‘I started gambling aged 14 and once spent five days straight in a casino’ – Wales Online

Jordan Lea was 14 when he started gambling.

There were spells where he stopped, but also spells where he was travelling from Colwyn Bay to Manchester to spend thousands of pounds on poker in casinos, spending days there at a time.

Jordan borrowed so much money, if he wasn't in the casino he avoided leaving his home for fear of bumping into someone he owed money to. He spent inheritance he had been given on the poker tables and even committed fraud.

For that, he found himself sat in the cells of a crown court waiting to be told if, like the convicted rapist next to him, he would be sent to prison.

He seriously contemplated suicide more than once. In the three years between being arrested and finding himself in court awaiting his sentence, he was so adamant he would be jailed, and planned to take his own life, he went on a self-destructive gambling streak.

His longest ever spell in casino, five days fuelled by Class A drugs and caffeine. On the fourth day he ran out of money so he listed his phone, laptop and tablet on Gumtree while he was in the casino, with the buyer coming to meet him there to give him cash. The following day when he broke down in tears outside, having been challenged by staff who were concerned by his behaviour, he did so because he planned, not for the first time, on taking his life on his way home.

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Since then his life has changed more than he can fathom. Now 34, he has been in recovery for four years and has set up Deal Me Out, a charitable enterprise, to help others. It is so successful he has just been shortlisted for a national St David Award.

In 2005, when a Year 10 student Jordan moved to Mold from Colwyn Bay and began playing online games, spending 12 hours a day on them. PC Games, like Runescape or Counter-Strike.

"I was buying the in-game currency with real money, and then I was depositing that on to gambling websites specifically designed for that game and then gambling with that money on roulette or blackjack on those websites. That was at 14 or 15 on black market, unregulated websites.

"I probably had a gambling addiction at 14 or 15 really, but it was disguised under gaming. Then I went on to find the real crack cocaine of gambling, which is online.

"I had a very big win, when I won 7,000 on Deal or No Deal, the first time I'd ever really done that. It was Christmas Eve and I was at my mum's house. I was probably been 18 or 19 and I was on Facebook, which would be reasonably new (at the time). I saw an advert and I clicked on it and went on it and deposited, let's say 100, and won 7,000."

"I withdrew it but what I hadn't realised is that you can reverse your withdrawals. So that 7,000 never actually went to me."

In the morning he reversed 1,000 of it, thinking 6,000 was still a huge sum. Soon it had all gone. Then he stopped playing for some time, the odd football bet but he says it was "reasonably safe".

"I wasn't very good mental state at that point. Then I found poker, which was always my kryptonite really. I played very high stakes for a long time made quite a bit of money for long time at casinos. I very rarely played online.

"I was very depressed, I'd been through relationship breakdowns and I was actually internally very depressed and what had actually happened is I'd created kind of a fake persona, I suppose because the staff don't know who I am. They just know me as some kind of pretty wealthy, good poker player and actually, as a matter of fact, I was a hotel worker, not even working full time."

There was, clearly, a difference between his earnings and spending and he committed a criminal offence of fraud in 2013, which took three years to end up in court. After his arrest he was warned he faced a prison sentence, so while he waited for that, his gambling went "way out of control".

During that time, he would travel to Manchester from Colwyn Bay to the casino. He didn't drive, so often a friend would drive him or he'd occasionally take the train.

He would spend days at a time in the casino, his longest spell was five days. How he did it, he now admits he "honestly doesn't know".

Cocaine, Coca-Cola and coffee were all involved to ensure he could stay awake. As he was a big spender, food was brought to him but of course, the lack of sleep had an impact on his ability to play.

"Probably 60% of the time I would win playing poker that was the I was playing quite high stakes. Generally I would bring about 2,000 or 3,000 of cash with me, sometimes more, sometimes less. I did get some inheritance as well. So I would always bring large amounts with me and I was never going to leave until it all gone.

"I'd never going to think 'I'm going to be out for five days', but it just transpired that way. The card room is always open 24 hours on weekends and bank holidays, so if there was a day where there was no broker on in the day so I just went upstairs and played on roulette but I did run out of money on day four.

"So what I did is I put my phone, my laptop and my tablet on Gumtree and someone actually came into the casino paid for the cash and and walked away with my stuff."

He said he didn't realise at the time how desperate he was.

"I just wanted that money Gambling addiction in general is escapism and you're trying to escape the pain you're feeling internally but also that you are outwardly showing to other people. So I was obviously causing a lot of harm, I was borrowing a lot of money at this point from parents, friends, anyone anyone really."

Mind Cymru infoline is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm. To contact them call 0300 123 3393.

Samaritansoffers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on116 123(in the UK and Republic of Ireland this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).

C.A.L.L. (Community Advice & Listening Line) offers emotional support and information/literature on mental health and related matters to the people of Wales and can be contacted on 0800 132 737 or through the website.

The NHS offers help and advice through its 111 service.

He doesn't remember the excuses he gave, guessing that debts was the most common.

"I didn't really leave the house, so when lockdown came in, I was fully prepared for it because I didn't really leave the house for years. So I was stuck in my bedroom eating maybe 10 packets of crisps and four cans of Coke and nothing else if I was at home.

"I would stay in my room, avoid anyone, avoid my dad. Avoid literally anyone because I probably owed them money but I also did feel a guilt internally and that's not a nice feeling knowing what you've been doing to people. I don't think gambling addicts actually really process emotion and I don't think people actually think that they are doing anything wrong at that point.

"They just think 'I'll get this and I'm going to pay back. I'm going to do some of these nice stuff'. That was what was going through my head -' I'm going to treat everybody and I'm going to pay everyone back' but not not only pay people back but I'm going to really make their lives amazing.

"I don't think you're necessarily thinking that you want to hurt people that doesn't come through your head. With addiction there will always be 'that one big win will sort everything out' - but that that one big will never be enough."

All this was while he was on bail for his fraud offence so he wasn't working. "I was incredibly depressed and Ricky Gervais says it brilliantly in Afterlife, that suicide is a superpower, when it gets too much you can just kill yourself and that's how I viewed my sentencing day. I always assumed when that comes around, I'll just kill myself so it doesn't actually matter."

He had been warned he would face prison and was "fully expecting" it and was on self-destruct mode.

When he got to his sentencing day, he had his bag packed and expected prison. Having heard the facts, the judge sent him down to the cells saying she wanted to consider making the category more serious, warning him of a three year term.

"I don't remember any of the conversation apart from her saying that she wanted to increase the category range which would take me over three years, and I was just in absolute shock because I think on some level I did actually think I was being hard done to. It sounds crazy now, but at that point, I probably felt like I was being hard done to."

When he was in the cells waiting to find out his sentence, he was sitting next to someone who had been sentenced for rape.

"He was screaming and shouting but I just sat there and thought I'm the same level as this person."

The judge gave him a suspended sentence including 300 hours unpaid work. He then didn't gamble for some time.

Looking back, Jordan, now 34, has questions of the wider rehabilitation system, including probation and the police, but says one thing now sticks out for him. "No one had ever really mentioned gambling addiction at any point. That sounds so silly but I still didn't think I had a problem. For me, I was always unlucky so I think I could have done with hearing that. Everyone else knew that, I didn't know myself."

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The first time he admitted he had a problem was in 2018, and it was when he had visited a different casino to his usual.

"They noticed some behavioural changes, which is really good and it's something I have to applaud them for and they took the onus said 'I think you have a gambling problem, can we see your proof of funds?' and I couldn't because I was borrowing the money.

"I broke down outside the casino crying because I was planning on killing myself on the way on the way home. That was because I'd already lost all that money in the casino and so I was now playing with the last, the dregs."

He credits his partner with turning his life around because he didn't want to "put her through the mill".

He had moved to Chester and had a job managing pubs, and was living in a pub, but then lockdown hit so all that stopped and he had to move back in with his dad.

"I had no job I had nothing," he said.

He'd already come up with the idea of Deal Me Out, a Community Interest Company, running some workshops but his pub job was needed to help him pay back his debts. "I needed that consistent form of income but then I got taken away from me and I really started to feel myself in the first weeks of lockdown getting into that really poor frame of mind where I could fall straight back into it. So it was a case of sink or swim and use it for something positive or, or go back to the old".

Deal Me Out started after he himself had tried to access services, but by the time he heard back, the moment had passed. He knew it needed to be immediate.

He uses his experiences, and those of his team to help others. "I have lived experience of gambling addiction and almost all of our team are now too so we've ever struggled in some way with gambling, whether that be, I was a very highly addicted person or some people are of lower harm but equally important.

"I'm not a therapist and I'm not trying to be that but I thought 'what can we do?'.

"So I thought, well, we can go in and speak to young people or anyone who would listen really just to try and not just avoid what I went through but also what others in my life had been through. The affect on others is the real legacy effect of gambling.

"I think if you can take a step back from it, which is so much easier said than done, but if you when you do get that moment of clarity you look back and think of the things you've done and the people you've hurt and impacted, one, it can really hurt and that can take a lot that that in itself can take a lot to move past but also it is something that really puts you on the straight and narrow and you just think 'I am not going to go back to that and I'm not putting them through that".

He wanted a service which was a peer support network.

"In the early days of lockdown I was worried about the pressure cooker of the hours and hours where people weren't able to leave their houses".

Then he watched the clap for NHS staff. "I sat there thinking 'Well, I can't drive. I can't leave the house. I can't help' and people were putting on Facebook 'I've been out and delivered this to these people' and I wanted to do something so I sat down one night and thought and really go hard at this now."

But his gambling has had, and continues to have, an impact. He couldn't get a bank account, until Welsh company Starling allowed him to get one.

He found Twitter an immediate and helpful place to make contact with people in need there and then and he's got involved in campaigns for the Gambling Act review, for example. He started going into schools to give talks and workshops, pandemic-pending.

"The kids really get it. All you have to say is who knows what Bitcoin is, and every single hand in that classroom goes up. When you ask 'who thinks Bitcoin makes loads of millionaires' their hands all go up and people do make money from it but it's so volatile and 70% of the crypto market has come in this year and if you came in this year, you're currently down about 50%.

"Gambling is kind of inherently linked to cryptocurrencies and the metaverse one with the process of buying it in itself, but also there are so many black market crypto websites, which people that game do use because you can actually use you can actually trade your skins, your cosmetic items on games, for things like crypto and then there's also streaming so these websites pay people to stream and then you get all these children watching people gambling, not just 1 or 10p stakes, they're gambling with hundreds of thousands of pounds. It's never a case where people should be gambling thousands pounds, that should never be the case but we've created an atmosphere of just I suppose numbness to money."

The group has attended a round table in the House of Lords about loot boxes. Loot boxes are a video game feature involving a sealed mystery "box" - sometimes earned through playing the game and sometimes paid for with real money - which can be opened for a random collection of in-game items such as weapons or costumes.

A report by researchers at the universities of Plymouth and Wolverhampton, found they are "structurally and psychologically akin to gambling" and that large numbers of children are opening loot boxes.

The UK Government is already considering whether gambling laws should cover such loot boxes, something the House of Lords says should be the case.

Jordan says: "People quite often argue that loot boxes aren't a gambling product and theoretically, they're not labelled that yet but I think it's only a matter of time before that is the case."

Now Deal Me Out has eight full-time staff and it is delivering a national education programme in Wales. It has already delivered to over 10,000 students to young people via teams in Cardiff, the north and the northwest of England.

Jordan, who is the CEO, has recently been shortlisted for a St David Award in the business category and he wants the places Deal Me Out operates to keep growing.

"It feels really surreal because I think you accept that you're a failure. When you're in that addiction you accept that your life's not going to amount to anything. I do still have a bit of an issue with accepting any form of I suppose praise or anything like that," he says, partly due to how he got here and also the guilt of what he has put others through.

"I've been a real idiot for 20 years, there's no getting around that, but that doesn't mean that your life has to be defined by that. You can push forward. Whilst there are always legacy issues, and they're always going to be repercussions for anything you've done in the past, that doesn't have to define the way you move forward," he said.

He still has credit issues which means he can't get a credit card and can't get a mortgage, but he says, he feels "amazing".

"The relationships I have with everybody, my family and my partner are all in the best situation," he says.

"Gambling can never really be safe. It's not something that is inherently safe. It's like smoking, smoking is never safe but smoking once is less likely cause harm so it's harm minimization or reducing gambling harm that's all we are interested in.

"We're not interested in bashing the industry. We want to be part of the regulation which is coming. We also have to respect that a lot of people do gamble and they enjoy it and if they can gamble responsibly, that's great. Everyone says, 'Well, gambling addiction won't affect me, I'm not a gambling addict' - but what about your sister or your daughter or your mum?"

Find out more at Deal Me Out's website.

Excerpt from:

'I started gambling aged 14 and once spent five days straight in a casino' - Wales Online