One man's story of addiction: ‘Gambling away my mental health with 80-100 bets a day’

Today marks the start of Gamblers Anonymous Awareness week. Here, one man tells Noel Baker how a mountain of debt is slowly shrinking, years after he won the battle against his addiction.

MICHAEL knew something was seriously wrong when, one day some years ago, he found himself betting on the outcome of a beach volleyball game.

It wasn’t the first time he had placed peculiar wagers, in what had become a scatter-gun approach to gambling. What started at his local greyhound track in his early teens, had escalated to the stage where he was “addicted to Teletext”, constantly seeking updates on sporting events, ploughing cash into betting on sports in which he could most certainly not claim any expertise. “Mainly racing, Moto GP, soccer...”