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‘I lost 10 years of my life’: how UK betting giant’s unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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It sucks and this predatory behaviour should be regulated out of existence and the people behind it Luigi'd.
However, it's not very easy to have sympathy for the guy. Any time you can just walk away.
“Bro just stop being addicted” wow thanks, im cured…
So can alcoholics. So can drug users. So can obese people. So can people in abusive relationships.
Walking away is rarely as simple as it sounds, and it's typically better to have empathy and offer support rather than dismiss them.
Obesity is primarily genetic so yeah most likely a different story there.
Nonetheless I've had the rest of all those.
Hardest is probably the abusive relationship, but for me that's because I was very young and the guy was quite a bit older and a decently skilled long-distance manipulator, plus I had the alcoholism turned Xanax abuse and amph binges on the weekends stacked on top because I had daily panic attacks over fears of deportation to my fatherland where I'd end up killed because my boss tried to quiet-fire me from my internship my visa depended on in my first week since she realized she had nothing for me to actually do and the train was delayed once, so i needed drugs to just tolerate entering work after that without freaking out constantly.
I don't even drink these days, nevermind have dessert or drugs.
It's def not impossible I'm sorry to say, and to think otherwise makes you seem very immature. Especially when it comes to mental internal stuff like gambling rather than material circumstances or physical chemical imbalances caused by chemicals.
You clearly don't know how addiction works if you think they can just walk away.
I've had multiple physical substance addictions, some multiple at a time and ultimately I just stopped when I needed to. It's hard, but it's definitely not impossible.
You didn't really understand what you read.
They reached out to him. Specifically. Personally. Not automated. They decided on him.
Did your drug dealers text you multiple times a day? For two years?
Don't think your experience is universal. Others struggle a lot more with it.
But that's the thing. I struggled too, so did I have it easier, or try harder? I humbly assume the former most of the time, but the sheer scale in question in this article plus the logistics of actually having to gamble that much make me wonder.