‘Jane’ seemingly had the perfect life, until a gambling addiction brought a . . . Trail of deceit and $200k loss
By Allan Murphy
May 18, 2013
However, Jane also has a dark and long-held secret – one that inevitably was going to catch up with her sooner or later.
Jane is a gambling addict and has been for the best part of the past decade.
But Jane has also been brave enough to confront that addiction, albeit acutely aware that she has a long and difficult road to travel.
Jane (not her real name) reckons to have spent about $200,000 over the past seven years playing poker machines, but the addiction almost cost her much, much more.
The trail of deceit, or “not telling the whole truth” as Jane puts it, threatened to end her marriage, ostracised her from a close circle of friends and tested her sanity.
For every waking minute, Jane dreamed of being back in front of a poker machine ... and when she was, no one or nothing else mattered.
It also never mattered whether she won or lost – the only benefit of winning every now and again was that she could spend more time in front of the flashing lights, the bells and whistles and gamble away to her heart’s content.
That was until earlier this year when in one month alone she spent more than $11,000 (much of it her husband’s earnings) on electronic gaming machines and found herself riddled by guilt.
It was then that she decided to explain the problem to her long-suspecting husband and find a way out of the mire.
She has played the pokies again, only once, but that is a far cry from the daily, hour after hour she would spend in her own private cocoon – engrossed, bedazzled and wholly engulfed by the lure of the machines.
“My life rotated around poker machines to the extent that just walking down the street I could hear different sounds that would bring me back in front of a poker machine,” Jane said.
“I stopped everything that I was doing to go to the poker machines,” she said.
“If my friends came to visit I didn’t have the time for them, I didn’t want them there, I didn’t want them to talk to me ... I just wanted to be able to go to the poker machines where it’s just you and the machine.
http://www.sunraysiadaily.com.au/story/1509587/jane-seemingly-had-the-perfect-life-until-a-gambling-addiction-brought-a-trail-of-deceit-and-200k-loss/?cs=1259
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