How my wife's gambling addiction destroyed our family's life

Opinion: How my wife's gambling addiction destroyed our family's life


I remember the exact moment I looked at my wife and realized she was a gambling addict.

I guess the industry term is “problem gambler,” but that just doesn’t go far enough. Addict or junkie is more fitting to convey the destruction gambling has had on our family’s life.

Our home? Gone. Our savings? Gone. Our children’s education fund? Gone.

All that’s left is filing for bankruptcy to protect us from the dozen or so credit cards my wife secretly acquired and racked up as part of her dizzying juggling act.

She didn’t know her limit and she certainly didn’t play within it.

And yet, what disappeared even faster than the money was the woman I used to know.

I go back to that moment when I realized she was gone forever. She had finally hit the wall and couldn’t hide the problem any longer. She broke the news that we would have to sell our home to cover her losses. Actually, it paid only a fraction of her losses.

I used to be able to tell what she was thinking just by looking at her, but she had mastered deception.

She couldn’t even muster a few tears to make the news more palatable. It was just an icy statement, another calculated move to bail herself out.

Going to the casino without me knowing hadn't been difficult. She had her own business, so she could come and go as she pleased, cramming in gambling sessions while the kids were in school. Her business often meant late nights so I didn’t know where she was. I would wake up and she’d be in the spare bedroom and say she hadn't wanted to wake me. In truth, she had just arrived home at 5 or 6 a.m. She used her business as the mailing address for all the incriminating bills and had concocted other elaborate schemes to keep me from finding out.

Gambling started out as fun girls’ nights out once in a while but, as she later admitted, once she won a big jackpot she thirsted for more. Even now she is convinced she has a 'system' to beat the slot machines. She talks about how certain machines are 'sure things' and that you have to hit them at certain times.

The woman once grounded so firmly in reality is now a little delusional. She went to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting but didn’t return. She signed up for the provincial Voluntary Self-Exclusion Program, but admitted it's still easy for her to quietly go into a casino and gamble -- she'll just get kicked out if she wins and tries to collect.

She never does.

The author is a writer living in Greater Vancouver.