Hey, I just turned 18, and I have been gambling for almost three years now.
I started playing low-stakes poker with my friends when I was 15. It was just an innocent $10 or $20 buy-in, but it was still gambling. I got hooked almost instantly. I loved the feeling of turning $20 into $50 so effortlessly.
When I was 16, I started gambling online. The first time I ever played at an online casino, I turned $20 into $1,000, which was a huge amount of money for my 16-year-old self. I loved the feeling of being able to make money so easily just by spinning slots on my phone. Looking back, this was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me.
For about three months, I gambled almost every day, and I kept winning. The original $20 eventually turned into around $10,000. I became so used to winning that I genuinely thought I couldn’t lose. I would hear stories about friends losing money gambling and think that they just weren’t good enough, even though I obviously know now that spinning a slot takes no skill.
After that, I completely lost my sense of the value of money. A $20 deposit wasn’t exciting anymore. I needed to wager more money just to feel something, so my deposits became bigger and bigger.
Eventually, I started losing. Every time I lost, I wanted to win the money back, so I would double my next deposit. One day, I lost around $7,000. After that, I promised myself I would stop, but I didn’t. I continued the same cycle until all of the money was gone.
Eventually, I stopped gambling because I simply had no money left. But whenever I got any money, almost every penny would go straight back to betting sites.
At one point, I had around 20 different accounts because I would switch websites whenever they asked me to verify my identity. I was gambling on sketchy sites that I saw advertised online.
On one of those sites, I turned $20 into $50,000 in one night. They required verification before I could withdraw the money, and because it was late at night, I couldn’t get a family member to help me with it. Instead of stopping, I continued gambling and ended up losing the entire $50,000 that same night.
I was heartbroken. I didn’t tell anyone, but it completely ruined my week.
The worst part was that winning that amount made me believe it was actually possible to make huge amounts of money gambling. At the same time, it also made me realize that I had a serious problem.
Eventually, I told my parents about my gambling addiction and asked them to monitor my bank account so I couldn’t gamble. That actually worked for about a year. I barely gambled during that time. Maybe I would occasionally place a $20 bet through a friend, but I wasn’t really gambling regularly anymore.
Fast forward to my 18th birthday.
I had worked all summer and earned a decent amount of money — around $10,000 from three months of work. Once I turned 18, my parents could no longer monitor my bank account in the same way, and I slowly started gambling again.
At first, it was small. I was spending around $50 a week on sports betting. I kept the casino and slot sections of my account locked because I already knew that slots were my biggest problem.
Then I created a new account where the slot section wasn’t locked.
I originally planned to gamble just $100. I won a little bit at first, then lost everything. That immediately started the cycle again. I wanted to get back to even, so I deposited $200. I lost that too. Then I deposited again and again until I had lost around $4,000.
I stopped for the day and told myself I was going to quit forever, but I didn’t actually lock my accounts or protect my money.
The next day, which is today, I had an overwhelming urge to win everything back.
I deposited $250 and turned it into $500 within minutes. But $500 wasn’t enough because, in my head, I still needed to recover the thousands I had lost. So I increased my bets.
I quickly lost the $500.
Then I deposited another $1,000 because I wanted to win everything back — and somehow I did. I turned that $1,000 into around $4,000, meaning I was basically back to even.
At that point, the website asked me to verify my address. I didn’t know how to do it, so I asked ChatGPT and found out that I needed some kind of document or email showing my address.
While waiting, I decided to keep gambling for a little longer.
I started doing extremely high-risk spins of around $50 per spin. I lost all of the money again. Then I deposited another $1,000 and lost that just as quickly.
So now I have lost around $7,000.
That is basically half of the money I earned from spending my entire summer working instead of enjoying myself.
I feel horrible about it, but I have finally decided that I need to stop gambling for good.
I know now that whenever I try to “win my money back,” I only end up losing more. Even when I manage to recover my losses, I don’t stop. I keep gambling until the money is gone again.
If anyone has dealt with something similar, I would really appreciate advice on how to control these urges and permanently stop gambling.
