I decided to put it all on one bet, one horse,
in one horse race at the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March, 2018.
And if that horse won, I would've won that money back.
I had the intention to pay everybody back.
If it didn't win, it had literally become a matter
of life and death and I was gonna go and kill myself.
I was one of those people that from a young age
I was obsessed with all sports.
I didn't really care what I played as long
as I was playing something
and it was all I was bothered about really.
It was all I wanted to do.
And then it wasn't until I was 15
when kind of professional clubs started
to take an interest in me
and I got put on the academy at Northamptonshire.
That's when I thought, okay, this is really something
that might happen.
[Producer, Erin] You eventually ended up going to Durham University,
to play cricket there and study, of course.
Yeah, so I was playing full-time professionally
after I left school.
So I arrived at Durham in October, 2006,
year left on a contract at Northamptonshire
and life was pretty perfect at that point in my life.
I'd never placed a bet.
I didn't know much about gambling at all.
It wasn't something that anybody in my family did,
none of my friends did, didn't have the same kind
of access and exposure that you do now.
And a few of the guys that I kind of got
in with early on, they were into it.
It was something that they did
and one Saturday morning we walked
into a betting shop in the middle of Durham.
I sat down in the bucket chair in front of the machine.
I had two pounds in my pocket left over from a night before.
And being an overconfident, arrogant,
slightly naive 19 year old boy, there was
at the time I put my two quid in the machine.
I put it on the only number that was different
from all the others, green Zero.
It was the last number to come up.
And I thought, what are the chances
of it happening twice in a row
and 12 seconds later £2 became £72
and my life changed forever.
And that was my first bet.
I always say to people,
I can't explain the feeling it gave me,
because I'd never had it before.
And weirdly I'd never have it again.
Yeah, it gave me a rush and buzz like nothing else.
And people talk about drugs.
That was definitely my drug.
[Erin] And how did the habit, kind of, progress from this point onwards?
I guess I was different to most people
at university 'cause I had a lot more money than most people
'cause I was being paid to play cricket.
I had a student loan like everybody else,
a generous mom and dad.
So I did have more money and I thought to myself,
well I can still afford to do what everybody else is doing,
so who cares if I lose a bit gambling?
The only thing about it
from an early stage was it started
to take up more and more of my time
and I wasn't always kind of totally honest
about how much I was doing it.
I'd go with my mates, there'd be a transparency around that.
But then I'd also go two or three times
at other points during the day
on my own when they didn't realize.
Whilst I was at uni in 2007, my cricket career ended
and I found that really difficult.
That moment was tough.
It hit me really hard
and I started to gamble more and more
'cause had the money at the time.
It would actually replace sport in many ways.
And then when I moved to London, it was a huge turning point
because I'd moved to London I think for the wrong reasons
in many ways 'cause I'd kind of followed the crowd
'cause I didn't know what I wanted to do
in my life if I wasn't playing sport.
And it was what all my mates were doing.
I thought it's the done thing to move to London,
to work in finance, to try
and earn as much cash as you possibly can.
And a big change in my kind of mindset,
was I was previously motivated very much
by sort of success and achievement.
And now I was only bothered about money.
And I think that was partly because I was gambling
but also because that was the culture
and environment that surrounded me, is what kind of drove,
made people tick in that world.
And so actually all I wanted was
as much money as I possibly could.
[Erin] What was the biggest amount you won during this time period?
Having kind of received some good news at work, being told
that I was getting a promotion, a bit of a pay rise,
a Christmas bonus, all those things you kind of crave
as somebody in that world.
I went out with my mates to celebrate that night.
Before I met up with my mates, I walked into the shop
and I put the biggest bet on,
I'd put onto that point, it was a football accumulator.
There were six matches, in two of the matches
there had to be a draw.
Three of the matches,
both teams had to score
and one of the favorites had to lose.
I put £500 on this bet, I walked upstairs,
I started getting drunk with my mates.
And that night, £500 became £34,968.
And that was the biggest single win
that I'd had and ever would have.
From that moment onwards,
not only did I kind of feel like I was totally invincible
I thought it would happen every time I did it.
When it doesn't, well it doesn't matter,
it's bound to happen again at some point.
But actually the worst thing
about it was that was when it became like a drug.
Because now if I didn't win that amount of money
it didn't give me the same rush, buzz, hit,
just like a drug.
And I wanted that every time I did it.
So I started to put more and more,
every time I bet bigger stakes.
So I'd keep doing it.
But also I started to feel guilty, embarrassed, ashamed,
stupid, emotions that I wasn't used to dealing with.
And I started to combat those
by drinking even more alcohol, taking drugs.
And life just started to spiral
in a very, very different direction.
I never told a single person
in the world that I won that money that night.
That was pretty hard.
But I also lost it in a few weeks
and when it was gone I wanted it back,
started trying to win it back.
And then once I'd lost that money,
I started to get into debt.
And I guess over a short period
of time that changed completely.
Nature of my job was kind of walking
from the office to the Lloyd's building.
Historically I would, on the way there
I'd stop, go into the shop for 15 minutes and have a bet.
That now became times where I'd be in there
for maybe three, four hours.
I wouldn't do what I was supposed to do.
I'd then make up a lie about what had happened.
And rather than that happening kind of once a week
it started to happen three, four times a week to every day.
By that point I had four bank loans,
I had five credit cards,
I'd missed a couple of months rent payments
and financial situation was starting
to become pretty dire to tell the truth.
I was starting to really struggle with my mental health
although I didn't want to tell anybody about that of course.
But yeah, financially it wasn't great.
But if at that point I'd stopped
it wouldn't have been as bad as it ended up being.
That's for sure.
I'd put on about three and a half stone, I had all this debt
and I thought, what on earth are you doing?
I decided to try and do something
about it and leave London.
At first, when I first became a teacher
I felt that that was the moment
that gave me the opportunity to stop.
And I tried.
And whilst I still did it,
I wasn't doing it all day every day
and I thought I'd crack this problem.
But then when the first set of holidays came along
things started to go wrong in my life.
I just started to do it more and more
and eventually I would probably spend 75% of my day gambling
because I could do it on my phone.
There's always a reason to be on your phone.
People thought I was on WhatsApp, social media, emails,
all those things that people are, but I was just gambling.
And so it meant I could do it whilst I was teaching.
It meant I could do it whilst I was doing whatever else.
And I just did it all day every day.
That's not an exaggeration.
It just completely consumed everything.
The salary I got paid would usually last the first
or second day of each month.
And then I'd think, well how
on earth am I gonna pay off my debts,
my bills, carry on gambling, live, afford anything.
I turned to payday loans.
I had 23 different bank and payday loans.
And then I guess all those kind
of avenues had been exhausted.
And it was at that point that I started turning
to individuals and eventually out of desperation,
I'd make decisions at work that I'd regret forever
because I would start to abuse my position as a teacher.
I worked in a private school, I wasn't stupid,
I knew how wealthy some of these people were,
had access to that information
and I started to take advantage of it and lie to them.
So I'd borrow money off parents of pupils that I taught.
I lied to them why I needed the money.
They'd liked, respected me, were worried about me.
They had the money to lend me.
I promised to pay them back.
I didn't pay a penny back.
I'd gamble it all away.
And when it all came to a head, it transpired
that there were 113 different individual people
that I had borrowed money off, ranging
from about 75 quid, which doesn't sound too bad
up to the best part of £30,000.
And I had half a million pounds worth
of pure gambling debt
that obviously now I'm spending the rest
of my life paying back.
And it started to take its toll.
Living this double life was exhausting.
And I actually knew
in my heart of hearts it wasn't sustainable.
There was no way I could kind of keep up this pretense.
Essentially the school that I was working at became aware
of the scale and the extent of the problem
'cause they'd received complaints
from all sorts of different people
and they'd kind of opened up an investigation
and at that point I knew the consequences were gonna be
as bad as they could be.
I knew that I was gonna lose my house.
I knew I was probably gonna lose my job.
There's no way I could carry
on being a teacher there or anywhere else.
And I knew I was potentially facing kind
of criminal conviction.
I might go to prison because I knew that I'd-
I'd been kind of forging signatures on contracts,
all sorts of different things.
And after kind of receiving that news, I borrowed a sum
of money off somebody I'd already borrowed money
from, told them a lie I'm not very proud of.
I said, look, I desperately need £10,000
but I promise I'll pay you back at the end of the week.
And that's because completely coincidentally
it was the start of the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival,
the biggest festival of the year,
my biggest week of the year.
And I honestly believed I could turn £10,000
into half a million.
So I put on a series of kind of speculative bets
that not even I thought had a chance.
And I had one bit of luck on the Thursday
that will never ever happen again.
When one jockey and trainer won pretty much every race
and the £10,000 that I had started
with was suddenly £58,000.
I decided to put it all on one bet, one horse,
in one horse race at the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March, 2018.
And if that horse won, I would've won that money back.
I had the intention to pay everybody back.
Yes, I probably still would've lost my house and my job
but at least I could've paid everyone back
and my life could continue.
But if it didn't win, it had literally become a matter
of life and death and I was gonna go and kill myself.
And I watched that horse race in a lesson.
I had kids sat in front of me doing work.
I watched a horse lose by a few lengths
and my whole world came crashing down.
[Erin] Did you reach out to anyone for help at this point?
I'd always seen a way out
and at that point there was no way out
as far as I was concerned.
I tried to essentially drink myself into submission,
take an overdose of antidepressant sleeping pills.
I even tried to drive my car off the road
in a kind of 48 hour period
before eventually arriving at a train station
and was on the verge of doing the unthinkable.
I was in floods, tears, I had commuters all around me
a lot of them kind of looking at me, some of them laughing
at me thinking, what's wrong with that bloke?
'Cause I was stood there in a complete mess
in floods of tears.
But actually I didn't care because I felt real.
The only person I could bring myself to tell
in a way that I felt...
was right, was my best mate in the world.
And that's my little brother.
I didn't want to call him, I didn't want him
to hear me in the state that I was in
because I think he might have reacted differently
if he'd heard that.
So instead of calling him, I sent him a message.
I told him what I was about to do
and fortunately for me having tried to call me
he then sent me a message
and that message saved my life.
He said, look, tell me what the problem is,
talk to me about it and I promise I'll try and help.
And as simple as it sounds, that's what I needed to hear.
And it's what stopped me doing it.
I took myself home.
I came clean to my girlfriend initially
and then my parents.
And that was so tough.
But I think one of the things that I reflect on more
than anything else is that their reaction was so different
to how I thought it was gonna be, how I'd played it
in my head for the last however many years.
They didn't disown me, they didn't go mad.
They recognized I had a problem.
They were glad I was still here and that I needed help.
I was admitted to rehab for want of a better term.
I went to treatment on Harley Street in London.
And those few weeks, months were really, really tough.
I like a lot of people wanted a quick fix.
I thought, oh, I'll go in there, I'll get treated,
I'll walk out and I'll be cured.
But actually I had to learn pretty quickly
that this was something that doesn't just go away.
It's something that I manage
essentially for the rest of my life.
The process was tough.
I had to sort of come clean to people
and having some of those conversations, particularly
with people that I owed ludicrous amounts of money to
and had to admit
that everything I'd told them was complete rubbish
and that actually it was gambling was so hard.
But people have been a lot quicker to forgive me
than I think I'll ever forgive myself.
[Erin] Did you, kind of, figure out how much money you did spend on
gmbling over how many years?
Yeah, I had to go back through messages, emails
bank statements, gambling accounts.
I think it transpires that
over the course of those 12 and a half years,
I'd transacted about £2 million worth of bets online
which was frightening in itself.
The volume of bets, the amount
of bets I was placing every day was mad.
I had 76 different online accounts opened
up in 65 different people's names.
So just the sheer scale
of everything was just way beyond
what even I thought it was.
And in my head it was pretty big.
Ultimately, nobody should go through what I did.
And I often say to people
I'm one of the lucky ones 'cause I'm still here.
Too many lives are lost to gambling every year.
And that just can't happen.
[Erin] And you now do a lot of campaign work to help people
struggling with addiction. What does it entail?
So I now work full-time for a kind of organization
that specialize in education and prevention.
We use our lived experience to try
and raise awareness of the problem, educate people
about the dangers and pitfalls,
reduce the stigma, help people kind of spot signs
in themselves and other people.
[Erin] Do you have any advice you’d like to give to someone
who thinks they might be addicted to gambling?
Understand that it's very easy
to lose control very quickly.
And the sooner you can recognize
that you've lost control
and do something about it, the better.
I have an issue with the fact that gambling
is so ingrained in culture and society
and yet still a bit of a dirty word.
It's still something that people don't talk openly about.
People only ever talk about when they win,
never when they lose.
It's often something that people almost feel ashamed
to admit that they do.
I think I would've found it much easier to talk
about a problem with drugs and alcohol than gambling.
That in itself is not right.
So reaching out for help is tough but tell someone.
It'll be the best thing you ever do.
One of the things I had to learn
over and above everything else was that it was
about managing this for the rest of my life.
And I now am able to do that every day that goes past.
I feel like I'm further away from a bet
which can only be a good thing.
- Yeah, I met up with someone I knew,
I'm not gonna say friend, like an associate.
A substance that I guessed straightaway was heroin,
was put on the foil
and I was shown how to smoke that.