LISTEN | How childhood gambling habit destroyed one man’s life

What started as a game with a single one-rand coin at the age of 13 turned into a 32-yeargambling addictionthat cost Raymond Phillips his marriage, his career, more than R1m and nearly his life. Today, at 45, Phillips is unemployed, rebuilding his life after completing a gambling rehabilitation programme. Having lost everything, including his wife through divorce, he is appealing for employment as he continues his recovery and shares his story to warn others about the dangers of gambling addiction.

“I lost everything I held dear to me.Gambling took my jobs, my money, my marriage and my family. It stripped me of everything I had worked for,” he said. His 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. “I 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.

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As a child, that was exciting. I thought if I won money, I could just play more Street Fighter.” He said there was no adult intervention in those machines despite him being only 13 years old. “The owners didn’t care because they were making money from us.” Looking back, he said he did not realise he had become addicted.

“I thought I was just having fun. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop,” said Phillips. Years later, counselling helped him understand what had happened.

“At first, you think you’re playing for fun, but eventually you’re chasing the feeling and chasing your losses,” he explained. 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. 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.

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