'I slept with money under the pillow': Wife on surviving her husband’s gambling addiction
For every one person who is a problem gambler themselves, around six to 10 further people are affected by the fallout of their gambling, including family members and friends. File Picture: PA
“When my husband was gambling, he’d gamble around family events. He always did it coming up to Christmas because he knew he’d get away with it, right? He knew I wouldn’t be able to face the family without him. I wouldn’t be able to face them and say ‘oh he’s done it again’, because I didn’t want people to judge him."
Those are the words of the wife of a man who suffered from problem gambling. She spoke of the enormous strain and impact she and her family felt from his addiction, describing the “stigma and shame” she endured as a result.
At an event in Dublin to mark the launch of the Gambling Awareness Trust’s annual report, Nicola Keating said she would sleep with money under the pillow and be thousands of euro in debt while her husband was receiving treatment for his addiction.
“I am outside with no support and thinking 'where am I going to get this money?',” she said.
“Sometimes that’s where families are lost. It’s very isolating for family members walking out of [residential centres where their loved one is receiving treatment].”
The event heard that, for every one person who is a problem gambler themselves, around six to 10 further people are affected by the fallout of their gambling, including family members and friends.
Ms Keating said her husband was addicted to casinos and poker machines, meaning she never saw betting slips from a traditional bookies that might have informed her there was a problem.
“I remember thinking ‘was he having an affair?’,” she said. “I couldn’t put my finger on it [at first].
“A friend of mine said to me: ‘Nicola, you’re actually killing yourself, you need to get some help.'
Her husband is in recovery for many years now, but Ms Keating said it continues to have an impact on her even though things have vastly improved.
“A decade ago, if he was 10 minutes late, my stomach would be doing somersaults. I’d be watching finances. Controlling the finances. As a man, he’d have to ask me for the money for a cup of coffee. I said: 'This has to stop.'”
She said families should seek out support for themselves and their loved ones, as help is out there and can make a real difference.
Also speaking at the event, Grainne O’Kane, the founder of the Wellbeing Consultancy, compared the impact of gambling addiction on a family to the invasive Japanese knotweed.
“It’s like a shallow shoot that you don’t even really see,” she said. “Families will talk about things being ‘not quite right’, or ‘they’re not quite present’. There’s something they can’t put their finger on. They can’t see it.
“But Japanese knotweed goes really deep rooted and then goes for metres underground. Which is really fracturing and breaking the whole family foundations, much like gambling addiction does, until it just erupts.”
