A: I’ve always loved shopping, and for a long time I didn’t know I had a problem. It used to make me feel good about myself, you know, trying things on, splashing out, putting together outfits

A: I’ve always loved shopping, and for a long time I didn’t know I had a problem. It used to make me feel good about myself, you know, trying things on, splashing out, putting together outfits and imagining myself wearing them to the theatre or the opera or whatever. It sounds silly now, but it was very real at the time. But of course I soon started running out of money, but by this stage I couldn’t stop. I had to keep on shopping. I borrowed money from friends to buy clothes... and then couldn’t pay them back. I think that’s actually the worst part of it, letting down people who you care about. Eventually, it was my boss that got me to wake up to reality. She’d found out that I’d been shopping instead of working, and she told me either I had to sort out my problem or I’d lose my job. That really scared me, because I’d run up huge debts on my credit cards, so I absolutely couldn’t afford to do without my income from my job. So do you know what I did? I cut up my credit cards and threw them away. And basically, that’s how I gave up my shopping addiction. It was actually much easier than I’d expected. B: Have you ever heard the phrase ‘beginner’s luck’? Well, it’s actually a very real phenomenon, and it’s incredibly dangerous. I started gambling when I was still a teenager, you know, buying lottery scratch cards, £1 each. My first ever scratch card won me £10! I was so excited, but instead of quitting while I was ahead, I used that £10 to buy ten more cards. And guess what? Four of them won! I ended up with £240, which at the time was more money than I’d ever dreamt of having. So that was it, I was hooked. I thought I had a magic touch or something, but after that first week or so, my luck wore off, and I spent the next five years... and £12,000, trying to bring it back. And then of course there’s the hundreds of pounds I’ve spent on therapists and psychologists and all that. And that’s how beginner’s luck works, if you think about it. If one in ten cards is a winner, that means one in ten beginners gets lucky. One in a hundred gets lucky twice in a row. And one in a thousand gets lucky three times. That’s all that happened with me -1 was that one in a thousand or ten thousand or whatever. It had to be someone, and it turned out that it was me. My beginner’s luck turned into a curse, while the really lucky ones were the nine people whose first scratch card was a loser, who probably never bought another one. C: It started out as just a normal interest in computer games, but it soon got completely out of hand. There was one game I used to play -1 can’t even remember what it was called now - and it completely took over my life. Nothing could tear me away from it. My friends invited me out to play football or to go to parties, but I turned them down so I could stay in and play. Looking back, I can’t believe I missed out on all the good times everyone else was having. Very often I’d stay up all night playing, and then I couldn't wake up in the morning, so I ended up falling behind with my schoolwork too. And the whole situation was really getting me down. That was when I realised I had a problem and I needed to cut down. It was really tough but I knew I had to. So I set myself daily limits and made sure I stuck to them - no more than two hours per night, and then I cut down to one and a half and then one. I still play from time to time, but only if I’ve got nothing better to do. Nowadays I’d much rather go out and have some fun than sit alone in my room playing computer games.

A: I’ve always loved shopping, and for a long time I didn’t know I had a problem. It used to make me feel good about myself, you know, trying things on, splashing out, putting together outfits and imagining myself wearing them to the theatre or the opera or whatever. It sounds silly now, but it was very real at the time. But of course I soon started running out of money, but by this stage I couldn’t stop. I had to keep on shopping. I borrowed money from friends to buy clothes... and then couldn’t pay them back. I think that’s actually the worst part of it, letting down people who you care about. Eventually, it was my boss that got me to wake up to reality. She’d found out that I’d been shopping instead of working, and she told me either I had to sort out my problem or I’d lose my job. That really scared me, because I’d run up huge debts on my credit cards, so I absolutely couldn’t afford to do without my income from my job. So do you know what I did? I cut up my credit cards and threw them away. And basically, that’s how I gave up my shopping addiction. It was actually much easier than I’d expected. B: Have you ever heard the phrase ‘beginner’s luck’? Well, it’s actually a very real phenomenon, and it’s incredibly dangerous. I started gambling when I was still a teenager, you know, buying lottery scratch cards, £1 each. My first ever scratch card won me £10! I was so excited, but instead of quitting while I was ahead, I used that £10 to buy ten more cards. And guess what? Four of them won! I ended up with £240, which at the time was more money than I’d ever dreamt of having. So that was it, I was hooked. I thought I had a magic touch or something, but after that first week or so, my luck wore off, and I spent the next five years... and £12,000, trying to bring it back. And then of course there’s the hundreds of pounds I’ve spent on therapists and psychologists and all that. And that’s how beginner’s luck works, if you think about it. If one in ten cards is a winner, that means one in ten beginners gets lucky. One in a hundred gets lucky twice in a row. And one in a thousand gets lucky three times. That’s all that happened with me -1 was that one in a thousand or ten thousand or whatever. It had to be someone, and it turned out that it was me. My beginner’s luck turned into a curse, while the really lucky ones were the nine people whose first scratch card was a loser, who probably never bought another one. C: It started out as just a normal interest in computer games, but it soon got completely out of hand. There was one game I used to play -1 can’t even remember what it was called now - and it completely took over my life. Nothing could tear me away from it. My friends invited me out to play football or to go to parties, but I turned them down so I could stay in and play. Looking back, I can’t believe I missed out on all the good times everyone else was having. Very often I’d stay up all night playing, and then I couldn't wake up in the morning, so I ended up falling behind with my schoolwork too. And the whole situation was really getting me down. That was when I realised I had a problem and I needed to cut down. It was really tough but I knew I had to. So I set myself daily limits and made sure I stuck to them - no more than two hours per night, and then I cut down to one and a half and then one. I still play from time to time, but only if I’ve got nothing better to do. Nowadays I’d much rather go out and have some fun than sit alone in my room playing computer games.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-05