From Ed Matthews: For Complete Post, Click Here…
I am an addict.
My addiction is invisible.
To those on the outside, I am a great guy living a great life, if they only knew.
I have spent over $165,000 to fuel my addiction, all hidden from my wife and family. I have taken out personal loans with high interest to fund this.
“Hello, my name is Ed, and I am a compulsive gambler.”
Around 8 months ago I won $100,000 playing fantasy football on Draftkings. Here is the story behind that. Any sane person would have counted their blessings and cashed out.
But I am not sane.
I took this as a sign that I needed to put all of that money towards creating financial freedom and a work-free existence.
So I lost all of that money, and to cover my tracks and try to chase the losses I took out loans, oh, and maxed out my credit card, another 20k.
If I had known that gambling addiction was real I may have recognized these choices as signs of an addiction. But I didn’t figure it out until I hit the bottom and joined my local Gambler’s Anonymous (GA) meeting.
In my first meeting is was stark to see the divide among attendees in terms of age. We had a few old-timers, who haven’t gambled in 30 years and a lot of young guns like me, still working through the addiction.
This is when it hit me, this addiction is going to become a huge problem in the next 5 years.
