Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict

Powerful ... electrifying ... compelling … challenges deep-seated class assumptions about gambling ... [which is] still regarded as a problem for poor people, for losers. You only have to read Foster’s unflinching account of entitlement, self-hatred and degradation to know that is the biggest lie of all. – Melanie Reid, The Times

[A] mesmerising, superbly written story of despair, decline and redemption ... Searingly honest ... compelling ... should be in the hands of anyone who has eyed a bet – Daily Mail

I don’t think any book has gripped me like Might Bite. – Chris Evans

Gripping and harrowing ... enough to make any gambling enthusiast think carefully. – The Spectator

Reading of Foster’s descent is itself compulsive – The i

An extraordinary story … vital stuff – Adrian Chiles, BBC Radio 5 Live

An in-depth testimony ... show[s] how anybody can fall prey to gambling addiction. – Daily Telegraph

A powerful story that I know only too well – a no-holds barred journey through gambling addiction and into the hope of recovery. – Paul Merson

A well written, ruthlessly honest account of gambling addiction – Jimmy McGovern

As a society, we are only just getting to grips with gambling addiction. Patrick Foster is a trailblazer. His work will help many. – Marcus Trescothick

A shocking insight into life with gambling addiction and proof that these issues really don’t discriminate. – Tom Curry, England rugby player

Foster’s compelling account of a once charmed life careering on a downward spiral proves [gambling addiction] can affect anyone. – Bristol Post

A must read journey through gambling addiction and out the other side – ultimately uplifting. – Charlotte Edwards CBE, ex-professional cricketer and England captain

This story will stop you in your tracks. – Sam Billings, England cricketer

Might Bite is beautifully written – Charlie Baker, TalkSport

A powerful read and a hell of a story – Paul Hawksbee, TalkSport

A remarkable piece of work – The Cricketer

You should all read Might Bite...a brutally candid, must-read memoir co-written with Will Macpherson, the Evening Standard cricket correspondent that ought to transcend the world of elite sport. – The Cricketer

A brilliant memoir which exposes the scale of this addiction – Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller

Astonishing…Might Bite is a harrowing tale of the final moments of a gambler’s descent to near destruction, but it’s a tale that demands to be told. – Racing Post

A must – electrifying confessions of a high-achieving public schoolboy who destroyed himself with a secret betting addiction – Melanie Reid, The Times

Contents

Foreword by Marcus Trescothick

March 2018

October 2006

June 2007

January 2010

August 2011

July 2012

October 2014

January 2016

December 2016

March 2017

August 2017

January 2018

March 2018

At the time of writing

Reflections from recovery

References

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Marcus Trescothick

I first met Patrick Foster in October 2018 at the Oval Cricket Ground in south London. We were sat in the grand old Committee Room inside the historic Pavilion, launching the Professional Cricketers’ Trust, a charity that supports players of our great game, past and present.

The two of us had been invited to tell our stories to print and broadcast media, thus raising awareness of the Trust’s amazing work. Patrick and I had been asked to speak together because we had very different experiences in cricket and in life.

At the Oval 12 years earlier, I had played the last of my 76 Test matches for England. A dozen years on, I had just completed the 26th of my 27 years as a professional with Somerset. Cricket had given me a great life and livelihood.

In his teens and early twenties, Patrick had also been a professional cricketer with Northamptonshire, playing nine first-class matches for Durham University. It had been his dream to make a career from the game, as I did.

But things had not gone quite to plan, and he had spent the decade before we met getting a degree, working in insurance and teaching while being an outstanding club cricketer. Cricket was a big part of his life, but he had done much else besides.

So as professional cricketers we had a lot of differences, but we were also sat talking to each other and telling our stories because as people, we had much in common. We had both had battles with mental health. My issue had been depression, triggered particularly by travelling away from home while under the intense spotlight of being an international cricketer. Patrick’s was a pathological addiction to gambling that caused many other problems. We were both cricketers who had had major struggles off the field.

Just a few months before we met, Patrick had been totally gripped by his addiction, which drove him right to the brink. But in that room he told his incredible story with clarity and calm. It was raw and tough to hear, but it was compulsive listening. I had said my bit, a tale which many in the room knew well, then everyone was gripped by Patrick’s story, even though most there did not know too much about him. Speaking about such matters so soon after they had happened takes a bit of courage. I was sat there thinking that this was someone who had been pushed to some extraordinary lengths and been to some dark places, beyond his control. Given what we had in common, it really hit home.

We were both there, too, because we were so grateful for the sup­port we had received from the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the parent body of the PCT. In 2006 I had come home from a tour of India having suffered a breakdown, and the help – through counselling – I received was instant and impressive. Just having someone I could sit down and open up to, who made me feel I was not alone was so powerful. The PCA had helped Patrick in his recovery, and we both felt so lucky to have them.

Now, Patrick works with them. Back in 2018, he was learning how to tell his story, and taking the first steps in a new life. The words he was saying were raw, and incredible to hear. These days, the narrative is polished and professional, but no less affecting. It makes for harrowing listening, that I found I could really relate to. It does not make for easy listening, but it is also amazing to see him stood there before you – or, in the pandemic, at the other end of a screen! – in recovery.

He speaks to students at schools and universities around the country, and to every professional cricketer (man and woman) in the country through the PCA, as well as plenty of other people across the sporting sphere.

He is sharing such an important message. Since he opened up about his struggles, another professional cricketer, Hampshire’s Chris Wood, has come forward and told his own story, and now they work together, which is very good to see. There are more young people in cricket who need help with gambling, and these two are doing a great job helping them. Patrick is a trailblazer because every person who talks about their experiences makes it easier for the next.

One of the things about problem gambling that has struck me since hearing Patrick’s story and learning that Chris – who I played against a lot – had a problem, is how little education there has been around it. I certainly wasn’t warned of gambling’s dangers growing up and I probably made it halfway through my career as a cricketer before it was ever raised as a ‘problem’, whereas we were in no doubt that drink or drugs could cause trouble. Over the years I have seen plenty of players gamble in many different ways, and they need to know that it can spiral out of control, as it did for Patrick.

As a society, it feels we are only just getting to grips with gambling addiction. It is not as normalised as other mental health struggles. Now this taboo is being smashed, we can move on to the next.

But I do believe we are fostering an easier environment for people to open up, whatever their issues. I look at some of the young cricketers I work with, like Dom Bess, a former teammate of mine at Somerset is in his early twenties. He has already learnt to speak articulately about his battles with his mental health, and that will help others. People across sport and society are just so much more ready to express their feelings, to ask for help.

I wrote extensively about my depression in 2008 in my book Coming Back To Me. It was a cathartic process, but also hard because I was still an active cricketer and learning how to deal with my mental health.

I am very proud to have played a part in opening up the conversation, and – hopefully – allowing more people to get help. I have said before that I wrote that book thinking that if I helped one person feel better in the battle I had been fighting, I would be happy. It would all be worth it. Fortunately, many people have said over the years that it helped them. And, honestly, I am as proud of my role in that conversation as I am of any cricketing achievement – a cap, a hundred, a series win. I’m extremely proud to see other cricketers – like Jonathan Trott, Steve Harmison, Mike Yardy and Sarah Taylor – opening up about their mental health. Cricketers and sportspeople are more vulnerable than they might first appear.

My time as a cricketer was great, I loved it and feel so lucky. But like all things, it came to an end. For me this was in 2019, when I began another chapter on the other side of the boundary as a coach, first with Somerset and now with England.

But education on all matters mental health keeps going. It is a lifelong project. I still get a buzz talking about it, helping people, making the sort of appearance at which I met Patrick. I find this work endures far more than runs or wickets. I am proud that Patrick is on the same path. His work will help many.

1

March 2018

Having driven around aimlessly for three hours, I left my car at Slough station and didn’t bother to pay for parking. Instead, having earlier smashed a porcelain piggybank I shared with my girlfriend and taken what I thought was my final £18.10, I bought a ticket to London, and walked onto the platform. The departures board told me that in six minutes a train would be hurtling through without stopping. I was set on throwing myself in front of it.

Standing on the end of the platform, I was certain that, despite only having turned 31 three days earlier, I’d reached the end of the road. I was ready to end my total mess of a life. I’d experienced suicidal thoughts for some time, and this was my second attempt to take my life in the course of 12 extraordinary days that had pushed me to the point of no return.

Although things had come to a head in 12 days, in reality they had been building up over the previous 12 years. In that time I’d developed a secret gambling addiction that had caused me trouble and pain in ways I could never have imagined. It had crippled me emotionally and financially, and it had led to me lying so much and so often that I became a master of disguise, living a double life.

To others, I was Patrick (or ‘Patch’), the life and soul of the party. I was a hard-working professional. I was a former professional cricketer who remained fanatical about playing and watching sport. I was from a happy, supportive family. I was a strong partner to a brilliant girlfriend. I was generally a well-rounded young man with plenty going for me and even more to look forward to. Certainly not perfect, but who is?

In reality, I was angry, saddled with debt and carrying a dirty secret that not even those closest to me knew. I’d become a fine liar and actor, able to put on a brave face, even when things were going very, very wrong.

People knew I liked a punt. Some knew it had got me into the occasional scrape. But gambling had become the defining aspect of my personality – and no one else knew that. I gambled at every opportunity. And because I gambled, I lied, sometimes about unthinkable topics, and I stole. I stole from those close to me, and from those I barely knew. I stole money intended for charity.

I always drank, but at times, because I gambled, I descended into alcoholism and dabbled with drugs. Because I gambled, I suffered from anxiety, depression and stress so severe it gave me a stomach ulcer.

Often, as soon as the door shut and I was alone, I would simply break down in tears. I was so, so tired of lying, yet I barely slept through the night for seven years; I would be awake indulging my addiction, or dealing with its devastating consequences. The first and last things I thought of on each long day weren’t my loved ones, but gambling.

I couldn’t stop gambling. Across these 12-and-a-half years, I placed just shy of £2m in online bets, and probably the same again in betting shops and casinos.

In March 2018 I had 19 different accounts with online bookmakers. At my peak, in 2017, I’d had 76 accounts in 65 different names. I was a VIP member of seven different online operators; in most cases, I had to be spending a minimum of £30,000 per year to qualify.

I’d received close to £110,000 in free bets. That year, 2017, I placed 27,988 bets with a single bookmaker. That’s close to 77 bets every day – and that’s just with one bookie.

There was nothing I wouldn’t bet on. I’d always been passionate about cricket, football, golf and rugby union – particularly when they involved British players and teams. From the word go I loved the thrill of watching a roulette wheel spin.

But I became less and less fussy. I gambled on Hungarian handball, considered myself an expert on American horse racing from Santa Anita, California, and even found myself gripped by Ecuadorian U23 football in the early hours of the morning. I once won close to £20,000 on a basketball accumulator based on the number of points scored in each game, despite not having heard of any of the teams, let alone players, involved. In the course of that very night I lost every penny of the win, predicting which team was going to score the next try and whether the conversion would be missed in an Australian rugby league game between Cronulla Sharks and South Sydney Rabbitohs. Knowledge or informed judgements ceased to matter – I just needed to bet.

That need, though, overwhelmed me and, because I couldn’t speak about it, made me feel like I was being eaten from the inside out. I’d locked my issues away, but the walls were closing in every single day until finally there was no way out.

I was always convinced that I could bet my way out of trouble and move on with my life. The belief that gambling would be my escape from gambling was naturally one of the many reasons I did so much of it.

Yet there were occasions when I won big enough amounts to erase my debts and walk away. At one stage in 2016 I had more than £96,000 across my many online gambling accounts – enough to get me out of trouble, but not enough to satisfy my addiction: I always wanted more. If I had £96,000, why not tick it into six figures? But that wouldn’t have been enough either. I was greedy and had lost all sense of money’s value. A few days later I lost it all and was back to square one, scratching around until my next payday.

Owning up to ease the pain? That never felt like much of an option. I responded to every moment of adversity in my adult life, not by talking to others and working through my problems, but by bottling bad feelings away and falling back on the thing that comforted me – gambling.

I was too proud and too fearful of the consequences to reveal my quandary, and continued to be suffocated by its weight and ever-deepening nature. I needed help but I felt that telling anyone – my lovely girlfriend, my adoring family or supportive mates – would come at too much of a cost. I would lose everything, and I couldn’t bear that.

By now, I’d lost almost everything anyway. That day, I was due to learn that a career I loved was over. At 31, I was becoming a former teacher, and in a shameful fashion. At 24, I’d become a former insurance broker. And at 20, I’d become a former professional cricketer. The loss of all three careers, each more than the last, was due to my gambling.

I’d no money left. In fact – I’d much less than that. My gambling led to me living way beyond my means, and I’d supplemented my teacher’s salary – which had averaged about £32,000 per year in my time in the job – in increasingly desperate ways. I’d taken out 23 bank, payday or unsecured loans. I’d borrowed money from loan sharks and drug dealers. I’d borrowed money from the parents of children I’d taught, and from colleagues. I’d borrowed money from friends and family. In total, since my gambling began, I’d borrowed money from 113 different people, adding up to £497,000. The necessity to repay some of these loans and the odd hefty win meant not all of this was debt. That said, I still had £238,000 outstanding, that was effectively due to be repaid immediately.

In the week since my last suicide attempt, my situation had worsened, my despair had deepened and my conviction had grown much stronger: I saw no other way out.

* * *

The final descent began when, 12 days earlier, I received an email that made me lie awake all that night, racked with anxiety. It was from a parent of a kid I taught whom I’d previously borrowed a significant amount of money from. He was asking why the repayments had dried up and, frankly, what on earth was going on? This inquiry had been triggered by a conversation with another parent, from whom I’d also borrowed money. The two of them had realised they were not alone. The email very pointedly questioned whether my issue was, in fact, gambling. If it was, he said, that made the whole thing worse, and he’d have no choice but to inform the school.

I was terrified. I’d never been questioned like this before. I knew that if he did tell the school, then my fabricated life would unravel. I tried to quell his obvious anger by assuring him that I would sort out his repayments as soon as possible.

To make things worse, late the previous week I’d also made other desperate requests for financial help to people I should have known not to contact. In general, their response was to reply with concern, not only about the content of my messages but the tone. A number of them said they couldn’t keep it to themselves. I felt like my house of cards was about to fall.

I’d been in trouble at school before, notably over an incident involving damage to a school minibus that I’d worsened by lying about – brazenly and at length, meaning the whole thing rumbled on and became far uglier than it could have been. I’d denied any wrongdoing when I was clearly the only person who could have been the culprit. Lying and running away from problems were second nature to me.

And that was before we even came to the lying, borrowing and misbehaviour that was directly linked to my life as a secret gambling addict, all of which was yet to come to light. For some time, my desperation to gamble had seen me abuse my authority as a teacher; in the case of some of the most significant loans I’d taken from people, a little had been paid back. But now I had defaulted on almost all the repayments.

So I woke up on Monday morning very nervous. The more I thought about the email, the more fearful I became that the parent was going to tell the school. I couldn’t think about anything else. I’d become extremely paranoid that the hundreds of skeletons in my closet would be exposed, and I went into panic mode. I knew I was skating on thin ice, and had so much to lose. The job, obviously. But also, the house I lived in with my girlfriend, which was paid for by the school. The scale of my offences meant that surely I would be stripped of my right to teach, taken to court for fraud and possibly even sent to prison. I needed to find a way to get this man – and the many others – his money back. If he did expose me, it would be the beginning of the end.

More than any formal punishment, the consequence that filled me with the most dread was my actions becoming public, and having to explain myself to my friends and family. Rather than act rationally by seeking advice (I now realise, looking back, that any advice, legal or personal, would have done), I chose to gamble. It was my safety net and the only coping mechanism I felt I had left. And I believed there was still one last route out of this extraordinary mess – the Cheltenham Festival, which was due to start the following day. Cheltenham is a four-day horse racing meet in Gloucestershire with the best jump horses, the biggest prize money, and the eyes of the racing world on it. All the opportunity it promised made it heaven for me. It was my favourite time of the year and it had been on my mind for weeks. It was my final shot at salvation.

The trouble was, I’d gambled all my money away, and so needed to find some more, by whatever means I could. My account was empty, and payday was still more than a fortnight away. And anyway, when that payday arrived, it would go on the tens of thousands of pounds I owed in loan repayments. But by now, this sort of quandary wasn’t something that fazed me.

I persuaded one of my many VIP managers at an online bookmaker to give me £100 in free bets, and I sold a couple of tickets I had for the Thursday of the Festival to a friend of a friend for a good whack – £300. The tickets had been a freebie from another gambling company. They lavish their biggest losers – those who gamble the most – with compensatory gifts. Profiting from something I had been given for free didn’t bother me in the slightest.

And then came a phone call. As someone with two lives, I hated phone calls, preferring to communicate via WhatsApp or email because it was less personal and easier to run away from or block out. But this was urgent, and I was really desperate.

I’d exhausted all avenues for ready cash at my current school, so went back to a figure I respected greatly and had borrowed from before. This person was extremely wealthy, extremely generous, and was someone with whom I’d developed a great relationship over time. They had said that, were I ever in trouble, I should get in touch again. As a bonus, there was next to no possibility of a chance encounter in the coming days.

Feeling this wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up, I went for broke – in excruciating fashion. I explained in some detail how a close family member had received some devastating news about their health. Their chances of survival were slim and relied on urgent treatment that would come at significant cost when done privately. The cost, I said, was £10,000 but that I would be able to pay the loan back in a week, when the surgery was done and my family member was able to access their funds.

Not a word of this was true and my real belief, of course, was that I would be able to pay this person – and countless others, including the man badgering me – back when Cheltenham was over and I’d completed the simple task of turning 10 grand into 150 grand, which was the figure I thought would get me out of trouble at school and therefore spare me jail. I’d won big before. Easy.

They asked to consider for a few hours, which I spent in a state of overwhelming anxiety, keeping a low profile at school, constantly refreshing my emails, and gambling away that free bet I’d been given. Just before 5 p.m., this person came through, sending the money on the terms agreed on the phone. Flooded with relief, I could scarcely believe it.

Then came a period of intense study: working out how I would use my pot. I opted to be consistent in who I backed, choosing the Gigginstown House Stud, the trainer Gordon Elliott and the jockey Davy Russell. I wouldn’t back them exclusively, but they would be the focus of my more elaborate bets.

Tuesday and Wednesday? A blur. I tried to balance teaching, gambling, and watching what I was gambling on – which, by the way, wasn’t just Cheltenham, but racing at Fontwell Park, cricket in the Pakistan Super League and, in the evening, any football that was on. I finished each day off with a trip to the virtual casino.

There were some early wins, but they