JJ Glanville’s gambling addiction began before he was legally allowed to gamble, at age 17. Now 29, JJ reflected on the depths of his addiction with me.

What started as small amounts of his own money quickly turned into being threatened with prison time after stealing tens of thousands of pounds from his granddad. His solution: to continue betting:

“I’d get my monthly salary and I’d just put the whole lot on football and try and build that up and up. Some months I would build it up to 20, 25, 30,000 but then I would lose it all. Then I got a job where I was actually, earning money for once after paying off the debt. That all went back on it.”

“I got into a serious relationship and that stopped. That kind of kept me clean because I didn’t want to let her down and I just had that extra layer of accountability that I’d never really had before. But then we broke up and it very quickly spiraled again.”

2 years of being clean became the past very quickly:

“A week later I flew out to Vegas which was a horrible idea. I lost everything and around the same time I moved out to the US for work. That ended after a couple of months because I gambled everything in my name and I lost. I had literally nothing left. My mum had to pay for my flights home.”

Again, JJ continued to place bets and quickly found himself in financial trouble again:

“I moved to Dubai because of my business, and again that lasted about six months because I gambled everything and lost everything. Dubai I think was even worse because it’s very very illegal there. I mean, you’d be serving serious prison time there for gambling if not worse consequences. Dubai was possibly the worst it’s ever been in terms of just the complete constant betting. It was literally almost 24 hours a day. I mean, I was getting two, three hours of sleep some nights.”

JJ saw suicide as the only way out, viewing himself as disposable as his addiction spiralled:

“I ended up in pretty major credit card debt with one of the Emirati banks. They were chasing me and I was like this is it. I’m done. I was living on the 24th floor of this building and I had a balcony looking over this amazing view. The only solution was ‘I have to throw myself off this balcony, there’s just no way around this’.”

“I always had the mindset when I was gambling that when I hit the actual rock bottom, whatever that is, I can just kill myself. That’s the easy way out. Throughout the entire time I was gambling had that mindset.”

“Any sense of self worth completely went out the window when I was gambling. My entire life revolved around it. It felt like I was just possessed by this demon that was completely controlling my brain and my actions and I didn’t have any say in it really. I would have these complete breakdowns genuinely thinking it was a better option to just end everything than to speak to my mum and get her help.”

Rock bottom was a familiar place for JJ, but one day four years ago his exhaustion with the life he was living became a catalyst for change:

“I was just physically exhausted. I had no life. I was just miserable. I’d been betting all day. I’d lost everything and I had 80 pounds left to my name and I thought, right, this is going to be my last bet. I just can’t do it anymore. There was no fun, no excitement. I felt like my brain was just dead at that point.”

It was at this point he realised the hurt he had caused his family and that he needed to change, after watching a TV show that he resonated with:

“I watched Euphoria. For me it gives an incredibly accurate depiction of the impact that you have on your family as an addict. I was watching it and I was like ‘That’s what I’ve been doing to my family for all these years. Exactly that’. And I was like, ‘It has to stop. I cannot do this any longer’.”

He refused to be controlled by his addiction and began to take steps towards recovery:

“I would go to Gamblers Anonymous meetings at least once a week in the early days. I started doing various forms of therapy and I did that for about 6 months. I started to just kind of take everything that I’d learned and kind of make my own framework that fits myself and I’ve never looked back. But yeah, yeah, it’s been a crazy journey.”

I was amazed by the strength of JJ’s willpower, that he was personally able to turn his life around despite having battled his addiction for so long and rewire his brain to avoid relapses.

“I’ve retrained my brain, but I know I’m still vulnerable. And I don’t want to let that slip. I think it’s really important for me to be completely open about it, because it adds a huge layer of accountability that not only would I be letting myself down, but I’d be letting down, actually at this point thousands of people.”

Now his life is incomparable to the way it was 4 years ago before he got clean as a result of the changes he made.

“I have my own apartment that I bought a couple of years ago. I have a partner. I have a huge circle of friends that I just didn’t have when I was gambling. I’m confident. I’m happy. Life is just really good now. I wouldn’t have this life if I was gambling.”

If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this story you can contact Samaritans at 116 123.