Like the unnamed Premier League footballer, I know what it is like to be addicted to gambling

I suspect that the players with the multi-million pound habits are not joking about it on the team bus. I suspect their addiction – like mine – is a dirty secret

For six years, I had a secret gambling addiction. Cumulatively, I lost tens of thousands of pounds that I couldn’t afford. (Getty)

According to the marketing gurus at Ladbrokes, gambling is social. If you’ve watched any sport on TV in recent years you can’t have missed the bookmakers’ ‘Ladbrokes Life’ advertising campaign. It features five likely lads straight off an FHM mood board circa 1998 enjoying a weekend of pubbing, clubbing, bants and bets. It’s a great laugh. You want to be their mate. You want to join in.

It’s probably not how the unnamed Premier League footballer who is said to have gambled away £15 million feels about his habit. And it isn’t how I feel about mine.

For six years, I had a secret gambling addiction. Cumulatively, I lost tens of thousands of pounds that I couldn’t afford, propping up my shaky finances with loans. I missed entire nights’ sleep, staring into a computer screen, watching some obscure contest from the other side of the world, hoping to claw back my debts. On the darkest days I could lose more than a month’s salary in a few hours.

Gambling affected every aspect of my life: it ruined at least one relationship; it made me feel increasingly distant from friends and family; it made me lose interest in my career. I suffered from stress, anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression.

In his statement following his recent 18-month ban for betting on the sport, Joey Barton described the pervasive gambling culture of football as one from which it is hard to break free. While that is no doubt true, I suspect that the players with the multi-million pound habits are not joking about it on the team bus. I suspect their addiction – like mine – is a dirty secret. And that’s a huge part of the problem: other addictions might leave obvious calling cards, but gambling is relatively easy to hide from loved ones.

Unlike those happy chappy Ladbrokes lads, for me gambling was anything but social; it was intensely, cripplingly lonely. After a bad loss, I would spend days or weeks interacting with the world as if I were in a bubble. Nothing felt real, nothing mattered. I would be detached and uncommunicative. I would be pretending to live.

And I would lie. I would lie constantly, to everyone. I’d tell people I had to stay in to work as I snuck my laptop off to my bedroom, I’d invent excuses for my puffy eyes or my irritability.

I secretly bet on American basketball games while on holiday in India with my then girlfriend, following the score on my phone as we sat down for breakfast. I spent most of a weekend at a wedding in Warsaw last year following the cricket from back home. “You’re always on your phone,” complained my friend. I mumbled an unconvincing response about Whatsapp groups.

More than anything else, the lying is about shame. People often describe shame as ‘burning’ but mine didn’t burn me, it made me numb. When I was gambling, my secret life spent online in the middle of the night was more real to me than my work, my friends, my relationships. Focusing on anything else became impossible.

Yet despite all this, I didn’t think I had a gambling problem. I would describe my big losses in passive terms, as something that happened to me. I would go months without placing a bet and tell myself I was over it.

Things only came to a head last summer, when weeks of chasing five-figure debts spiralled out of control. I eventually spoke to my brother and sister, with whom I share a mortgage and who were materially affected by my actions. They found the charity Gamcare, which offers counselling to addicts. I don’t know if I’d still be gambling without their and my family’s help, just as I can’t say for certain whether I’ll gamble again. But I know I am only writing this now because I eventually reached out.

There may be little public sympathy for millionaire footballers who choose to blow their immense wealth at the bookies. But money is no protection from this addiction. If these young men can’t rely on the support of those who love them, gambling will ruin their lives just as surely as it nearly did mine.

If you need help with gambling addiction contact you can speak to a Gamcare adviser on Freephone 0808 8020 133