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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Gambling wasn't part of my life really at all until I was 19 when I went to university and got introduced to it by a group of mates who basically one Saturday morning going down to the bookies as they called it to put some bets on the football. I'd never been into one of these shops before really. I walked in. sort of didn't know what I was doing, stood there clueless.
I spent most of the time I was in there watching this guy play roulette on one of the fob team machines. I watched him feed a wodge of 20 pound notes into this machine for about 15 minutes. He eventually sort of punched it, kicked it, stormed out the shop and I'd laughed at him and thought, what on earth is wrong with that bloke? Little did I know.
I sat down in front of the chair, had two quid in my pocket, left over from the night before. So being an arrogant, slightly naive person, 19-year-old boy that I was at the time, my first thought was two quid. Who cares about two quid? My second thought was there's only one number on a roulette machine that's different.
It was actually the last number to come up that the bloke had lost all his money on. And I thought, what the chance of it happening twice in a row? Put two pounds in the machine. Twelve seconds later, two pounds became 72 pounds. And as I always say, my life changed forever because not a moment went by for the next 13 years where I didn't have a bet.
It's like a sliding door moment. Like you can literally pinpoint that moment where your life changes.
Yeah, definitely. And I think the fact that my first bet, and hindsight's a wonderful thing, but I think the fact that my first bet was a winning bet had a massive impact on me as well because as somebody who's ultimately fiercely competitive, gambling's like a drug for competitive people because it's all about winning and losing.
And if you're competitive and you lose at anything, you don't stop until you win. And then when you win, you love that feeling. And so for me, that was definitely like...
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Chapter 2: How did gambling become a part of Patrick's life?
And so, I mean, one way or another, I would have found it. But I guess, as I say, it was that kind of moment was so defining because... It was just the start of something that just went on and on and obviously changed for different reasons over time. But it's mad to think that I hadn't done it before that point. And then for the next 13 years, a day didn't go past where I didn't.
So for myself personally, I've gambled a couple of times in my life, you know, Grand National Vegas, but it's never gripped me. But some people it really grips quickly. Why do you think it hooked you so much?
Yeah, I mean, I think initially it was very much that kind of feeling of winning. I just loved it. And I don't think I was addicted to gambling straight away, but I was hooked. Also, I just loved the environment that was in the betting shop. It was sort of sport on all the TVs, anything and everything you can gamble on, you could watch at the same time as putting bets on.
So I think a combination of those two things was the thing that sort of got me so into it at the beginning. But when I first started gambling, like a lot of people, it was fun. It was money that I could ultimately afford to lose. time that I had that wasn't sort of impacting other things, but it definitely changed over time as various things happened in life.
And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand is that actually, although it might start as something that's sort of fun and that you feel in control of, it can change pretty quickly. But also for me, there was some signs quite early on, like I wanted to do it more than other people.
I started doing it always with mates and then quite quickly found myself walking into bookies between lectures without anybody else knowing. not telling people that I was doing it, telling people I had certain amounts of money on things when I actually had a lot more. So that kind of deceit and lying started pretty soon, to be honest. And I think that is one of the earliest sort of
signs to recognize and always sort of chasing my losses but also reinvesting my wins so there are lots of people who when they start out gambling if they put a fiver on something and they win 50 quid the next bet they'll put on will be five quid for me the next bet would always have been 50 quid From the very beginning.
So you're always going to lose, aren't you? Because it takes one loss just to wipe you out.
Exactly. But you don't, weirdly, you don't think about it at the time. You don't really realise it because you think, well, it's money that I wouldn't have had anyway, so I haven't really lost. But of course you have. And that's where the psyche behind it is just bizarre.
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Chapter 3: What were the early signs of Patrick's gambling addiction?
Yeah, I mean, I bet on anything and everything by the end. When I first started gambling, there were kind of two things that I did. I bet on sport. I mean, I'm fanatical about all sports, so I would bet on anything sport-related. A lot of football betting, a lot of horse racing. And then the other thing, which was probably my biggest issue and biggest vice, was sports.
roulette so I would spend hours and huge amounts of money on physical roulette machines in betting shops and then online roulette is what I'd do kind of when there wasn't sport on or it got to the point where actually I'd be sitting in a bookies and I wouldn't be able to watch a horse race because I wouldn't be able to wait for the outcome.
I'd have to be spinning a roulette wheel at the same time. Um, and, and over time that just got worse and worse to the point where it I had to be gambling basically every minute of every day, which is where it's sort of terrifying. And I guess a sure sign for people that things might be sort of spiraling out of control is when you do start to gamble on other things.
Because I talk about sport, like I'm sport mad, but there are some sports that... I don't know anything about American football, but when there wasn't football on and the American football was on in the evening, I'd put bets on that. I wouldn't have a clue what I was gambling on, but it was just a medium by which I could bet. And huge sums of money as well. How much?
I mean, by the end, it was like thousands of pounds. I remember putting like a bet on Hungarian handball or something, and it was literally thousands of pounds. And I didn't have a clue. I just went off what the odds would be, whichever the greater the odds. And I thought, and that's where it's nuts.
Did you understand, you know, like with roulette, obviously it's a rigged game, you know, in the favor of the bookies. And I know that those machines in bookies were heavily criticized. And I think they ended up limiting them, didn't they? Not when you were doing it, unfortunately. But I know that people could spend thousands of spin really quickly. Yeah. Did you understand the odds?
And did you know that this game, the longer I play this game, the more likely I am to lose? You know, it's rigged in the bookie's favor.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I did because I'm not sort of stupid. But actually, when I think about it, you think, my God, it is stupid that you believe that you can beat the system or beat the machine. And honestly, it's mad to think back, but I used to... have theories about being able to understand what numbers are going to come up next and what patterns it was going to follow.
So if it was this number, then I know what the next number will be, or this number always comes up twice in a row. And I genuinely believe that I could beat the system and, and that, I was better than it. And you look back now and you think, well, that's crazy. But I guess that's an arrogance.
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Chapter 4: How did Patrick fund his gambling during his university years?
People thought, well, you can't have that big a problem, but... It would be mad for me to say that no one started to spot signs. I mean, from a financial point of view, I started to have to reach out to my parents for money at times. They started to question why. Is it gambling? Always talk my way out of it. No, it's not gambling. it's historic debt from London and all this kind of stuff.
People started to notice that I was sort of putting on weight. I wasn't exercising as much. But basically the way I projected myself was so different to what was going on internally. I'd show up every day. I'd put on this mask. I'd pretend I was completely the opposite to actually who I and what I was. And I just became so good at it. And part of it was because I was protecting the addiction.
I didn't want to stop gambling. I wasn't ready to stop gambling.
Is there anything that your parents could have said to you in that moment to kind of break through, do you think? You know, as a parent myself, I'm terrified of my son hiding something like that from me. And is there a way to communicate with an addict?
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that addicts fear most is judgment. And I was always... I couldn't bear the thought of my parents, although they're incredibly supportive and they're amazing people, I couldn't bear the thought of my parents being angry with me, disappointed in me, knowing that I've made mistakes. I sort of grew up with...
this sort of perfect son type tag because I was good at everything. I never got in much trouble, didn't do much wrong. So when I did, I was like, I can't admit that to people. And that was definitely on me. But I think now looking back, I wish I'd had more of a transparent relationship with my parents. And I wish... I'd known it was okay.
And their reaction was, as I found out when it all came to a head, was so different to what I thought it was going to be. Because I'd played in my head that they were going to react in a certain way. They reacted in completely the opposite way. And I think that's sometimes the thing you're so worried about judgment.
You're worried about the consequences when ultimately the consequences are going to be worse if you carry on. But you think... it's impossible to get over it. And you think it's impossible to live a life without whatever it is that you're doing, which again is not true. So I think that's the, they're the three sort of most important things.
So remove the judgment. So if you're a parent and you're worried about a kid or you've got someone you should say, I don't care, I'm not gonna judge you. I just wanna help.
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Chapter 5: What led to the escalation of Patrick's gambling habits?
It was like, and that's when I had to start fixing my life, like you say. Yeah, definitely. So it was nowhere near an addiction or something, but I can relate to that moment of you need to kind of just communicate to someone and say it. Yeah, yeah. I was scared of being judged as well.
Yeah, and that was the thing is, like, it was almost like at that point I'd tried everything to solve this problem and I had to just, like, hold my hands up and surrender to the addiction and say, right, it's beating me. Mm-hmm. And by doing that, I was then able to sort of move forward.
And it was the start of a long journey and like a challenging one, but one that I look back now on and yeah, it's worth it.
Did you have like a family meeting after that and speak to your parents and everyone and have like a big talk about it?
Yeah, I mean, so like my girlfriend, who's now my wife at the time, my... We get you.
She's gone down the banks.
Yeah, she's a saint, that's for sure. Anyway, she was sort of the first to come and... I basically couldn't sort of speak. I wasn't in a way of any sort of state of communicating. And I mean, she obviously knew like how serious it was. And she said, your parents are on the way. I said, look, they can't come today. I can't speak to them. I'm so tired. I'm so broken.
I just need like 12 hours to sleep apart from anything else. She was incredible in that moment. She didn't try and force anything. She didn't sort of, I did that and the next day, the rest of my family came and we had to sit down around a table, literally like this one. And I can't explain to anybody how hard it was telling them. It took so long for me to get stuff out.
I kept saying, I can't tell you, it's that bad. They kept just saying, look, we wanna know everything. And I think apart from anything, they were just so relieved because they realized that finally, I was prepared to finally be totally honest and open and that there was no more layers that they needed to unpick that they'd tried to unpick for so long before that.
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