So let us talk about Patrik and his story and the shit that went down in his life due to a serious gambling addiction on ONLINE Slot machines.
Patrik was a 42 years old male who was a business owner in the construction sector of building allergy free homes and offices.
He focused his business model on building high quality allergy free homes and offices and he employed over 100 people all and all.
He started at the age of 23 his own company.
Patrik had a wife who was 10 years younger than him she was a mom and a wife who worked from home in the food catering business.
And they together have two daughters who where 5 and 7 years old when Patrik decided to take his own life due to the compulsive gambling addiction that he had developed over a 5 year period.
So Patrik operated and owned his own construction company and Mrlifeadvise came into contact with Patrik when we needed a smaller allergy free office space for personal with allergy issues.
This was 3 years prior to him taking his own life.
Looking back the signs of a gambling addict was there, if you where looking for it, which we where not at the time!.
Patrik did a great job for us and he came true on every aspect that we needed to cover by law, as a an employer.
So how did this hole thing unravel from being a 37 years old self made successful businessman and a company owner, to a person losing everything and not seeing any other way out than taking his own life to save his families future!.
So this is a very long story short, but the short version goes like this.
Patrik had to be in his office most of the time all days to cater to his foreman and other management personal that had different construction project going on around the clock.
But he also had a lot of down time, but he could not leave the office to go and do something outside the office.
And sitting in the office all days , with very little to do, since they had all the business they could handle became very boring and boring very fast.
Patrik had seen for years these adds that says deposit 200 dollars and get 200 dollars free as a casino bonus on online slot machines.
So since he had access to time and his laptop he decided to give it a go , this was 2012, so 5 years prior to everything unraveling in his and his families life.
So in the beginning he played some and won some and lost some and it was fun to play different video slot machines.
He played around 2-3 hours a day at the office and that was that.
The first year he lost around 15.000 dollars and that did not affect him what so ever.
During the second year he played a bit more and lost around 60.000 dollars.
Now these are still amounts that he can easily manage to lose.
But now he was down 75.000 dollars and as person who did not like to lose, here he makes the gamblers worst and most common mistake, he starts to chase his losses.
The reason why you should never chase your losses in gambling or on the stock market is that 99% of the times you will just end up losing much more than you had lost in the first place due to this chase.
And it is always better to walk away from a loss, than to double down and lose another large amount, and then you are even deeper in the hole than you where before you started to chase that loss.
So year 3 of online slot machine gambling is where all hell breaks lose and Patrik ends up losing 400.000 dollars more.
And still he can manage this amount, he has a good business and a paid for house and a cabin both in really desirable neighborhoods.
But his gambling becomes compulsive and he realizes that he needs to quit.
So he writes to the operators of these sites that he wants to self exclude from ever gambling there again.
Some close his accounts and never open them again even when he asks them to.
Some close the accounts but open them up again time and time again when he ask them to do so, which is both very unethical and highly illegal and the game providers/casinos licensees should have been revoked years ago.
But the regulators seldom care about these breaches, like in so many other professions, money talks and bullshit walks!.
Now Patrik starts to play at home even when the family goes to bed at 10.00 a clock pm , he starts to gamble online at the casinos sometimes the whole night and sometimes until 04.00 a clock AM.
To his wife he says i need to work on new projects during the night to get them finished.
Everybody around Patrik starts to see a real change during the third year of online gambling, he does not care much about his company, and lets things slip, and lets people who should not take the decisions take them in the business due to him not having any time to look at business related things more than to just sign his name on the bottom line.
He gambles now 14h a day.
At this point he has over 30 active casino accounts online and he plays with bets around 20-40 dollars per spin.
And if you dont know this , these are really high bets on online casino games, where most normal people bet maybe around 1 dollar per spin or even less.
He has now days where he ends up losing over 50.000 dollars a day.
Some days he wins, but normally he ends up losing it all back pretty quick to the casinos.
Patrik is no longer chasing his losses anymore, he is now gambling for the sake of gambling, and he is now a full blown compulsive gambler at this time.
During year 4 he loses 1.2 million dollars.
And now it starts to affect his own economy, he has blown true all of the families savings and this is the beginning of the end his life as he knows it.
During year 4 his business takes a big hit with an office space they have built for a company that goes under, prior to the building being ready for occupancy.
His company ends losing over 5.4 million dollars on this project and the company is in real jeopardy.
Patriks starts to increase his bet size to 100 dollars a spin to try and win big, to also help his company out.
But there is no way he can save his company, so a larger construction company offers to take his company over, and to save the 100+ workers he has on his payroll and keep those families hole, he basically walks away from his company with a small sum of money.
Year 5, Patrik is just sitting at home gambling all days.
And now he is in the final stages of losing it all, he takes out a mortgage of 900.000 dollars on his home and his cabin , that he was owned for over 10 years with out any mortgages.
He ends up losing this money in around 5 months time, and now it is time for his final step, which is to cash in his 401K.
He gets after penalties for taking out the money early around 800.000 dollars and he ends up losing that money inside a two month period.
Now he has no money left , he has no company, no income, and is under water with his mortgages at 900.000 dollars.
During the last 24 months time, Patrik has tried to quit gambling on his own , he has gone to Gamblers anonymous a few times, but allure of being able to play online casinos at home, just controls his brain as the disease it actually is.
So you see here that during the first 2 years he had the chance to corrects his behavior, but by year 3 he was so addicted that it was no longer possible for him to do on his own.
In a situation like this, the hope would have been that the relatives and friends, co-workers could have made an intervention and got him into a treatment facility for a longer period of time, and then handled his fiances for many years to come.
So this is how it usually looks like when business owners gets addicted and they end up losing their company and their assets.
The problem is that as a business owner you need to have access to cash to run your business and if you are a full blown addict you will listen to your addict brain first and foremost.
So as an addict someone else should have the power of attorney of your decision making when you your brain chemistry has been altered to the point that you can no longer fend for yourself or your company.
So gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide compared to any other addiction out there.
And after the opioid addiction it is considered the worst one out there.
Please think about that when a casino wants to open in your area or if you get an offer to gamble online that this will happen to 10% of all gamblers, they become compulsive gamblers.
So what really happen to Patrik and his family.
So Patrik had one of these new age life insurance polices that will pay out even at suicide if you have held the policy for over 10 years time and you had a clean bill of health when you took the policy.
Patrik had held the policy for over 15 years time, and he was worth 1.5 million dollars to his family dead!.
But in his mind, he was never gonna be able to stop gambling he felt worn out beaten down and finished in every way in his own mind.
He had made the decision ruffly one month prior to him taking his own life, and like with so many others who had taken that fatal decision before him, he got a big boost of energy making up his mind on this matter.
So during his final month on earth Patrik went around saying goodbye to all of his family and friends.
And everybody blames themselves for not understanding or seeing the signs but the reality is that gambling addicts cover their tracks very well since they often dont have as many symptoms showing on the outside like a normal addicted person to pills or alcohol has.
So the last 72 hours of Patriks life, he spent with his family and the families German shepherd named Rex and cat name Blue that he really loved both so much.
They spent a great weekend out in the cabin and he told his daughters and wife how much he loved them from the bottom of his hearth.
On Sunday evening when the family had arrived back home and everybody had gone to bed, even the pets, he made a round in the house and kissed everybody goodbye on their forehead while they where all sleeping.
And he gave Rex and Blue each a treat and told them to look after the kids and his wife.
On Friday prior to this last Sunday, he had mailed over 40 suicide letters to family and friends explaining why he was gonna take his own life.
AND THEN HE HAD WRITTEN A 20 PAGE LETTER TO HIS FAMILY(WIFE AND KIDS).
These all arrived the following week!.
So at around 02.00 a clock he took his gun a bottle of Whiskey and a chair with him and he left his wedding ring on the kitchen table.
But he had his wallet with him, so the police could id him on sight.
This was in late November and his life insurance policy that was always paid in full for a whole year, during the first week of January, was about to expire in less than 7 weeks time
He walked 20 minutes up to a hill that looks out on top of the city, he drank half a bottle of liquid courage and then he pulled the trigger and that was all she wrote!.
So he left his family whole financially, but completely broken emotionally.
I meet his wife at the store last week and i asked if we could use her story to warn others not to embark on this dark and lonely road of hell on earth that gambling is!.
I asked her on how she and the kids are doing today, and she said that the first year was ruff, due to the kids being so small and not really fully understanding why daddy is no longer coming home to them ever again!.
She also said that having Rex and Blue ,(dog and the cat) gives the kids and her strength to move forward since animals(pets) are usually really good with kids and adults that are suffering in one form or another.
Since the daughter share a bed room she told me that Rex sleeps in the bed with one daughter and Blue sleeps in the bed with the other daughter.
And the mother told me that this started 2 days after Patrik was gone, and ever since then the dog and the cat almost protects the kids during the night time!.
She did not believe her eyes at first in the beginning, but now she is so used to this behavior.
I asked how she was doing herself as a widower and a single mother, and she told me that she runs a 10 person catering company these days.
But she had not started dating anybody yet, she told me that after 10 years of marriage, she is still not used to being single yet.
She still loves Patrik and hates him at the same time for putting her and her kids in this situation.
But she also understood that she was on of the lucky ones that financially they survived, due to the unusual life insurance policy that her husband had, NORMALLY SUICIDE IS NOT COVERED IN ANY LIFE INSURANCE POLICY.
And she had made peace with him being sick/addicted and not himself when making this decision to end his own life this way.
Which in her mind was to protect the family from his addiction and mistakes.
But she also told me that she would have moved into a 2 bed room in a not such a nice area 100% of the times if that would have meant that PATRIK WOULD HAVE STAYED ON EARTH!.
So the life lesson to take way from this very sad story is that, when you start gambling you dont expect to get addicted, and you dont know for sure if you are one of these 10% that actually gets addicted, and end up derailing your life and your families life in the process.
SO NEWER EVER START TO GAMBLE, AND NEVER EVER START TO GAMBLE ONLINE!
ONLINE GAMBLING IS MUCH WORSE SINCE YOU CAN DO THAT IN YOUR OFFICE OR IN YOUR BEDROOM!.
You dont even have to psychically visit the casino these days in some parts of the world.
And this is super dangerous.
So as a business consulting firm that Mrlifeadvise is, we recommend that you never even try and gamble, and if you have tried it and like it, stop.
And if you are gambling more and more each year, then think of this story of Patrik and do not go down the same road that he took.
The only winners in this story are the cold heartened online casinos that do not care if you are a problem gambler, they do not care about you and your family, like the cold blooded snakes they are, they just care about the money.
So do not feed this beast with one single dollar ever again!.
For Patrik it was a few millions that broke the camels back, for some business owners and people it can be as low as 20.000 dollars that destroys your life and your business.
So the amounts are different for everybody, but the end result is the same, pain agony and destruction.
Thank you for reading.
Mrlifeadvise.
