Two numbers, and both are free
If it is the morning after and you are looking at a balance you cannot explain, the first two calls are a gambling helpline and a free debt line. They are separate services, you can use both, and neither asks you to explain yourself first.
- United Kingdom the National Gambling Helpline is on 0808 8020 133. The NHS page on gambling addiction says you can call 0808 8020 133 for free 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for free information, support and counselling. For the money, StepChange Debt Charity is on 0800 138 1111, and its gambling debt page opens by saying Gambling and debt can get out of control fast.
- United States the National Council on Problem Gambling runs the National Problem Gambling Helpline, printed on its own pages as 1-800-MY-RESET, with call, text and chat. Its Help by State directory tells you to use the map below or contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline (1-800-MY-RESET) to be connected with gambling resources in your state.
The three things, in order
They are in this order because the first makes the second bearable, and the third quietly undoes both.
- Tell one person. One is enough, and it does not have to be the person it would be hardest to tell. The NHS advice is to talk to someone you trust about what is happening. A helpline counts as that person if there is nobody else this morning.
- Get free debt advice from a named service. Not a firm that advertises debt help. A free advice service, named below, paid for by somebody other than you.
- Close the borrowing route. Borrowing to repay a gambling debt can turn a bad month into a bad year.
None of the steps on this page is something an app can run for anybody, and this is a blocker's blog, so the disclosure belongs here rather than at the bottom: Fold'em makes ending its block on the betting apps a request that takes days, and it moves no money at all.
Where the free advice is, by country
This page is not debt advice and cannot be. The services below are regulated to say things a blocker's blog is not, such as what to do about a specific creditor. Their advice is better than anything here.
- United Kingdom the government's own debt advice page offers free, confidential and independent advice on dealing with debt problems and names StepChange Debt Charity, Citizens Advice and others. National Debtline, run by the Money Advice Trust, is on 0808 808 4000.
- Beside the helpline GamCare's Money Guidance Service offers one-to-one budgeting and financial support for people who experience gambling harms, by referral through the National Gambling Helpline. It says plainly that it cannot provide debt advice and refers people who need it to a free debt advice provider, so it sits beside those services, not instead of them.
- United States there is no single national debt charity. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is the long standing nonprofit credit counselling network, whose first step is a confidential consultation with a certified counsellor.
The route that undoes the other two
Step three is on the list because it feels like a solution. A loan, a card, a friend, one more account, and the total goes quiet for a fortnight. Then that payment falls due beside the old ones.
Two services that deal with gambling debt say it plainly. GamCare writes that Gambling should never be viewed as a way to make money or overcome financial difficulties. StepChange writes that Gambling is not a good way to make money or get out of debt.
The practical form of that is a gambling block on your cards, which reaches payments rather than pages and can take a delay to lift again. Where it sits among the layers is the bank step of how to block yourself from gambling.
The one that can wait: the total
You will want the real number. Get it, eventually. Getting it alone, at night, with a phone in your hand, is the worst version of getting it.
There is evidence for that. The WAGER, published by the Division on Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, reported a 2004 study by Hodgins and el-Guebaly in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology which followed 101 people who had recently quit gambling. Of the moods reported before a relapse, it records that 70% of participants reported that they were thinking about finances. Frustration, at 53 per cent, and happiness, at 49 per cent, were about equally common beforehand.
So the total is not dangerous information. It is dangerous company. Gamblers Anonymous builds a meeting around the same idea. Its flyer for the Pressure Relief Group Meeting says the meeting may help alleviate financial, employment and personal pressures, and that in its members' experience honesty with loved ones, friends and even creditors can be the catalyst to living a more normal and peaceful life.
Write the number down with somebody in the room, or with a debt adviser on the phone. Same act, worst part removed.
Can any of it come back?
This is about money lost to a gambling operator. Refunds of a subscription to us are a different subject and live in billing and refunds.
Be honest about the odds: no route on this page promises to return money you chose to stake and lost. What exists is a complaint, and a complaint is about whether the operator broke its own terms or its licence conditions, not about whether you regret the bets. In Great Britain the route is published.
- Complain to the operator first. The Gambling Commission's guide for players says the business has 8 weeks to resolve your complaint from when they receive it, and that you cannot skip this stage.
- Then take it to an ADR provider. The Commission calls one a free, independent service and says that after 8 weeks you can take your complaint to an ADR provider if the operator's answer did not satisfy you.
- Then the free debt advice above. Not because it recovers anything, but because it deals with what is in front of you.
The regulator is not a fourth step, and it says so itself: its page for players states that We do not resolve or make decisions on complaints regarding gambling-related transactions. In the United States there is no single national regulator to escalate to: operators are licensed state by state, so the route is that state's regulator.
If somebody else controls the money
If the money is being controlled by a partner rather than lost by you, that is a different subject and needs a different service. Surviving Economic Abuse describes economic abuse as a legally recognised form of domestic abuse that involves the control of a partner or ex-partner's money, finances and things that money can buy. It points people to the lines below.
- The National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000247.
- The Men's Advice Line on 0808 801 0327.
- Galop on 0800 999 5428.
- The police on 999 where somebody is in danger.
An article about gambling debt is the wrong help for that.
What a blocker cannot do
No blocker moves money, ours included. Fold'em reads no bank and measures nothing. The Money kept figure in the app is worked out on the phone from a weekly amount you typed in yourself and the days you have been gambling free, so it is an estimate of what you did not stake and never a record of what was lost or what has been recovered. Not one of the routes on this page is something the app can run for anybody: it cannot open a complaint, speak to a creditor, or ask your bank for anything. It makes the next bet slower to place, which is a different job and the only one it has.
If this is tonight and not this week
All of that assumes some daylight and a little distance. If it happened in the last few hours, the shorter list is what to do before you sleep: somebody to talk to now, and the two or three things worth changing on the phone before morning. The paperwork keeps until you have slept.
