00:00But when it comes to drinking and alcohol and drugs, you've got to go to the shop or find a dealer and stuff like that.
00:10With gambling, you've just got to pick up your phone, click, bang, all gone.
00:14Aled says that gambling was always part of his life without ever really realising it.
00:19From a young age at amusement arcades to the odd bet on sports, which spiralled into a fully-fledged addiction.
00:24And it took rock bottom for him to finally get out of it.
00:27But from a young age, I was an avid rugby player.
00:31I was always in social clubs, rugby clubs, sports clubs.
00:34We used to go on holidays to Haven, caravan parks.
00:38I was always in arcades, claw machines, bandits, even two-pee pushers.
00:43People don't think that's gambling, but it is.
00:45And that's how I got exposed to it.
00:49And it was just the norm growing up, putting a bet on you, buying a scratch card there, jumping on the slot machine.
00:57And as I got older, in hindsight, it was getting worse.
01:02And then for me personally, like dormant for a couple of years, I had a new baby boy, a new job.
01:07I moved areas with my partner and stuff.
01:12And then I had this job, and it just went downhill from there.
01:16Then mental health went down the pan.
01:19Other addictions arose from my mental health state at the time.
01:24And the gambling addiction just skyrocketed.
01:28And I'm uncomfortable to say it now because it's part of my history.
01:32But I ended up breaking the law to fund that gambling addiction.
01:36And that's where my life started to turn around when I got caught stealing from work to fund the addiction.
01:44And that's where I was like, right, I need serious help.
01:47It's that subtle gambling that's made its way into young people's lives that's a real issue that Alid wants to see fixed.
01:53With things like trading card games, planting seeds for kids who don't even realise that they're gambling.
01:58Yeah, back then it wasn't like a gambling thing.
02:02You were just buying packs of cards, trading them, having fun.
02:05But now that world of collecting cards, not just Pokemon cards, you've got the football cards, you've got Formula One cards.
02:16You've got cards for Darth players now, Luke the Nuke on, and it's just wild.
02:21And you've got influencers then buying rare packs, encouraging other kids then.
02:28They might not be saying it or go out and buy it.
02:30But kids are like, oh, if I buy this one back, I could hit a £50 card.
02:35And I've got my money back and I can buy more packs.
02:37And it's just, yeah, it is rife.
02:41Alid is a recovering gambling addict.
02:42And he says he's seen incredibly low pints during his life.
02:46But says that there is a real risk of plenty more people falling into the same problems as himself.
02:51So he believes a gambling addiction isn't given the same level of respect and attention of things like alcohol or drug addictions.
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