A £2 Bet Destroyed The Next 13 Years Of My Life

0:00This episode was made possible by Vanta. If you're building a business and you need to prove that you're compliant with security standards like GDPR or SOC 2, then Vanta can save you a lot of time and money. You can book a demo using the link in the description. In today's episode, we explore how gambling can go from a harmless pastime, a little flutter, to completely destroying someone's life. Just as a heads up, we talk about suicide and addiction in this episode. If you're struggling with any of those issues or you feel like you need help, we've left some links below. You aren't alone. Please seek out that help.

0:34Please just go check out those links.

0:38Patrick Foster:Gambling wasn't part of my life really at all until I was 19 when I went to university and got introduced to it by a group of mates. who basically won Saturday morning, going down to the bookies, as they called it, to put some bets on the football. I'd never been into one of these shops before, really. Walked in, sort of didn't know what I was doing, stood there clueless. I spent most of the time I was in there watching this guy play roulette on one of the fob team machines. I watched him feed a wodge of 20-pound notes into this machine for about 15 minutes. he eventually sort of punched it, kicked it, stormed out of the shop and I'd laughed at him and thought what on earth is wrong with that bloke?

1:22Patrick Foster:Little did I know. I sat down in front of the chair, I had two quid in my pocket left over from the night before. So being an arrogant slightly naive 19 year old boy that I was at the time, my first thought was two quid, who cares about two quid? My second thought was there's only one number on a roulette machine that's different. It was actually the last number to come up that the bloke had lost all his money on. And I thought, what the chance of it happening twice in a row. Put two pounds in the machine. 12 seconds later, two pounds became 72 pounds. And as I always say, my life changed forever because not a moment went by for the next 13 years where I didn't have a bet.

2:00It's like a sliding door moment. You can literally pinpoint that moment where your life changes.

2:06Patrick Foster:Yeah, definitely. And I think the fact that my first bet, and hindsight's a wonderful thing, but I think the fact that my first bet was a winning bet had a massive impact on me as well because as somebody who's ultimately fiercely competitive gambling's like a drug for competitive people because it's sort of all about winning and losing and if you're competitive and you lose anything you don't stop until you win and then when you win you love that feeling and so for me that was definitely like a huge moment because it won because it made me almost think that that was going to happen all the time and I sort of walked out thinking well that was fun that was easy I can make so much money from this and it gives me a nice feeling at the same time you get that dopamine hit right do you do you think like do you blame those lads or do you think you would have discovered gambling at some point anyway and it would have got you yeah I mean I don't put any blame on them whatsoever um I would have found it anyway I think the fact that I'm sort of fanatical about sport to go hand in hand And it was sort of a thing that people did at university, particularly guys that were involved in sport.

3:18Patrick Foster:And so, I mean, one way or another, I would have found it. But I guess, as I say, it was that kind of moment was so defining because it was just the start of something that just went on and on. And obviously changed for different reasons over time. but it's mad to think that I hadn't done it before that point and then for the next 13 years, a day didn't go past where I didn't. So for myself personally, I've gambled a couple of times in my life, Grand National Vegas, but it's never gripped me. But some people it really grips quickly. Why do you think it hooked you so much? Yeah, I mean, I think initially it was very much that kind of feeling of winning.

4:03Patrick Foster:I just loved it. And I don't think I was addicted to gambling straight away, but I was hooked. Also, I just loved the environment that was in the betting shop. It was sort of sport on all the TVs, anything and everything you can gamble on, you could watch at the same time as putting bets on. So I think the combination of those two things was the thing that sort of got me so into it at the beginning. But when I first started gambling, like a lot of people, it was fun. it was money that I could ultimately afford to lose time that I had that wasn't sort of impacting other things but it definitely changed over time as various things happened in life and I think that's what a lot of people don't understand is that actually although it might start as something that's sort of fun and that you feel in control of it can change pretty quickly but also for me there were some signs quite early on like I wanted to do it more than other people I started doing it always with mates and then quite quickly found myself walking into the bookies between lectures without anybody else knowing not telling people that I was doing it telling people I had certain amounts of money on things when I actually had a lot more so that kind of deceit and lying started pretty soon to be honest and I think that is one of the earliest sort of um signs to recognize and always sort of chasing my losses but also reinvesting my wins so there are lots of people who when they start out gambling if they put a fiver on something and they win 50 quid the next bet they'll put on will be five quid for me the next bet would always have been 50 quid from the very beginning.

5:59So you're always going to lose, aren't you? Because it takes one loss just to wipe you out.

6:02Patrick Foster:Exactly. But you don't, weirdly, you don't think about it at the time. You don't really realise it because you think, well, it's money that I wouldn't have had anyway, so I haven't really lost. But of course you have. And that's where the psyche behind it is just bizarre. When you said earlier, from that moment onwards, would you say 13 years? You didn't have, you always had a bet. Did you mean every single day for 13 years or you always had a bet on? I mean, not a day went past where I didn't gamble in some form. From that day onwards? Yeah, from that day onwards. Most of the time I would have bets on, multiple bets on.

6:40Patrick Foster:Obviously at the beginning, the scale of them and the volume of them were less. Towards the end, I mean, there wouldn't have been a minute of a day where I wouldn't have had some sort of bet in play by the time that it kind of all reached its end, so to speak. At that point in uni, you were a student, how were you funding this kind of, where were you getting the money from to gamble? Yeah, I mean, I was different to most people because I had more money than them because not only did I have a student loan like everybody else, a generous mum and dad, I was also being paid to play cricket. So Durham Uni were paying you?

7:18Patrick Foster:No, I was contracted by Northamptonshire at the time. Okay. So I was able to kind of combine the two. So I was playing counter cricket, but doing my studies in the winter, basically. And they were paying me a salary. And so I had sort of disposable income that other people wouldn't have done. And again, as far as I was concerned, I was like, well, I can still afford to do what everybody else can do and more, even if I'm losing some money gambling. So there's no problem. But obviously, two years later, when my cricket career came to an end, I had nothing to show for it financially because it had all been spent gambling.

7:57It's like the curse of money young, isn't it, when you're not mature enough. And in a way, that facilitated and enabled you to justify this habit because it's like, well, I've still got more money than everyone else. Exactly. I must be doing okay.

8:11Patrick Foster:Yeah, for sure. And that was definitely my mindset. and I always kind of thought I was invincible and that if I needed money someone would wave a magic wand and give me more and that is something that look back on. Is that like an upbringing thing? Yeah I think so, I mean I think looking back on my upbringing I was very fortunate in background education, very privileged, always surrounded by money and people with lots of money, um always spent my whole life comparing myself to people who had more than me rather than people who had less um and I think that kind of instilled a kind of greed um it's probably the word I'd used um when it came to money um I expected to be really rich and have loads of money because I'd always been around people that did um and sort of probably expected it to just land on my feet as well which obviously is not the case for most people you you were good at playing cricket right but you you got an injury and that ended that that point yeah I mean a combination of injury sort of bad lifestyle and ultimately not being good enough um I mean when I was younger I was sort of very high achieving pretty successful um and I guess one of the mistakes that I made along with lots of other things is when it came to my sort of cricket career because I was so good when I was younger I just assumed that I'd always be a professional cricketer and that's what I'd do and that whilst I'd have to work reasonably hard at it that that was just what I was going to do but actually the world of professional sport is so cutthroat is so competitive and there are so many people that are so good that actually then when I was sort of graduated so to speak from like the academy to the professional game I started to get found out and I found that really difficult and then I had an injury which is difficult for anybody who likes playing sport because you can't do what you love but as a professional athlete it's it's even more difficult and came with loads of spare time that I didn't really know what to do with how to deal with and obviously spent a lot of that gambling it would be really easy for me to sit here and say my professional cricket career didn't work out because of gambling or because I got injured it wasn't it was ultimately because I wasn't good enough but I didn't give myself the best opportunity to have a successful career because of my inability to to kind of deal with difficulties, setbacks, time, injury, all those things.

11:04Patrick Foster:And I got found out ultimately. How did you feel when you ended your cricket career? Because I mean, I've taught my ACL and I played basketball. I was in tears, not from the pain, just because I was like, I can't play basketball for like a year now and I'm not even a professional. So how did you feel when your career ended? Yeah, I mean, I think that moment hit me so hard. And again, I underestimate at the time and I think everybody around me underestimated at the time but um not only was it sort of the first time in my life I'd ever been told I wasn't good enough at something which I really didn't like it felt like my dream was over that I was partly responsible for it but also my identity I felt like I'd lost my identity completely all I ever thought I was going to be or who I was had now gone, felt like I'd let people down, let myself down.

11:57Patrick Foster:And I really, really struggled to come to terms with it. But because I'd never struggled with anything, I didn't know how to deal with it. I certainly didn't want to admit it. I went back to university. I pretended to people that ultimately I didn't care about my cricket career because I could go and do something else. When actually deep down, it was eating me alive. And people talk about trauma when it comes to things like addiction and trauma means different things to different people but for me that moment was defining because it it just changed my view on myself and and everything really um and and I was I was fundamentally sort of angry bitter um and and just really struggled how did that then feed into the gambling yeah it was at that point that definitely my relationship with gambling changed because now gambling started to form a different part of my life because not only was it a way of sort of replicating the Russian buzz that I used to get from playing cricket and the feelings that sort of come with that but also it became a real form of escapism it was a way of kind of just running away from the way I was feeling my emotions because when I was gambling I didn't have to think about anything else didn't have to worry about anything else um and so it that was when things definitely started to to change um why I was gambling was very different at that point to why I started um and I think that's one of the things that people need to realize just like people's relationship with things like alcohol change because certain things happen in your life um but I was like well it's gambling so I'll just stop when I need to um very different so when you finished uni what what where did you go from there uh so I I got a job in the city so I didn't really know what I wanted to do my life if it wasn't playing sport so I followed the crowd I moved to London because that's what everybody else at Durham was doing um I got a job in finance I worked for an insurance brokers didn't really know anything about insurance wasn't necessarily interested in it but it was an opportunity to be in London it was a good salary and I sort of started doing that I didn't really enjoy the job to tell the truth but I enjoyed everything that came with it I live with four of my mates in southwest London we all got paid pretty healthy salaries for our age but I guess my problem unlike the others was I couldn't manage my money I couldn't resist all the temptations that were around me the freedom that I now had every time I got off the underground to go to work there were these betting shops I could go to on my lunch breaks after work bars I could go to every evening casinos all night and for the first time ever in my life really that had been so structured I didn't have anybody telling me what to do or what not to do.

15:07Patrick Foster:And things started to sort of escalate pretty quickly at that point. Was there any, I mean, I've worked in financial sales environments that are very macho and they're pretty toxic and encouraging of things like gambling. You mentioned greed before. They are greedy environments. Did you find that with the insurance world? Yeah, I mean, it was the kind of culture and environment that I was operating in. You're surrounded by a lot of money. And the fact that I was gambling so much as well, there was this kind of just desire for more. But also culturally, there was a big kind of drinking culture.

15:52Patrick Foster:What came with that was often gambling. and I just got sort of wrapped up in that, believed that it was sort of normal and what people did. But also when you're young and you're impressionable and you're trying to make your way, you're sort of conforming to that. And there's certainly, with me, there was a kind of way I wanted to be viewed. I wanted to have this kind of persona as somebody who lived life to the full and did all these things when actually I don't know deep down whether it's what I wanted to be doing but at the time I didn't realize that um and you just sort of get carried along in this sort of wave um which you believe is kind of the right thing to do we still enjoying the gambling at this point yeah I mean more and more, to be honest, because I had more money.

16:49Patrick Foster:So therefore, I could put bigger bets on. And so whilst I was doing it more than I should have been, again, from an affordability point of view, I wasn't in debt in the early days of my time in London, I was leading a really unhealthy lifestyle. But I wasn't in debt. But again, I wasn't making any good decisions around money because I wasn't saving a penny. I was living paycheck to paycheck. Any disposable income, that's money to gamble with. And then I guess the biggest turning point was in 2010 in December when and what 11 months into my time in the city um i had a massive win um and that was the point where things changed again but everything changed in a completely different way at that point how massive are we talking if you don't mind me asking no not at all i mean so i i kind of uh i got a promotion a pay rise at work i went out like you do um it was a wednesday night um i I arranged to meet my mates in a bar in London to celebrate.

18:05Patrick Foster:They didn't care it was a Wednesday because I said I'd pay for the whole night. And I arranged to meet them in this bar. But I'd chosen the bar not because the bar was good, but because there was a William Hill betting shop two doors down. It's a Wednesday night, the Champions League's on, I want to put a bet on. I guess the biggest difference by this point now is I'd started to keep most of my gambling secret because I didn't want people to judge me, question me, think worse of me. So I got there 15 minutes early. I walked downstairs to this shop. I thought, you know what, I've just been given some money I don't even need right now.

18:38Patrick Foster:I'm going to put a big bet on. I did. I put a 500-pound bet on a series of football matches. I walked upstairs. I started getting drunk with my mates. Didn't really think anything of it. And that night, 500 pounds became 34 ,967 pounds. Stuff of dreams. which obviously sounds like the best thing that could happen to anyone, let alone a 22-year-old living in London who liked gambling. But actually looking back, it was obviously the worst thing that happened to me because now I just thought I was even more invincible. You thought you knew what you were doing? Yeah, every time I put a bet on, I thought it might happen.

19:15Patrick Foster:When it doesn't, well, it doesn't matter. It'll happen again in the short term. I don't even need 35 grand at the moment. But actually the worst thing about it, which I never understood, is now it became just like a drug because now if I didn't win that amount of money didn't give me the same feeling same rush the same buzz the same hit I didn't tell anyone that 135 grand that night I lost it in a few weeks when it was gone I wanted it back and that's when the spiral started to just descend into chaos because I was constantly trying to win that money back as quickly as possible my stakes started to increase And then reality set in, I started to lose.

19:54Patrick Foster:And then everything that came with that, with sort of feeling stupid, guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, started to combat all that by drinking too much, taking drugs without people knowing. And the next six months, my life just started to spiral in a very, very different direction. It's interesting hearing you talk about the money and say, oh, I didn't need that money. You know, it's like you had that justification of, it doesn't matter if I lose it anyway because I don't need that money right now you know like 35 grand is people probably don't need 35 grand but like it can impact their life in a positive way like you can hear the the addict justification there of I don't even need that money yeah big time and I think back now what I could have done with 35 grand at the time age 22 um my life would look very different that's for sure but there was an element of naivety there as well um because I was just like well it's mine to spend so you were holding your life together in somewhat before that though because you got a promotion which implies that you were doing okay at work yeah and I think this is probably one of the like biggest myths about addicts um is that but it's going to manifest itself in certain ways.

21:11Patrick Foster:Actually, a lot of people continue to be incredibly high-functioning, high-performing, and that was the case for basically the whole time I was going through this, which is hard for people to believe. But also, I'm obsessive. I always have been. So when I was sat at my desk, I worked harder than anybody. um and to to everybody um i looked like kind of perfect professional um but actually what was going on away from it was was anything but but i managed to put on this kind of facade that i was completely the opposite um and that that was definitely kind of consistent through my whole addiction.

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24:03Patrick Foster:um and i guess that's the the scary thing is is for me gambling was about feeding my addiction so money one was money to spend on gambling it was more money that i could gamble with um i mean i guess it afforded me at times a lifestyle that i wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise because i was going out pretty much four or five times a night in london it also took it away from you though because it's feast and famine right yeah it's not like you're always winning you would have been down and probably yeah exactly in financially at points um and and definitely i look back now and there were like weeks where i would be like behaving like i was sort of bigger now i'd be going to the bar and buying huge rounds that's because i'd won money and then other times i'd be sort of skimping my way around um nights out and stuff and you just you don't i wasn't thinking rationally at all when it came to money um but no point did i think to myself oh I've just won x amount of money even if it's on a single bet I'm going to put some of it away or I'm going to go and buy something meaningful it was always right I'm just going to spend that on either gambling or drinking or my kind of social lifestyle what what was your better choice like was it the football yeah I mean I I mean I bet on anything and everything by the end.

25:35Patrick Foster:When I first started gambling, there were kind of two things that I did. I bet on sport. I mean, I'm fanatical about all sports, so I would bet on anything sport related, a lot of football betting, a lot of horse racing. And then the other thing, which was probably my biggest issue and biggest vice was roulette. So I would spend hours and huge amounts of money on physical roulette machines in betting shops and then online roulette is what I'd do um kind of when there wasn't sport on or it got to the point where actually I'd be sitting in a bookies and I wouldn't be able to watch a horse race because I wouldn't be able to wait for the outcome I'd have to be spinning a roulette wheel at the same time um and and over time that just got worse and worse to the point where it was just I had to be gambling basically every minute of every day which is where it's sort of terrifying and I guess a sure sign for people that things might be sort of spiraling out of control is when you do start to gamble on other things because I talk about sport like I'm sport mad but there are some sports that I don't know anything about american football but when there wasn't football on and the american football was on in the evening i'd put bets on that i wouldn't have a clue what i was gambling on but it was just a medium by which i could bet um and huge sums of money as well how much i mean by the end it was like thousands of pounds i remember putting like a bet on hungarian handball or something and and it was literally thousands of pounds um and i didn't have a clue um i just went off what the odds would be whichever the greater the odds than I thought.

27:25Patrick Foster:And that's where it's nuts. Did you understand, you know, like with roulette, obviously it's a rigged game, you know, in the favor of the bookies. And I know that those machines in bookies were heavily criticized. And I think they ended up limiting them, didn't they? Not when you were doing it, unfortunately. But I know that people could spend thousands of spin really quickly. Did you understand the odds? And did you know that this game, the longer I play this game, the more likely I am to lose. you know it's rigged in the bookies favor yeah i mean i guess i did because i'm not sort of stupid yeah but actually when i think about it you think my god it's stupid that you believe that you can beat the system or beat the machine and honestly it's it's mad to think back but i i used to have theories about being able to understand what numbers are going to come up next and what patterns it was going to follow so if it was this number then I know what the next number will be or this number always comes up twice in a row and I genuinely believed that I could beat the system and and that I was better than it and you look back now and you think well that's crazy um but I guess that's a an arrogance um and I think the situation that a lot of people get in is when And they think that they can actually outdo the maths and the system, which you're never going to do.

28:54You see it in casinos. They facilitate that. They show you the numbers on the roulette tables that have come up as if that's relevant information. Do you know what I mean? They'd be like, oh, there's eight blacks in a row because they want everyone to think, oh, well, a red's got to come up. The casinos want you to believe that you can beat them.

29:12Patrick Foster:Yeah, and they definitely, I mean, online casino, know ultimately they're in control of the outcome they they're not stupid they pay out because they know that that's what's going to keep people coming back um and that was the thing is because I a number would come in and have 13 quid on it or whatever and win 500 quid as soon as that happened they just take take take and I'll just keep going um because I convinced myself that it was going to happen the next time it was always oh the next time and that next time very rarely materialized yeah like the fruit machines when i worked in a pub that's the only time i i got anywhere near having a gambling issue was when i was 18 working in a pub before uni and there's fruit machines and i would just watch people fill them off and i convinced myself that i could hear when the pound was hitting the bottom of the hopper so i knew and I won a few times and then I ended up leaving and that was good but yeah you you can convince yourself that you can see the machine because you watch it all the time yeah definitely you know and yeah I can see how people would would slip there I would end up spending my whole wages for a shift on this fruit machine you know and then like have nothing I've just worked eight hours I've got nothing because poured it into a fruit machine then some guy I would sit there in the pub watching it because i knew that someone would come in and put a tenner in and it would make me angry i'd be like you've just stole my money because i've just filled that up for you yeah definitely and i to the point where i would actually then not want to leave a machine because you filled it up yeah and i wouldn't want to watch somebody else benefit so you just keep going and keep going and never comes it's it's terrifying really when you think about it so you you've got you've done this city career for a bit and you've had this six month spiral and things have descended quite quickly you say you can't go without betting you become a teacher is that during this period yeah so after about six months I mean by that point I'd won and lost all that money very quickly lifestyle was getting worse.

31:23Patrick Foster:I'd taken out a few bank loans, huge bank loans. I'd maxed out a load of credit cards. I started to miss payments on my rent. I put on a lot of weight. I wasn't sleeping and I thought, you know what, I've got to do something about this because I looked myself in the mirror and I thought a few years ago, you're a professional athlete. You had everything. Look at the state you now. So I decided to make a change because I honestly thought at that point, if I changed my environment and lifestyle drastically, it would get rid of the problem. I now realize I needed to change me. But I basically said to my parents at the time, they didn't know the extent of what was going on.

32:04Patrick Foster:But I basically lied and said, I hate my job. I hate living in London. I want to do something more rewarding. They're amazing people. They're really supportive. And they said, okay, what do you want to do? And I said, I wanted to be a teacher because they were teachers. I knew if I said that they'd be pleased. They wouldn't ask them any questions. I'd be able to get a job. So I moved out of London. I moved to Oxford where I got a job at a school where I'd spend a few years before escaping to another one. And do you know what? For a few weeks, it actually did help a bit because I didn't do these things quite as much because of the environment that I was in as much as anything and I'd sort of said to myself you've got to make a change but then quite quickly I slipped into old habits, school holidays came along, I had loads of time on my hands, I started gambling again, I had some more wins and then I thought okay I can now sort of use gambling to get myself out of the financial debt that I was in from London which was probably about 50 grand at the time I thought well what I'll do is I'll just gamble a bit more slowly um a bit more calculated I'll win 50 grand and then I'll stop and of course then um things sort of started to um kind of happen that meant my relationship with gambling again changed although that was my intention.

33:31Patrick Foster:I had some relationship issues that I found very difficult to come to terms with. I had some problems at work. I was in a very serious accident. And my problem was always I never, ever talked about problems or addressed them. And I guess the thing with any addiction, when you're faced with difficulty, challenge, challenge adversity you run away and you escape to what weirdly feels to you like a safe place which other people don't understand but actually it was the most dangerous place I could be because essentially when I was gambling if I was drunk if I was using I didn't have to engage with reality I didn't have to think about anything else connect to my emotions and that too became addictive and I started to rely on it and and and that spiral just continues um and and things just got worse and worse whether it was there anyone at that point that was recognizing the issues or was it were you keeping a lid on it yeah I mean I was so good at hiding it like I was genuinely like a master of disguise and because I continued to be really high functioning I was very well thought of as a teacher people like me they respected me people thought well you can't have that big a problem but it would be mad for me to say that no one started to spot signs I mean from a financial point of view I started to have to reach out to my parents for money at times they started to question why is it gambling always talk my way out of it no it's not gambling um it's historic debt from london and and all this kind of stuff um people started to notice that i was sort of putting on weight i wasn't exercising as much but basically the way i projected myself was so different to what was going on internally um i'd show up every day i'd put on this mask i'd pretend i was completely the opposite to actually who i and what i was and I just became so good at it and part of it was because I was protecting the addiction I didn't want to stop gambling I wasn't ready to stop gambling is there anything that your parents could have said to you in that moment to kind of break through do you think you know as a parent myself I'm terrified of my son hiding something like that from me and is there a way to communicate with an addict to yeah I mean I think the thing that addicts fear most is judgment um and I was always I couldn't bear the thought of my parents although they're incredibly supportive and they're amazing people I couldn't bear the thought of my parents being angry with me disappointed in me knowing that I've made mistakes I sort of grew up with this sort of perfect son type tag because I was good at everything I never got in much trouble didn't do much wrong so when I did I was like I can't admit that to people and that was definitely on me but I think now looking back I wish I'd had more of a transparent relationship with my parents and I wish I'd known it was okay and and their reaction was as I found out when it all came to a head was so different to what I thought it was going to be because I'd played in my head that they were going to react in a certain way they reacted in completely the opposite way and i think that's sometimes the thing you're so worried about judgment you're worried about the consequences when ultimately the consequences are going to be worse if you carry on but you think it's impossible to get over it and and you think it's impossible to live a life without whatever it is that you're doing um which again is not true um so i think that's the they're the three sort of most important things to remove the judgment so if you're a parent and you're worried about a kid or you've got someone you should say i don't i don't care i'm not going to judge you i just want to help yeah i mean i heard i heard someone a parent say the other day to me about taking drugs like i don't care if you take drugs i just want you to tell me yeah and it's be safe yeah it's that it's that kind of very transparent and honest relationship that i think is really important because otherwise it goes underground um and it's there's this sort of secrecy that makes it really really complicated um and often people are worried that people are gonna as i say be angry um and so often they're not it's funny because my dad always said well you can always tell me anything but like growing up i'm like i don't want him to know i smoke cigarettes i don't want him to know i did this i don't want him to know i did that and then as i got older like literally in the last few years i I realised if I tell him anything, he doesn't judge me.

38:25And he doesn't, even though he's a strict guy, he doesn't react how I always thought in my head he'd react. So I think as a parent, you're always like, you can tell me anything. And the kids are like, you don't know what I've been up to. And it's like, they're adults. They've seen everything. They've done everything. But as a kid - But he didn't invent it, right? We didn't invent it. But he thinks I'm the first one who smoked a joint. I'm the first one who's been drinking. I'm the first one who's had a cigarette. So it's kind of, yeah, it's the pressure. How did you manage to fund it as a teacher?

38:49Because obviously I assume you had a smaller salary. than you did in London. Yeah, pay cut compared to London. And you said you borrowed from your parents, but obviously if you're doing it every day, you can't ask them every day for a loan. So how did you continue to... Yeah, I mean, I borrowed money in every way

39:03Patrick Foster:you could possibly imagine. So when I first became a teacher, I probably had as much disposable income because although I was not being paid as much, I was living actually in school accommodation. So I didn't have as many outgoings. but basically what I started to do is I started to borrow money in all the sort of, I guess, traditional ways in that I would start with loans. I then went to credit cards. Then once that had run out, I then started to use payday loans. I then started to borrow money off loan sharks, gangsters, drug dealers. And then once that had kind of all run out and I'd exhausted all those mediums, I then started to turn to individuals.

39:57Patrick Foster:And the reason I was able to turn to individuals is because ultimately being a teacher in a school like I was, I was surrounded with or by people that had a lot of money. and basically one day I was so desperate for money I thought you know what I'm gonna send an email to a parent and basically explain that I've had some issues financially would they be able to lend me some money and that I'd pay them back agreed terms knowing that these people probably had the money to lend me that they liked me they respected me they were probably worried about me and this parent did and suddenly I was like oh my word this is a new source a new source that is not unlimited but and I just started to take advantage of it and take advantage of people and people started to lend me huge sums of money um in the knowledge that I was going to pay them back but I just started to gamble it all away and of course I'm not proud of it anything but but what's really scary is that these were highly successful people who I'd managed to convince that I really needed this money and it also helped me in hiding the addiction because anybody who has a gambling problem people just view it as a financial problem so because I always had money and was able to buy things and do things nobody ever thought I had a serious gambling problem because if I did I wouldn't have any money the difference was it was other people's money but the whole time I wasn't thinking about what the consequences would be and I was just building up debt and debt and debt to the point where when it all came to a head i mean i had an extraordinary amount of debt um that i'll now rightly have to spend the rest of my life paying back but at the time i didn't think about it do you know how many people it was that you owed like these individuals 113 different individual people and like the amounts uh anywhere between between a hundred pounds and ten thousand pounds right 113 how were you spinning all those plates like those individuals because obviously there's a period of like well here's the money so you're going to start paying me back next month that doesn't come and then you've got 113 people pecking your head for money basically how do you how do you manage that yeah it was it was mad um i sort of smile about it now because it's just hard to believe but it was like a full-time job of lying yeah basically and and also that became a bit of an addiction in itself um in a sadistic way it was like how am i getting away with this so i'm going to keep doing it and that's the kind of feeding the ego thing um but yeah i mean i would i would be i didn't sleep so i would basically just spend my whole time trying to find money different ways wangle my way out of problems emails messages and of course over time people started to see through it because they might accept that one month you can't pay them back but then the next month what's going on and I was very clever at paying different people at different times so it looked like things were okay again and it just it started to just get completely out of control and it just wasn't sustainable and you and i knew i was going to get found out at some point i just didn't know when it was going to happen is that when it all came to a head at cheltenham in 2018 yeah so in in sort of by march 2018 um things were obviously totally out of control and i'd started to sort of drop the ball in more ways than one and it started to really impact me professionally because I wasn't sleeping.