Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
My gambling journey started back in 2014, my first year of university. I was living in a dorm with some friends and all we did in our free time was either drink cheap alcohol or play a low-stakes game of either blackjack or poker.
Being students, we didn’t have too much money since we only had our allowance to spend. So a maximum of RM50 was usually the number you’d either win or lose in a typical night of gambling. I didn’t realise this back then but that was when the addiction caught up to me. The next thing I know I was looking forward to a game at the start of every day – and I didn’t even have much money!
I remember thinking that it was a means of income or a side hustle. But looking back, what side income has the risk of losing the same amount of money you’d have the chance to make?
My later stages of gambling make my university RM50 games look like scrap money. Looking back, I’m glad that it never affected our studies.
Then we graduated and got jobs
I did fairly well in my course and I ended up securing a job with an above average salary at a renowned auditing firm. I obviously took this opportunity to fuel my addiction even more.
I remember during the first month at my new job, I didn’t gamble at all because it would mean that I had to dig into my savings. I wanted to wait for the end of the month, when that juicy chunk of fresh pay would enter my bank account.
I was the last among my circle of friends to receive my salary, so on the night of the 30th, we went to my buddy Chong’s house for the first gambling session in over a month.
Stakes became significantly higher and I ended the night winning RM900. I remember going home thinking, “Wow, that’s RM900 on top of my monthly salary. Imagine if I kept this up!” I was on top of the world!
Little did I know, I would go on to lose double of what I had made in that first session over the next few.
Just like every other gambling story, I started chasing my losses
The sessions started becoming more frequent, and each time I would be trying to cover my losses from the previous sessions. For example: I would lose RM400 in one game, win RM150 in the next and lose another RM400 after that.
It was never ending, and I was stuck in a hole.
This made any winning session a lot less satisfying because I always knew that I was still down a lot of money. And the more I was reminded of that the more I felt the need to chase.
A few years later, Chong introduced us to an online gambling website
He had sent a link to our WhatsApp group chat, and what it represented was the luxury of going to Genting without leaving your home. It was very appealing because you can imagine that our group of guys who gamble regularly had always talked about heading up to Genting.
It works like this: you enter the website and the next few steps are pretty much SOP – like creating an account, picking a username, verifying it, yada yada.
To gamble, you go to the ‘deposit’ tab and all you have to do is transfer money through online banking to the given bank account number on the screen. You fill up a form, and right away you get your amount transferred in credits at the top of your screen.
It couldn’t be easier.
It couldn’t be easier to lose more money too
From there, there are an infinite number of table games to choose from. From Baccarat to this thing called Dragon Tiger (wtf), all of which start from RM2 a bet. Surely it can’t be that bad… right?
I suddenly found myself placing RM200 bets in games that I never even knew how to play – all because I needed to chase my losses. It was toxic.
I hopped onto the website any chance I could over the next year or so, whether it was the minute I got home from work or in between lunch breaks. If there was a graph chart to indicate my bankroll fluctuation, it would be spiking over the place. I would either be winning ~RM2,000 a day or losing a lot more. But obviously, overall I was still losing a lot more than I have ever made from gambling.
I calculated how much I had spent at the online casino and…
I was never one to track my gambling record, but it got to a point where it really took a hit on my bank account. I had lost a nett amount of RM52,880 in 11 months from the online casino itself.
That’s f**king ridiculous! You never really realise how much money you put into gambling when you’re in the middle of it.
That was when I decided that enough was enough, that I didn’t want to be 45-year-old in the future with less than RM2000 to my name. I ultimately came forward with my addiction to my friends and parents, and that was when I also eventually decided to put an end to my gambling era.
It was nowhere near easy, but it’s been 3 years since I placed my last bet
You don’t need me to tell you that gambling is never the way to go, there are enough warnings on the internet and pretty much everywhere else for that. But I will tell you that if you think gambling is the quickest way to make some extra money, you are very wrong. It’s more often than not quite the opposite.
You’re way better off living an honest life, saving money the right way – and more importantly, the safe way.
Take it from me, the more you fall into a hole of losses, the more you will feel the need to crawl your way out. And you might think that the only way out is the exact same way you fell in in the first place. Which really makes no sense at all.
The best advice I can give you is to not fall at all.
For more stories like this, read: You Shouldn’t Lend Money to Friends and Family, and Here’s Why
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