A man has shared how he turned his decade-long gambling addiction into a social enterprise aimed at helping others not to fall into the same trap he did. Aaron Abbott first stepped into a betting shop when he was just 16 years old.

As he looked more mature than his years, no one questioned him when he played the roulette machine inside and quickly lost £5. But that was the start of a slippery slope which saw him lose relationships, drop out of university and even harm himself.

By the age of 29, the dad-of-one had lost a staggering £263,000 to his gambling addiction. And after reading the tragic story of how one addict killed himself, Aaron began to work on changing his life.

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It was a slow process, but the 33-year-old will soon be celebrating three years without a bet. He set up a social enterprise to help him curb his addiction and it has since taken off and allowed him to quit his job in recruitment.

Aaron now works full-time on Against The Odds to help educate young people on the dangers of gambling – something he thinks would have helped him as a young man. Speaking about his start in the world of gambling, he told BlackCountryLive: “Two friends asked me when I was 16 if I wanted to go to the bookies and I’d never been before.

“We all looked older than we were so knew we wouldn’t get ID’d. I put £5 in the roulette machine and lost it straight away. As I walked out, I saw a load of old blokes filling out football accumulators and took a few slips home.

“Then I got into social gambling so would do £2 or £3 every weekend on the football even though I was underage.” When Aaron was 18, he won £4,500. “Online gambling wasn’t a thing then so they paid me in £10 notes,” he said. “I kept it in an envelope and kept it in my pocket for eight weeks. I wanted this perception that I had all this cash so I just walked around with it.

“After that, I couldn’t stay out [of the bookies] and was back in every day for eight weeks until it was all gone. I left college and went to university to do a diploma in sport science and that for me is when things started to get out of control.

“When I went from further education to higher education – and this is what I tell students now – you’re met with more finance and more freedom. You tend to get student finance and don’t have a parent or guardian asking where you are or what you’re doing.

“When I started seeing more money coming into my account I began betting on things I had no idea about. I was a season ticket holder at Aston Villa so knew about football, but would bet on things like African police forces and volleyball that I knew nothing about.”

Aaron, who is originally from Coventry but now lives in Staffordshire, dropped out of university during his third year. He said: “I split up with my girlfriend who I’d been with since we were in secondary school. I had a bad ACL injury so was out for 18 months and decided to pull out of university without telling my mum.”

He landed a job in recruitment but would spend his entire salary on betting. “I’d get my salary and lose it in 48-hours then take out a short-term payday loan,” he said. “I knew I had problems but I was in denial. It’s a secret addiction that a lot of people don’t know about.

“My grandad had a £12,300 ISA for me when I turned 21 and I lost it in a week in a casino. I kept getting money and losing it, I just couldn’t stop.

“I started self-harming by punching myself in the head and pulling my hair out. I’d smash up laptops and found out later it was my way of dealing with things. I’d let things build up and then it would all come out.”

During one betting session, Aaron won £19,000 on a roulette game after spending just £50. But within minutes, he had lost it all. In 2020, he read an article about a gambling addict who had taken his own life and noticed similarities in their stories.

“Apart from the suicidal element, everything was like me,” he said. “It made me think about how I’d done three years of college and two at uni, played county sport with cricket and rugby and yet I’d never been educated on the industry.

“I requested my spend and found out I lost £263,000 from the ages of 18 to 29.” Aaron went on to set up Against The Odds in an attempt to help not only himself but others.

He said: “I began setting up educational sessions and began delivering lots of content and had so much positive feedback from clients and candidates. The last 18 months have been mad and I’ve been able to give up my job and do this full-time.

“People think it is anti-gambling but it isn’t. We’re about helping students to open up about their issues at the earliest possible stage. And then helping students identify the transition from social gambling – which 47 per cent of the UK do – to gambling-related harm.

“It’s preventative so they don’t go down my path and get to 29 or 30 and think ‘I need to do something about this.'”

He believes that gambling adverts should only be shown after 9pm. “When the industry advertises so aggressively like they do around the clock even though it’s an 18+ product, my issue is that we are not doing enough on the education side,” he said.

“If you look at alcohol and cigarettes, they used to be able to advertise in the day but then it got pushed back to after 9pm. But with gambling, it’s from 6.30am and with it being an 18+ product, for me it should also be pushed back to after 9pm.

“Education needs to be compulsory from 16 onwards. Lots are able to gamble without getting ID’d.”

The recovering addict continued: “I am now almost three years without a bet. There was a spell for 12 months where I’d go back in and not tell anyone so it was a slow transition.

“When you’re so absorbed by addiction like I was you don’t care about whose feelings you’re hurting or who you’re lying to or how it impacts people around you. I lost two or three relationships because I was bang out of order.

“I’ve fallen out with my family over it and sold personal possessions and told lies. It takes you away from reality and all you think about is putting another bet on. I didn’t care about winning, I just wanted another bet on and to chase the rush.”

Speaking about Against The Odds, he continued: “My USP (unique selling point) now is that we are not funded by the industry. I was offered funding from them but I did not want to take out the stuff they wanted to.

“So we offer education based on lived experience and the last 112 months have just been nuts. We won social enterprise of the year at the UK start-up awards, we’ve released a podcast and we’ve started an in-house recovery service.

“We have an awareness club and people like Alex Bowen from Love Island have helped us to get our message out. We’ve been in with Steven Gerrard’s academy in Tenerife twice, Wigan, Coventry City, Sheffield Wednesday, Stockport, Loughborough University, The NFL Academy which is the best NFL players in Europe for their age so we’ve been in some really good organisations.”

He added: “We’re not here to benefit shareholders, we’re here to benefit the wider community. My plan over the next three years is to establish more of a foothold in elite sport as well as the community.

“I can think of 20 or 30 lads I know who gamble every day and wouldn’t say [to themselves that] they had a problem.” When asked what advice he would give to someone struggling with gambling he said: “Talk to someone. It is really simple, just talk to someone.”

Click here to view the Against The Odds Instagram page.