Excessive Spending on Lottery

[TurnedItOffAndOffAgain]

Opinions please as I'm not sure now if I'm being unreasonable or not. My DH has been really poorly for the last 18 months and I suppose has had more time than he would normally so has been playing the uk lottery more frequently than previously. He is spending around £150-£250 per month, £2,000 over the last 12 months. He's not really won anything, not a surprise as the odds are massive. We have had a major fallout today after I asked him to stop. I have asked before but he has continued. Am I being unfair? We can still pay all the bills but haven't got lots of spare cash and there's lots more practical things we could spend the money on, home repairs for eg. Just feeling really miserable now. We both work full time but he was on nil pay for the last 6 months. I would appreciate some advice as I can't talk to my friends or family about this. Thank you.

[Puddleofmilk]

I'll start this as I'm not a professional in this field but I have had some experience with it. It sounds like your DH has the start of a gambling addiction. We've had a family member who had a gambling addiction which ended up with them racking up a large amount of debt, causing more then one family fall out.

The problem with gambling is you end up with a large endorphin and adrenaline hit from losing, as well as winning so it's a double edged sword.

The good thing is you know about it, I'd suggest that you need to get some help before it gets worst but if he's not open to this (tread lightly as you don't want to push it underground) then maybe the first stage could be to (non-judgementally) write down and keep track of every bet including if they were successful or not as this will bring to light the frequency of bets, if there's any pattern on when they are and may provide the natural realisation of how much DH is gambling and how unsuccessful he's being.

Good luck