How Gambling Can Affect Your Life

I have always thought that someone who has a gambling problem would be someone who takes large amounts of money and goes to a casino or maybe a race track. I soon realized that is not true. I never would have thought going to bingo would turn into such a bad problem. I would start going to bingo every now and then to get out of the house. Never spent very much maybe 25.00 or a little more. Well one week I had won a game that paid out 250.00. Boy I was really excited, Well I started then going every week to bingo.Of course I didn't think I had any kind of gambling addiction from going to a bingo hall. Well I saw a lot of people buy these things called pull tabs. They were winning a lot of money from those things. I decided I wanted to try some of those. Well I started buying them a little at a time. I won 100.00 off of one of those pull tabs and ended up spending my 100.00 back on buying more pull tabs. So now I am wasting money on bingo and pull tabs. Well it didn't stop there. I then saw that they had bingo online that I could play. I would sneak money to go to a western union and send money to play online. I thought my husband wouldn't find out anything doing it like that. What I didn't realize is that if I won that they would not western union me the money back. Well after I learned that I stopped playing online.

I had stayed away from the bingo hall because I was playing online. Well now that I stopped playing online I started back to the bingo hall. I knew we didn't have the money to go to bingo but I started using my rent money to play. Figured I would win and could put it back. That did not happen very much at all. I soon had to start working a lot of extra hours to replace the rent money. Well after I had started working a lot more to pay back what I spent I stayed away from bingo for a few months. Well I was told by a friend the bingo hall now accepted checks. Oh boy that started it back all over again. I just figured I would write a check and put it in the bank when I got paid. Well occasionally I would win and everything would be ok. Well I was wrong again. This gambling was more out of hand than I could have ever imagined. I started going to bingo twice a week writing bad checks. The bingo hall soon discovered I had over 600.00 in bad checks. I knew I could never cover that. Well I just stayed away from bingo and thought they had forgotten about the checks because nearly a year went by without anyone doing anything. Guess what I was wrong again. I really thought nothing would ever come of this since a year went by.

One day two officers came to my door with a warrant for my arrest. I was absolutely in shock. I had never been in trouble with the police in my life. Here I am in my late 40's and going to jail over bingo. I was so terrified. I was put in handcuffs and taken with the other prisoners to jail. I was so embarrassed. I was only there one day and then had to go before the judge. My sister basically bailed me out. She paid the bad checks and court cost. I never wanted to look at another bingo hall in my life. Thank god my wonderful husband didn't walk out on me. We finally got our finances back in order and we are doing just great. My point of this story is to recognize a gambling problem. If you find yourself really start enjoying it and spending more money each time step back from it because I guarantee you it will soon ruin your life. You want to believe each time you gamble you will win. You will soon see instead of winning you will lose everything.