KEEP ON MOVING: ThE 12Th DDN cONfErENcE
Session 3
‘I’m calling on the
drug and alcohol
treatment sector to
do more to at every
level to be just that
little bit more
curious about
gambling.’
‘I found what I was looking for – a
short and very intense practical
intervention.’ Although he went on to
relapse a couple of years later, what was
important was that ‘I’d managed to
achieve a period where I’d stayed
stopped for the first time.’
Accessing targeted help had been
oWeN BAIly ‘quite
a journey’, he said. ‘If you use
substances you’re far better off in terms
of access to treatment. With gambling it very much depends on where you live.’ All
gambling treatment organisations received funding indirectly from the gambling
industry, he pointed out.
16 | drinkanddrugsnews | March 2019
In recent years, Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) had brought a ‘hard’ form
of gambling onto the high street and generated considerable controversy, while
gambling advertising had also started to proliferate. However, a public health-based
review of gambling harms had been announced and the NHS was now looking at
how it could improve access to treatment.
‘Despite a bad start in life, today I’m in a very good place in my recovery. As I look
forward I see a bright and fulfilling future, and I’m incredibly passionate about
putting my experience of gambling-related harm to positive use.’ Services could
display details of help on notice boards, hold meetings and appoint a person in each
service as a gambling rep, he said. ‘Let’s carry on talking and see what we can do to
improve knowledge, understanding and awareness around gambling-related harm.’
T
he day closed with a presentation from Jacquie Johnston, on the theme
of moving forward through knowing what’s driving you from your past.
As a little girl she had been ‘innocent and excitable’, but had no idea
what her life was going to look like, she said. She’d been inseparable
from her brother, mainly through fear – ‘my dad was a raging binge-
drinking alky, and a regular perpetrator of domestic violence. We’d sit and listen to
mum and dad fight.’
The shame of having a failed marriage meant her mother stayed in the situation
for years, but ‘during one of their worst-ever fights I managed as a nine-year-old to
phone the police and we got out that night in just the clothes we stood up in’.
However, her mother by now had ‘lost her spirit’ and become alcohol-dependent.
As her mother was ‘drunk or absent most of the time’ she had to take on the role
of ‘mini-mum’ to her brother, she said.
By this time, however, her life had also
‘taken a turn – a path of sexual abuse,
truanting, violence, self-harm, suicide
attempts, neglect’, she said, followed by
foster care, detention centres, mental
health wards and hospital. ‘While all
that had a huge impact on my life, I still
had my brother.’
He also took the father role with her
young sons, as ‘because history often
repeats itself I went on to marry an
alcoholic gambler when I was 17’. Her
brother’s life, however, was tragically
cut short when he was killed by a
drunk driver in 1992. ‘My whole life
changed. My eldest son was 12 and he
also tried to take his own life as a result
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