Do You Have a Gambling Problem? 5 Early Warning Signs

Gambling stops being entertainment at the point where stopping is no longer a free choice. That line is not marked anywhere, and very few people notice crossing it — which is why the warning signs below are worth knowing before you need them.

Great Britain's regulator measures the scale of it through the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, which puts the nine questions of the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) to a large sample of adults. The survey covering January 2025 to January 2026 collected data from 20,775 adults aged 18 and over. Of those participants, 2.4 percent scored 8 or more on the index — its top band — and a further 3.5 percent scored between 3 and 7.

One caveat matters, and the Gambling Commission makes it itself: those figures are not a trend line. The survey's method changed, and the Commission states that the data "is not comparable to previous gambling survey publications due to changes in the methodology". So the figure you may have seen quoted for years — a 2017 report suggesting "about 430,000 people suffer from a serious habit", within a wider finding that "more than 2 million people are addicted to gambling or at risk of developing a problem" — belongs to the older method. It is not the current estimate, and the two cannot be set side by side to argue that things got better or worse.

What is not in doubt is how available betting has become. It is difficult to watch a sporting event without seeing a betting brand on a shirt, a hoarding or an ad break. Horse racing and greyhound racing exist in their present form largely because of gambling. That is a long way from the era when placing a bet meant a deliberate trip to a shop during opening hours.

The machines at the centre of Britain's long argument about gambling were fixed-odds betting terminals, criticised for "allowing betting shop customers to spend up to £100 every 20 seconds". That stake was cut. The Gaming Machine (Miscellaneous Amendments and Revocation) Regulations 2018 replaced "£100" with "£2" and came into force on 1 April 2019. It was a real reduction, and it is worth knowing it happened. Note what it covers: the machines it caps are the B2 category, which under the same regulations may be sited "in accordance with a casino premises licence or a betting premises licence". It says nothing about what you can stake on your phone.

5 Signs You Have a Gambling Problem

Most people who read this will never have a problem with gambling. It is worth knowing the signs anyway, because the condition arrives gradually and the person it is happening to is usually the last to see it.

It can happen to anyone, and it does not require a reckless starting point. Tony O'Reilly worked for An Post, Ireland's postal service. Writing in the Irish Times under the headline "I stole €1.75m from An Post to fuel a gambling addiction", he described being sentenced "to four years in prison, with one suspended" and going on to write a book about it — Tony 10: The Astonishing Story of the Postman Who Gambled €10,000,000 … and Lost it All. He also describes completing treatment, and writes: "I thankfully found a way back, somehow." Both halves of that matter. The first is how far this can go. The second is that it is not a one-way door.

1. You Will Bet on Anything

Addiction broadens what counts as a betting opportunity until anything on a screen qualifies. The sport stops mattering, the research stops mattering, and what matters is having something running. If you find yourself betting on competitions you could not name a team from, in markets you have never looked at before, the activity has changed into something else.

2. Gambling Consumes You

If you are missing work, missing social events, or lying awake planning the next bet, it has stopped being a pastime. The breakdown of relationships and of working life runs through almost every published account of gambling addiction — in O'Reilly's case it ended in a criminal conviction and a prison sentence, which is further than most go, but the direction of travel is the same one.

3. Chasing Your Losses

This is the behaviour that does the most damage. Placing a losing bet is one thing; abandoning your own limits to win it back is another. What typically follows is a staircase of larger and larger stakes, and often money taken from somewhere it should not have come from — the €1.75 million O'Reilly took from his employer was not a single decision but the end of a long sequence of them. The belief is always that one more win settles everything.

4. Lying About It

Concealment is one of the most consistently reported features of problem gambling, and one of the most useful to recognise early. Losses get downplayed, time spent gets understated, and separate accounts get opened so that nobody — including you — can add it up. The lying is not incidental to the problem; it is what allows the problem to keep going.

5. Gambling to Forget

Betting as an anaesthetic — for a job you hate, a relationship that has failed, a bereavement — is different from betting for entertainment, and it escalates differently. If the appeal is that it stops you thinking about something else, the something else is the problem and the gambling is making it worse.

Where to Get Help

If any of this is familiar, for you or for someone close to you, these lines are free and confidential. Note that the British numbers are not interchangeable — the main helpline covers England and Scotland, and Wales has its own.

• England and Scotland — the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, delivered by GamCare. GambleAware advises: "If you'd prefer to speak to an adviser over the phone, call 0808 8020 133". The service states that it is "for England and Scotland residents only".
• Wales — the free NHS Wales helpline on 0808 2819 265. GambleAware says of it: "Immediate support, advice and guidance is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
• United States — the National Council on Problem Gambling runs "the National Problem Gambling Helpline™ ( 1-800-MY-RESET ) to help connect you with local resources", which also takes texts and online chat.
• Australia — the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858. BetStop states that "free and confidential support is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year".

If you would rather take the decision out of your own hands than rely on willpower, GAMSTOP is Great Britain's self-exclusion scheme for online gambling. It works by "blocking your access to accounts on gambling websites and apps", and registering costs nothing.

Our own gambling addiction guide goes further into what the warning signs look like in practice and what support is available.

And if you suspect someone close to you is in trouble, say so to them. Published accounts of gambling addiction almost always contain a long stretch in the middle where somebody noticed and said nothing.