Dave, a retiree recovering from gambling addiction, says that when he was winning, he felt like a king, hooked by the prospect of wealth and recognition.
But he says like most gamblers, he “inevitably” started losing.
“Not only money — trust, people we care for, spouses, children, we lose the whole gamut. Everything that we built goes crumbling down,” he told CBC News during a recent online Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Toronto.
“So we often try suicide, which I did try. I turned out to be an utter failure at that.”
A CBC News investigation has found that at least 220 problem gamblers in Canada have died by suicide in the last decade, which includes a tripling of gambling-related suicides in Ontario since 2022.
