S Club 7 star calls out ‘lack of empathy’ for gambling addicts

Jo O’Meara, a former member of the 90s pop team S Club 7, has shared how she became addicted to gambling on fruit equipment as a “form of escape” from the pressures of touring, prior to realising she had to give up since it produced her delinquent.

O’Meara stated she 1st went to bingo halls with household at about 18, exactly where she commenced taking part in on fruit devices. While she did not think about it an addiction at the time, she found herself taking part in regularly more than 5 several years just before determining, she stated, that “the gambler never wins” and she was “wasting important time which would be improved used with friends and family”.

“It really helps make you fairly antisocial because I could be going out with a team of close friends or whatever, then I’d go to the loo and be lacking for ages, for the reason that I’d locate myself transfixed on these fruit machines,” she claimed.

“It would just allow me ignore about every little thing for a when, for the reason that all I could focus on was the job in hand, getting the three leprechauns or the 3 lemons in a row. It wasn’t about the cash so a lot as about hoping to beat the machine to get what I preferred it to do. It was the buzz.”

O’Meara shared her tale to aid raise awareness of gambling addiction and the assist delivered by GamCare, which runs the National Gambling Helpline.

She was equipped to quit without the need of aid and has not relapsed, including on a vacation to Las Vegas, but she stated she understood “just how easy it is” to drop into addiction. While there was an out-of-date assumption that gamblers are “older adult males sitting down in bookmakers”, she explained, it “can happen to anyone at any time, at any age”.

“I was a youthful lady in a pretty thriving pop group and I had a thing for fruit equipment. In today’s culture a lot more than ever it is so obtainable – we have bought iPads, tablets, telephones – and I can see how simply it can be performed and how substantially it can wreck people’s life. I want to get my issue across that it takes place to females, young women of all ages, as very well.”

She mentioned she experienced been angered by experiences of her gambling in tabloid newspapers in the 2000s. “I did not definitely like that it was becoming labelled as gambling addiction since I in no way saw it that way and in a good deal of techniques I really don’t see it as that substantially both, but I can see I had troubles with it and I believe if I’d been left to it and I didn’t snap out of it, it could have long gone a whole lot more.”

She claimed she assumed there was a lack of empathy for gambling addiction and how it could be fuelled by Television set marketing and free bets that attract people today in. “I really do not assume people today realise it’s an disease.”

GamCare has warned of the effect of the price of dwelling crisis on gambling addicts. Its helpline has received loads of phone calls from people today stating they are utilizing gambling to attempt to make ends fulfill, which includes a lot of who are trouble gamblers who have relapsed. Callers have also claimed increasing costs are earning it more challenging to tackle gambling money owed.

A YouGov survey of a lot more than 4,000 grown ups, commissioned by the charity, uncovered that almost fifty percent (46%) of those people who gambled were being nervous about their financial predicament, growing to practically two-thirds (61%) between those people who experienced misplaced major funds to gambling.

The charity claimed its advisers experienced noticed that cryptocurrency trading was turning into a increasing challenge, especially amongst young folks. The study showed that 43% of men and women who discovered as challenge gamblers owned cryptocurrency, several of whom noted harms as a final result, which include being unable to spend their expenditures or seeking to commit extra money to recoup losses.