It started very innocently enough when I used to follow my grandmother to her weekly Bingo game every Friday at the local senior citizens’ club. My grandmother died unexpectedly about one year ago. Having been close to her, I tried to keep her memory alive by going to these Bingo games as scheduled. Very soon, it became every other day and then I started going everyday to all the places that had games going on.

My friends started missing me at our usual hangouts and at first, they just teased me about it but after a while, they gave up and I had more time on my hands to go and play my game. Later, my addiction became so bad that I started missing work so that I could play online Bingo on my PC at home.

Did I mention that all this was also causing me to always run out of money as well? I started borrowing from my friends and sisters but no one really knew why I kept running out of money. While all this was happening, I never really thought I was up against anything serious; it was Bingo after all. I kept telling myself I could stop whenever I wanted to except that day never came until it was too late.

As you may have guessed, given my continuous absence from work and after several warnings, I was terminated. I was kind of happy about this because it meant that I could stay home guilt free playing my online Bingo. I used to win big sometimes but very soon banks started calling me for not paying my credit card bills and I guess the last straw was when the electricity was cut. The worst part was that I wasn’t even shocked or anything about there being no electricity; I was just planning to go out to one of the Bingo centers. Of course, I had no money so I had to pawn whatever I could find so I dug out some gold chain that my grandmother had given me. In retrospect, this should have jolted some form of remorse in me but it didn’t. I guess someone upstairs was watching out for me because just then one of my sisters knocked on my door.

The sight that welcomed her wasn’t a pleasant. This is what she tells me. The little room that I was living in was a mess with empty pizza boxes everywhere, paper was everywhere on the floor of the little room plus she could only see this from the light of the corridor as she held the door open.

It was then that intervention came into my life. My sisters enrolled me into a gambling rehabilitation center. Yes, that was what Bingo had become to me, a very bad gambling habit and it was ruining my life. I went through a month of therapy there. I came back to stay with one of my sisters for a while. It almost sounds impossible what I had done to myself with the harmless game of Bingo. But addiction is addiction and I was addicted to Bingo, believe it or not!

Dave.