Gambling took my jobs<\/a>, my money, my marriage and my family. It stripped me of everything I had worked for,\u201d he said. <\/p>\nHis addiction began in Cape Town, where he spent his afternoons playing Street Fighter and other arcade games at a neighbourhood spaza shop. Next to the arcade machines was an illegal gambling triple seven slot machine where children could insert 50 cent or R1 coins in the hope of winning more money. <\/p>\n
\u201cI used to play Street Fighter, but next to it was this gambling machine. I would watch people put in 50 cents and get a whole lot of coins back. As a child, that was exciting. I thought if I won money, I could just play more Street Fighter.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said there was no adult intervention in those machines despite him being only 13 years old. \u201cThe owners didn\u2019t care because they were making money from us.\u201d <\/p>\n
Looking back, he said he did not realise he had become addicted. \u201cI thought I was just having fun. I didn\u2019t understand why I couldn\u2019t stop,\u201d said Phillips. <\/p>\n
Years later, counselling helped him understand what had happened. \u201cAt first, you think you\u2019re playing for fun, but eventually you\u2019re chasing the feeling and chasing your losses,\u201d he explained. <\/p>\n
However, gambling followed him even in his adulthood where he used his National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funds to graduate from gambling at small neighbourhood machines to playing slot machines. <\/p>\n
After moving to Johannesburg, his gambling habit subsided briefly until a traumatic incident changed everything. In 2015, while travelling home from work by train, he was shot in the leg during a robbery. <\/p>\n
While recovering, a colleague arranged transport with another employee who introduced him to online gambling, reigniting his gambling appetite. \u201cHe told me he had won R3,000 after gambling R300 online. He showed me how to register. He didn\u2019t know my history. From that moment I was hooked again.\u201d <\/p>\n
This time, Phillips said, the addiction became far worse because gambling was available at any time through his cellphone. As his addiction deepened, he began gambling away his salary and hiding the truth from his family. <\/p>\n
\u201cI lied to my wife, I lied to my family, I lied to my colleagues. Addiction makes you lie because you\u2019re ashamed,\u201d he explained. <\/p>\n
He also persuaded colleagues to contribute to a workplace stokvel, only to use the money to fund his gambling. \u201cI had around R25,000 of other people\u2019s money. I gambled it all away. I was so desperate that I quit my job just to cash out my pension so I could pay everyone back before they found out.\u201d <\/p>\n
After getting his pension payout, he paid his colleagues and gambled away the rest. Later, he received his lawsuit payout of R325,000 from railway company for the injury he sustained when he was shot in the leg during the robbery. He used over 70% of the payout on gambling and lied to wife, saying he had invested the money.<\/p>\n
His wife reached a breaking point in 2020 when she was pregnant with their second child when he told her that the money he claimed to have saved up … he actually gambled it and they have nothing. <\/p>\n
His wife later divorced him.<\/p>\n
Phillips only sought professional help in 2025. \u201cI never believed in counselling. I was wrong. Counselling saved my life.\u201d <\/p>\n
After more than 30 years of addiction, Phillips completed rehabilitation and now volunteers to educate others about problem gambling. \u201cI suffered in silence because I was too ashamed to ask for help. Nobody beats this addiction alone.\u201d <\/p>\n
He warns that children are especially vulnerable to gambling, particularly online, and hopes his story will stop others from making the same mistakes. <\/p>\n
* Not his real name<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Story audio is generated using AI What started as a game with a single one-rand coin at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1114131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4317],"tags":[9776,303732,303737,147059,303738,303734,105,218,303735,303733,303736,16,15],"class_list":["post-1114130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-addiction","tag-gambling-and-family","tag-gambling-and-mental-health","tag-gambling-awareness","tag-gambling-rehabilitation","tag-gambling-warning","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-nsfas-gambling","tag-slot-machine-addiction","tag-triple-seven-slots","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116991917369672803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1114131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}