a couple of years after this Gambling Act, it changed into a massive Ladbrokes in the middle of the high street, you could see through there, you could see the machines and you could see all the advertised on the outside of the windows.

And that's what's happened to gambling. And the impact on society is huge. We now know that 2. 5 percent of the adult population are experiencing so called “problem gambling”. And just to note on that terminology, it's not a term that we like to use, but this is what the statistics say. And we don't like to use it because we don't like to put the problem with the person. There are many reasons why people experience gambling harms, which is what I'll come on to later. But that figure alone. So that's the very sharp end of gambling harms, but then you've got many more impacted by somebody else's gambling. You've got widespread harms happening to young people. So, a really important point here is that these harms aren't just financial. Again, I think there's a perception that gambling addiction is a financial problem, and the harm is felt through debt and long-term financial worries. Actually, this is a mental health condition. This is a diagnosable mental health condition. Gambling disorder is in the DSM manual since 2013, and it's a mental health harm first and foremost. And that then causes anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts as well, which again, we'll come on to based on the work we do at Gambling with Lives.

Helen: Thank you, James. So, what I've just heard you describe there, that it's gone from being a bit of a backstreet, rather unattractive niche thing, to being sort of very attractive and perhaps more widely, I don't know, more people participate in it. And you mentioned gambling machines and I'm also aware that people can gamble on the internet as well. They don't have to go out to do it necessarily. And I'm also aware that you used words like addiction, which most people would associate with substances, perhaps alcohol or drugs or something. And I wonder if you could say a bit more about, perhaps the difference between what I might have thought of as a harmless flutter and something that's harmful.

James: Yeah, another good question and potentially asking the wrong person because I, obviously I experienced a gambling addiction myself, but I'll try to answer based on my own experiences. And on your first point, actually, probably the thing I forgot to say, which is most important is that the biggest change for gambling is, as you say, the fact that all of these products that are now available on our phones, in our pocket. At the time when the legislation was written, there was concerns about super casinos in places like Blackpool and on the coastal towns of England. And actually what's happened is we all now have a super casino, but it's in our pocket and anyone can access it over the age of 18. There's very little safeguards and protections on there. And that's where the harm is felt most on online gambling. And that's sort of the answer to the second question as well is that gambling is not just one product, and some products are more harmful, risky and addictive than others. And that's not to say you cannot be harmed by, as an example, buying a lottery ticket. Because if you've only got 5 pounds to last you for food that week and you spend 5 pounds on a lottery ticket, you are experiencing gambling harms.

But evidence shows and experiences from people who have been there and been harmed are that the quickest, more attractive, the things that are designed to be addictive products like online slot games, online casino games, online bingo as well. These are the things that are really causing the harm and causing addiction. And the difference is the indication someone is experiencing gambling harm is how often someone is spending on those products and how much money someone is spending on those products and how quick all of those things are, those products. That's why people can get harmed quite quickly. Back in the day, again, you used to have to go somewhere to place a bet on, and you maybe did that once, twice a week. Now, because of how quickly you can do that, that creation of addiction is so much quicker and instant, and it can happen really quickly. I can give you examples of times where I spent five, six, seven hours just in bed spinning online roulette tables on online casinos. And that time I, it didn't feel like five, six, seven hours. It felt like I was just trapped in this zone. And that's because it's deliberately designed that way. So what happens is, and this is very medical and I'm not a scientist or a medical person, but this is a physiological change in the brain. So when you play these really fast paced products, these intense products like slots, like casino games, your pathways in your brain are rewired and it becomes a dopamine driven urge to do this thing again and again. And what's really worrying and something for your listeners to look out for, is if this happens to a young person before the age of 25, where their brain isn't fully developed and if they experience a big win and they get an explosion of dopamine in the brain from that win, that can be a real big indicator that they're going to experience gambling harm and even gambling addiction.

So I would say that and the other thing that I would just say to answer the question is, there is no national guidance on a safe level of gambling. So I'm hesitant to say what that is, but there are clearly signs, indications, symptoms that someone may be experiencing gambling harm, such as feeling the need to check devices a lot, not being motivated by relationships or by career, lying about how much time and money is being spent gambling, and then of course, feeling suicidal or feeling like the world would be better off without you. There are some, but there are an exhaustive list of, of indications someone might be experiencing harm.

Helen: I mean, this sounds really worrying, James. You've said probably around two and a half percent of the population may be experiencing gambling harms, and that doesn't count the people around the person who may be affected by their changes in how they interact, as well as things like, I don't know, would have an impact on household finances, for example, or occupation, things like that. And yet what we see in the media seems to be more about how to place bets and how to gamble rather than what the potential risks might be.

James: Yeah, there's very little public health messaging about the risks of gambling. From my own experiences, if I take you through the journey of my life, really, as a child, not at any point was I taught or warned about the risks of gambling. You know, I was warned about drugs, warned about wearing a seatbelt, warned about sexual predators, was never ever told that gambling came with a risk to my mental health. And then when I started to gamble at the ages of like 18 to 25, there was no preventative health messaging, through campaigns or through advertising that told you that this is a risk to your mental health that you're probably likely to lose your money but there is places to go for help and support. That didn't exist. All we got, my generation, were messages like, When the fun stops, stop. Which was a ludicrous message but was the main one for years and years which just, you know, really put the onus of responsibility on an individual to use addictive products responsibly, which of course is a contradiction in terms.

And even now there has been some progress, but there isn't messaging out there on the whole that really says the things that I've just said. Not many people know that this is a thing that impacts the pathways in the brain. Not many people know that this is an industry that makes 14 billion pounds every year and it makes most of that money from the most addictive products and from the people that are experiencing harm. And most people don't know where to go for help, support or treatment. We do a lot of prevention work and every time we're in a room with young people or with professionals, we ask them at the start of the session, do you know where to go if you're worried about someone you know because of gambling harms? And it's between like 80 and 90 percent of respondents to that question is a no, and that is really worrying. So it's not just that people aren't being warned, people aren't being protected from this either. And so there is a hell of a lot to do to ensure people don't experience harm in the first place. But if they do, they are, they're cared for.

Helen: Thank you, James. And I'll want to come back to talking more about that as well. I mean, I think, one of the things standing here as a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist, I was really curious about what you were saying about how addictive these products are, about the dopamine rush that people experience, and actually physiological changes in the pathways of the brain which we know happen if you do something repeatedly, and gambling is one of those situations.

And I remember very early in my learning about gambling, from a cognitive and behavioural point of view, one of the things that we talk about is the power of rewards. And you mentioned a big win, which may happen sometimes, even though, as you pointed out, overall, people would tend to lose money almost certainly if they gamble regularly. But the idea is that if you get a reward in an unpredictable way, especially if it's a really good one, we're much more likely to carry on doing that behaviour. The technical term for that would be intermittent reinforcement and when I'm talking about how CBT works, gambling is an example that I use because of that every now and again, you'll win something but what it does is it tends to keep going. Is that a reasonable understanding of, you know, how it's so addictive- are the things that I'm missing?

James: No, that's a much better explanation than I would give. I think it's true and the gamble industry knows that. It employs some of the best psychologists in the world to design these products because they know what makes brains tick and what makes people coming back to the products. And, you know, in my experiences, I used to know that on the whole, I would lose money. And I used to know that on the whole, it didn't matter how many times I tried to stop that I couldn't and yet I couldn't stop myself going back to using these products and I didn't understand why. And it's only coming into recovery and doing the work that I do now and being taught this and being told this and finding out myself what actually happened to my brain, that gave me agency to realise that I was being tricked, I was being conned by gambling companies. It's all an illusion, these products are designed to fool you, designed to think that you have an illusion of control. They're designed to make you think that you've got a chance of winning in the long run, but the truth is the algorithm is against you and the house always wins. And again, going back to messaging that people need to hear, I think to be more hopeful and positive. That kind of messaging can be absolutely crucial to unlocking something in people's brains and giving them that freedom and agency and license to not just rewire their brain for good reasons, but to rebuild their life.

And I, you know, I have a little mantra now that because of this knowledge that I have and because I know how the products are designed and I know how the industry operates, and I know the psychological tricks they used on me, they truly do not deserve another penny of my money or another second of my time. And that is such a big motivating factor for my recovery, and it keeps me going and I'm adamant until the day I die, I will not give them any of those things.

Helen: And I just want to check with you, when you're talking about these things, I'm thinking there might be listeners out there who perhaps every now and again enjoy a day out at the races with their friends, or perhaps when there's a big football match or something like that, that they want to put a bit of a bet on. Is that the same kind of risk for certain people or, you know, if somebody was vulnerable, would that lead to harm in the same way as the internet and the machines in the betting shop?

James: Yeah, again, I think all forms of gambling do carry a risk and some are more risky than others, and we're much I am genuinely and our charity is to not anti-gambling, we don't want to stop people recreationally gambling or go into events like that where gambling may be involved. But I would urge caution in that so often people's experiences of gambling harm and gambling addiction do start with what is perceived to be the more harmless or innocent forms of gambling, such as a bet on sports or a night at the bingo. And that's what happened with me. My first ever bet was a five pound football bet on a football match in a bookmakers. And you know, that, that led to years of devastation. And what the industry does is it spends lots of money on getting to these audiences in these sorts of venues, in these sorts of environments and in these sorts of sports to, to lure young people especially into then the more addictive forms of gambling, because that's where the profit is.

Yes, they do make profit from football betting and from horse racing, of course, but most of their money now, most of their profit comes from the quicker, more addictive products. And that's the business model, to get people through one avenue to the next. And of course, that's not to say that everybody that goes to the horse racing or put bets on the football will become addicted. But the truth is, again, is that the industry wants people to spend lots of money on their sites. That's their business model. And the longer you are on those sites, and the more money you are spending, of course, the more profit they are guaranteeing in the long run. So again, it's just being aware of how quickly this can happen and being aware of the ways the industry targets people.

Helen: And I mean, you've said, you know, just how quickly this can have an impact on people, how much it can suck you in to spending a lot of time and all the money and so on. How would somebody get from being in that position, and this is probably quite difficult to speak about, but where people are actually dying by suicide in relation to having gambling difficulties, how does it get to that situation?

James: Yeah. And I can answer from my own experiences partly, but I can also answer from the facts from the position of our beneficiaries, which are families who have lost loved ones to gambling related suicide. And I'll just start by saying that for those families, and I didn't meet the people that died, but I've met their families, and they all say the same thing, that these were just every day, normal, bright, happy, young people with their life ahead of them with no real vulnerabilities, no preexisting conditions, good upbringings, and gambling was the thing that changed them, that robbed them of their future. And I can really resonate with that. When I first came across the charity and I listened to the mums talk about their sons that had died. I did honestly think that could have been my mum quite easily. And that is because I feel like I know what it was like to get to that point. And what it is, it's not about losing substantial amounts of money. And of course, when that does happen, it can feel absolutely catastrophic. But what it is that sense of never being free of this. And, you know, I used to think I would always be addicted to gambling. I genuinely remember thinking I would spend my life addicted to gambling. This was just the, who I was, just the way I was. And that was such a horrible mindset to be in because it made me very pessimistic, nihilistic, didn't really care about myself, didn't care about my well-being, didn't do anything for myself, didn't look after myself, and because I had no control over what I was doing, that feeling of not being in control of your actions, you sort of think, well if I'm not in control of myself, what is the point? Because agency and control and freedom is sort of all we have and they're the fundamentals of how we live so to be robbed of those things, I can see so easily why people get to that point and think I'll never be free of this and I have lost all control over my life and there is no hope. And there is now, thanks to the work of bereaved families, there is now national recognition that gambling can be the dominant factor in a suicide, without which the suicide would not have occurred. And, sadly, it's somewhere between 117 to 496 people every year in England alone take their life because of gambling.

And, you know, we're there to support the families who come to us and thank God we are. But this is something that is happening far too often, and we're getting far too many families who need us. And again, where is the message that by engaging with these products, there can be a serious risk to your life. And it's, you know, it's not a drastic thing to say that gambling can kill. And the point of disclosure, the point of, sometimes what's referred to as rock bottom, but the point of when someone says, I can't do this anymore, I can't be like this anymore. That is where the suicide risk is greatest. And so, we as professionals, as people that come into contact with people experiencing harm, always have to be mindful of the suicide risk and do everything we can to use the right language to, to support someone as adequately as we can. Because a common feature and experience of those that are no longer with us was that they try to access services. They try to stop, they try to have the conversation with people, but there wasn't that understanding about how serious this is. I think going back to my first answer on today was people thought that this is just gambling. It's just betting. It's just, you know, he just can't stop a few bets at the weekend. This is not, this is a serious health issue that drives people to that, that moment.

Helen: And that's absolutely shocking statistics there, James, talking about the sheer number of people that are being lost to suicide, related to gambling and you're spending time with the families of people who've already gone. You said that you haven't met those people. You've met the people who've been affected by their loss. And you described what I would think of symptoms that sound very much like depression. You know, that sense of hopelessness, I'm never going to get any control over my life. I've tried everything and I've run out of ideas and all of those things. If somebody came to me and described that and didn't say that they were betting, I would think this person was really quite depressed. And you also said you weren't looking after yourself and your relationships weren't going well. And again, those would be things where I would expect a healthcare professional to be concerned about someone's mental health and think about depression. Is there anything that people like me, healthcare professionals, should really take care to check to know whether there's a gambling element to how someone's feeling?

James: Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned depression because I think it's one of the most common harms felt from gambling. And I, again, from my own experiences, I used to think when I was addicted to gambling that I was just a depressed person who gambled. Having now been nearly seven years in recovery, I realise that I was a person who gambled and that caused depression and those feelings, because I wasn't like that before gambling and I haven't been like that after gambling. So it's something about gambling specifically, I think that makes people feel depressed. And similarly, with anxiety as well.

And in terms of what healthcare professionals can do, a real basic ask from us would be just to ask the question, and that is something that's not traditionally happened, but this is a new and emerging field so there's no judgment at all on any healthcare professional. But begin to ask the question and you can ask it in an empathetic way. You can ask it in an unjudgmental way, and it could just be as simple as, are you worried about your gambling or someone, you know, if you're worried about an affected other, and that could unlock something. It might be the first time someone's been asked that question. And if the answer is yes, then it's really absolutely crucial to determine what type of gambling they are gambling on, because as we know, if it's a weekly bet at the football or if it's some of the less harmful products like buying a lottery ticket or taking part in the, you know, the village fate raffle, we can probably assume there is a less risk of addiction and all the harms that I've talked about. But if they say, I've just been using an online roulette machine for four hours. Okay, alarm bells would need to be start ringing because we know how powerful those products are and the impact that has on the brain. It would then be to determine how often they're gambling, how long they're spending when they gamble, and asking them about their support networks around them.

And I kind of feel like here, I need to give a bit of a shameless plug to the work we do through Chapter One, is that there's no expectation for healthcare professionals that are listening to this to be experts in gambling because there hasn't been adequate information and training, but our program through chapter One is there for you. We are here to help. We are here to train you to be able to have these conversations, to have the information and the knowledge that you need. So if someone says, I can't stop gambling, it's not that you just know what to say next, but you know, why that person is experiencing that and what we can do to help them, stop and rebuild their life.

Helen: And I probably want to ask you a bit more about that, James, if I can come back to that. I think it's really important for our listeners in general, particularly the ones who are healthcare professionals, but also everybody out there to understand more about that. And I wonder, on the way to that, whether we could talk a little bit. You said that one of the things that you've done is talk to people working in NHS gambling services, and particularly people who do CBT. Can you tell us a bit about what it's like to talk to people doing CBT when it comes to gambling and gambling harms?

James: Sure. So, I didn't get any treatment or any support other than the self-exclusion tools that you can put on yourself and just support from my mum and from family and close friends. And that was because when I stopped gambling in 2018, I think there was just one specialist gambling addiction clinic in the country, possibly two. But not one that was local to me and not one that was accessible to me. I'm now pleased to say that there are 15 specialist clinics across the country that cover every single area of England. Same cannot be said for Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, unfortunately yet. But there is wider support out there, other than the NHS services.

Having met with all but one of these NHS clinics now, they all take a nearly identical approach and that is CBT first and foremost for someone that's experiencing gambling harm. And I've spoke to the clinicians at these organisations extensively and we've worked with them to learn how best to tailor our materials and to work together. And honestly, I'm not just saying this, I leave those conversations feeling like these are truly people who understand what happened to me, what happened to my brain and have the answers to rewire it and to change the behaviour for the better. And I left feeling like I would send anybody I knew that's experiencing gambling harms into their service tomorrow, because they would be in the safest possible hands and that's kind of what we're doing with our work now is we want to be that support and treatment pathway into these services because we know how effective CBT is. We think, and I say that because I'm not actually sure on the best international evidence, but we think this is the best form of treatment for people experiencing gambling harms. And this is what these services offer. So our job is to get many more people into those services because currently only one in 200 people who may benefit from treatment for gambling harms are accessing it. So there is clearly a massive gap and a massive job to do to get more people into those services.

Helen: Again, you're giving us some fairly shocking statistics there about the sheer number of people with the difficulties, the people who are losing their lives and the families affected by it, and the number of people who are accessing help. And I'm just thinking about the work that you do in Chapter 1. Did you say that training is one of the key things that you offer?

James: Yeah, so Chapter One provides information and support for everyone affected by gambling, including training for professionals. So, it's designed to give information to everybody about the causes and effects of gambling harms and how to support someone if you're worried. But a big focus of the work has been helping professionals perform very brief interventions and also helping them understand where specialist support and treatment is. And we have a training program for frontline professionals, which has been rolled out across Greater Manchester, in Yorkshire, and in Nottingham to really good results. And we're about to have an e-learning platform as well, which professionals will be able to access towards the end of 2025. And we just hope that it makes it easier because we are totally aware of how time pressured people are, how stretched people are, the fact that, you know, health professionals have to be experts in lots and lots of different fields and we want to lighten the load on that and make it easier for people because we know this stuff, we know gambling, everything has been informed by lived experience and by gambling addiction clinicians and those messages, that information, those resources are all accessible, on the Chapter One website, which is chapter-one.org. And there's actually a dedicated professionals hub on the website as well, where it's got additional resources, stuff that you can print off and start using tomorrow to put up into the places where you work, takeaway resources, posters, flyers, and that will be a really good starting point. But I would highly recommend trying to book on to some training to learn more about what we do and how you can help.

Helen: Sounds like a fantastic resource and we'll make sure we put that link on our show page so that everybody can follow that up and have a look. Thank you. So, I mean, it sounds like you've done a huge amount of excellent work, and you've also said there's probably a lot to do. How do you see the future? I mean, what do you want to see, you know, in, in the next few years? What would you want to see happen?

James: Yeah, well, I kind of have a vision of how to prevent gambling harm and to save people dying because of gambling related suicide. And it's a number of things and you have to bear with me here, but I think it has to start with better legislation of gambling laws to make gambling much safer in the first place and better regulation of those laws by the regulator, so the industry is accountable and those laws are enforceable.

But beyond that, look, I think every young person, in every school should have a curriculum mandated lesson on the risks of gambling. And that lesson has to talk about the risks to mental health and the addictive nature of gambling and the industry business model and the practices they use to draw us all in. I think that everybody in the public deserves public health information and messaging about why this happens to people and how best to support someone if you're worried. I think that every professional should have access to training. I think that every professional who works with children and young people should be empowered to have resources to deliver preventative education to the young people they work with.

And I think there should be much, much better joined up services so there's no wrong door for people experiencing gambling harms. If someone comes to a service and says, I'm worried about gambling or I can't stop gambling. Everybody should know at the very least where to point that person in the right direction. It’s no good fobbing people off with generic mental health support advice. This is a unique and diagnosable mental health condition that deserves recognition for that reason alone. And everybody should know that there are now specialist NHS clinics that can provide support.

So that's the vision. And I don't think we're a million miles away from that happening. The political context is that we're about to get a statutory levy on the gambling industry, which will be roughly 1 percent of their profits that will be given to independent prevention, research and treatment. So that is a really positive step, and it will ensure that there is more treatment, better access to treatment. The truth is again, on the prevention side of things, probably 30 million pounds of that will be spent on prevention activities. But if we think about how much money the gambling industry spends on advertising which is 1. 5 billion pounds every year. Well, we're using a 30-million-pound budget to try and compete with 1.5 billion pounds of advertising, telling everybody that gambling is safe, harmless fun. So there's, the balance is still not there. So I would advocate for more investment in prevention and all the things that I said to make sure people know about the risks and how to get help much earlier.

Helen: Thank you. And I really would say hearing what you're saying about the extent of the difficulty, and that people are starting to talk about it more. you have the ear of the government, perhaps in a way that hasn't been the case in the past and things are perhaps moving in the right direction. And it really comes across how passionate you are about making a difference here. One of the things that I did wonder about, going back to one of the things that you said right at the beginning about this sort of dirty backstreet betting shop thing and, how the presentation of it all has changed and it's kind of shiny and attractive. I still wonder though if there's anybody listening out there who's thinking about, well, maybe this is something that is affecting me, but feeling embarrassed or ashamed or hasn't got a social support network that would hear them if they said I've got a difficulty. Have you got anything that you'd say to them?

James: Yeah, I would say, try to self-reflect on gambling and your relationship with it. So ask yourself, what is gambling costing me, not just financially, but including the money, but time. What is potentially gambling benefiting me and literally write those things out. And I can almost guarantee that the list of things that will be costing you will be greater than the things that you are getting benefit from. I would encourage you to really question whether you can engage with sport without having to put a bet on. That was a huge point for me is that the idea of watching sport, especially football, without putting money on it used to be an awful feeling. I couldn't bear it. And so ask yourself that. Has that become such a part of your routine that you always put a bet on when you watch the football? Do you find yourself gambling when you intended not to, how many days do you honestly think you can go without gambling? Ask yourselves those questions as a starting point. And I'm not going to tell you the answers to those because I don't think it's our job to, to tell people that I think self-reflection is really important.

And that's, you know, that's something that I did for my recovery was write down all the things that gambling had done to me. And every time that I felt, oh actually, maybe a bet on the football this weekend might be fine. Cause I'm over it now. I literally got that list out on paper and would go through it and go, oh yeah, I remember now this is what it costs me. This is what it did to me. And I'm not going to go into that.

And the other thing that I'll say as well is it try and give yourself as much information about gambling as possible. So again, look at Chapter One, go on the website and look at the information on there about how gambling products are designed, what the industry business model does, the whole myth of safe and responsible gambling initiatives, that kind of information might make you see gambling in a different light.

And I'll give you one personal anecdote actually recently that has helped me, is that I've started to look into and read about ultra processed food. And it's really opened my eyes about the tactics and the mechanics and the playbook of the junk food, fast food industry. And it's really put me off it. It's made me think, actually, I don't want to eat this stuff because I now know what's in it. I now know how the industry operates and lobbies similar to what happened with me with gambling. So I'm always a big advocate for information. Giving people information is absolutely key. So go find it.

Helen: It sounds as if, there's anything from just asking yourself some questions and educating yourself, just checking who's benefiting here, all of those kind of questions, but also places that you could go to learn more and places you can find help. And it sounds for you as if that comes in the context of a more generally healthy lifestyle as well, that you live these days.

James: Yeah, if you ask my wife, she may disagree, but I still eat unhealthy food. I still have a drink. I'm no angel, but I am now much more aware of how a whole range of industries actually, do everything they can to keep us as customers, especially the gambling industry, but, you know, I feel like we're all quite attached to our phones and to social media. And that's really difficult and it's deliberate. And that's the thing that really gets me is the deliberate nature of all this and going back to gambling, that is, you know, there is a deliberate side of this. It's to generate profit at the expense of widespread social harm. And that's the thing that, you know, you mentioned passion. That's the thing that gives me the passion to know that I can counter that information by going to tell people the truth and my personal experiences are what keeps me going, drives me on, but also knowing that I have the opportunity to tell people that and tell people the truth, yeah, is good for me and I'm hoping it will be good for many others.

Helen: Thank you. So if you had one key message out of all of those things that we've been talking about today, where you want people out there to know, especially if they've got a worry about a loved one or a worry about themselves. What's the one key thing that you really want people to remember from our conversation today?

James: The first thing that came to my mind, it's really difficult because there's lots of things I'd like to say, but I'll stick with the one. And the first thing that came to my mind is, please don't think this is all your own fault, and please don't think it's all the fault of the person that you care about or you love. And that's really difficult, especially for that latter category of people because you may be experiencing harms and none of this is definitely your fault because you've not even gambled, and you may be experiencing harms through a loved one. But there is a reason this happens. Nobody wants to be addicted to gambling. Nobody wants to experience gambling harms. And of course, yes, people do have agency, and people are responsible for their recovery and for seeking help and for staying recovered and abstinent. But from my perspective, I will never take responsibility for being given an addiction at 16 years old and never, ever take responsibility for throughout 12 years of addiction, never being asked by a gambling company if I was okay, or if I could afford to lose the money that I was losing. And so, to summarise, try to remove this blame that people feel because that is another reason why people get to that point of feeling that they've let everybody down and it's all their own fault. So challenging that narrative is absolutely fundamental for us and for me.

Helen: Thank you, James. And I just want to check whether there's anything that you would want to ask me or anything else that you'd like to say before we finish today.

James: I just like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak to anyone that's listening and thank you for dedicating time to this topic. I know it's not a topic that is always high up the agenda, until it needs to be. And that's the sad truth that gambling harms are often identified way too late, or at crisis point, or at death. And hopefully, by just spending a bit of time listening to this and looking up Chapter One, you may avoid those situations. So just to thank you for me. And if anyone wants any more information on these, anything from me, you can get in touch with me through, my email address, which is, [email protected]

Helen: Thank you so much, James. Thank you.

James: Thanks.

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