But we all know that our numbers are regularly diminished as members succumb to their addiction and return to gambling - the invisible addiction.

You can tell if someone is drunk or high on drugs, the symptoms are obvious, but take that nice young girl across the road, you know, the one with the two young children, well she has a serious addiction; she’s hooked on playing fruit machines. That surprised you, didn’t it? And that adds to her problems, because gambling addiction doesn’t show. Oh there are symptoms but for now, let’s follow our young mum, we’ll call her Jane, as her world begins to fall apart.

Jane dropped her children off at nursery and hurried home. Despite the warm day she felt numbed, chilled to the bone. How was she going to tell Mark that they were going to lose the house, and that she had spent all their savings, plus a thousand pound loan, on playing fruit machines.

 He would kick her out, or leave her, she knew that. Oh how could she have been so stupid!

It had started innocently enough. About twelve months ago she had begun to go to bingo with some other mums, just one afternoon a week, and Mark had thought it was a good idea.

     “It will get you out of the house for a couple of hours,” he’d said.

     One afternoon, on the way back from the bar she had noticed that one of the fruit machines had two jackpot symbols on the win line. She had popped a pound into the slot hoping that the symbols might hold, but they didn’t. So she spent the reels spinning and on her third spin, out of her four credits, she hit the jackpot. Twenty-five one pound coins clattered down into the coin tray. It took her a few seconds to realise that the hold lights were flashing, and she held the jackpot again. Another twenty-five one-pound coins fell on top of those in the tray, and Jane inserted one of them back into the machine just in case. The jackpot held once more. Seventy-four-pounds she’d won.

     Jane was elated and rejoined her friends, but soon she realised that she wasn’t interested in playing bingo anymore, she would have rather have kept on playing on the fruit-machine.

     After a few weeks, her friends realised that she was only interested in playing the machines, and some of them warned her that she was losing too much money. But Jane wasn’t worried, okay so she’d had to draw some money out of the bank, so what? She’d replace it with her winnings, soon.

     Mark had complained about her being irritable and distant lately, but she was only half listening, she was too busy planning on how to finance, her, now daily visits, to a local amusement arcade.

     Jane, having fallen behind with the mortgage payments had secretly taken out a loan of a thousand pounds. But instead of using the money to pay off her arrears, she had gambled it away.

     This morning, just before taking the children to school, she had rung Mark at work and told him that the bailiffs were coming this morning, and then hung up.

     His car was parked in the drive, and she recognised her in-laws car parked behind it. Jane wanted to run away, to hide, but she had nowhere to go. Blinded by her tears she walked up the path leading to the front door.

     Mark, his face ashen, was in the living room with his parents.

     “You bloody, bitch,” he hissed. “How could you do this to me and the kids? Where’s the stuff you’ve been buying, designer clothes or…”

     “I haven’t bought anything,” she sobbed. “I’ve been playing one-arm bandits. I can’t stop, Mark. All I can bloody well think about, getting hold of money to play the machines.”

     She looked around at the three people staring at her in shock, but it was Mark’s look of hurt and betrayal that cut her as sharply as any knife.

     Jane went over to him but when she touched his arm he shrank away from her, shaking his head.

     “I don’t need this,” he said. “I’m taking the kids back to Mum and Dad’s and when I come back I don’t want to find you here.” He pulled out his wallet and removing three twenty-pound notes thrust them into her hand. “That will pay for a taxi back to your parents,” he said. “Or put it in your bloody bandits, I don’t care what you do.”

     “How could you do that to Mark and the kids,” his mother hissed, “You’re not fit to be a wife or mother…”

     “That’s enough!” Her father-in-law, a man who was dominated by his wife, and who Jane had never really liked much, surprised her, Mark and his Mum.

     “Have you two any idea of what Jane is going through right now? Mark, I know you’re hurting and feeling betrayed, but Jane’s become addicted to gambling, and she’s going to need our help, and support.” He turned to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Jane, if I find out the about Gambler’s Anonymous, would you go?”

     Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded and saw Mark shake his head.

     “I don’t think I can handle this,” he said.

     “Mark, please…” Jane pleaded.

     “All right, I won’t kick you out, but I’m closing our joint account at the bank. I’ll open another one for my salary and the standing orders. Dad’s lending us five-grand to get sorted, but you’ll pay him back every…”

     “I don’t want her…”

     “But I do,” Mark said, cutting his father off. “And as for your addiction, that’s your problem, so you deal with it. I don’t want to know. Right!”

     Jane nodded with relief. She wasn’t going to lose her home and the children, and perhaps one day she and Mark her might get their lives back together.

      It is her first Sunday GA meeting and Jane is scared, but Richard, her father-in-law, who has insisted on coming with her, gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.

     “It will be okay,” he says.

     There are half-a-dozen people, some of them smoking, standing outside the building and when they walk up the steps, Jane is dismayed to find they’re all men. One of them, a man about forty walks over.

      “Hi, I’m Jack, are you looking for GA?”

     She nods, and he smiles.

     “Which one of you is the gambler, or are you both…”

     “It’s me,” Jane said. “My father-in-law is here to give me some support.” I wish we hadn’t come, she thinks.

     “Okay, what do you gamble on, bandits or…”

     “Bandit’s but how did you know?”

     He laughed. “You’re talking to a man who used to put hundred’s of pounds a day into machines with a ten-pound jackpot.”

     Jane looked at him in surprise; he’d done the same as her and could laugh about it now. Perhaps this place could help her after all.

     “We’re about to go into the meeting,” Jack said. “You come with me, and the others, and I’ll show your father-in-law…”

     “I’m Richard.”

     “Great, I’ll show you where Gamanon are, and we have a coffee break at half time so we’ll se you then.”

*   *   *

     Mark looks proud as he pins a GA 2 year gold pin to her jacket, and he kisses her on the cheek. Turning towards the rest of the people in the room, and still holding Jane’s hand, he begins to speak.

      “Two years ago my world collapsed when I found that my wife had gambled away our savings and we were about to lose our house. Our children were aged three and five at the time, and I wondered how any mother could betray her family just to gamble. I couldn’t understand it, and Jane couldn’t either.

     I didn’t want to know, and for the first few months I didn’t attend the Gamanon meetings to support her, though my Dad always came with her.

     But as time passed I saw Jane change back into the girl I had married, and she had entered a debt management programme in order to repay the money that we borrowed from dad.

     Two years down the line, things have never been better, and I would like to thank everyone her for their help and support. My name’s Mark and I’m married to Jane, a compulsive gambler.”

     Jane stood and looked around the room.

     “I would just like to say thank you to the group, and especially to Richard, Mark’s dad. To the newer members and their families I would like them to know that there is a life after gambling, and please, try to remember that no one ever asks to cross that invisible line between normal gambling and compulsive gambling, it just happens. The trick is; stop gambling the GA way, one day at a time, keep your barriers up and get to the meetings. My name’s Jane, I’m a compulsive gambler.”

*   *   *

Gamblers Anonymous Nottingham Meetings are held at the Old School Hall, Windmill Lane, Sneinton. Notts.

Sundays: 7.30pm -9.30pm.  (This meeting also has a Gamanon support group, for relatives of friends of the gambler.)

Wednesdays: 7.45pm – 9.45pm (Gamblers only, meeting)