“I WITNESSED my wife trying to hang herself.

“As a result of that she was sectioned and spent the best part of 15 weeks in hospital.

“The closest person to me needed me and was on 15-minute observation, and while I was visiting her I was looking at my watch and thinking how I could make an excuse to go gambling.

“I have left my children outside the bookmakers’, resented spending money on them because I regarded it as gambling money. Gambling ruled my life. It was the be-all and end-all of me as a person.

“I came to GA for the first time in 1996. The longest I have gone without gambling is 15 months. I am 47 years old. This time I have been off gambling for 95 days.”

Jeff, who tells this story, is in all other respects a perfectly ordinary and rational individual. So are all the other people for whom Gamblers Anonymous is a lifeline. They might be the person who teaches your children, fixes your car, serves you in a shop, looks after your loved one in a care home, puts a crown on your tooth, deals with your inquiry or turns up to save your life when you dial 999.

In fact, it’s not really accurate to use the word “they” because “they” are “we” – and some of us are prone to compulsions that turn us into people we barely recognise.

As a GA booklet notes: “To non-gamblers, even more to controlled gamblers, the idea that gambling may become compulsive (an addiction or a sickness) is incredible.

“It is not so difficult to believe that people can be alcoholics or drug addicts because, in those cases, something gets into the physical system. Nonetheless, the condition is real enough.”

Compulsive gambling strikes people of both genders, all ages and all backgrounds.

Swindon’s GA is based at Gorse Hill Community Centre in Chapel Street. It meets between 7pm and 9pm on Tuesdays, 7.40pm and 9pm on Wednesdays, 10am to noon on Saturdays and 2.15pm to 4pm on Sundays. Members support one another and work through a 12-step recovery programme which begins with a simple admission that gambling has rendered them powerless and their life unmanageable.

The branch was founded 15 years ago. It has about 50 regular members, more than ever before, and this is something members put down to growth in opportunities to gamble. Such opportunities used to be limited to betting shops which kept normal business hours, fruit machines in adults-only settings and perhaps a casino, dog track or racecourse if there was one nearby.

These days the betting shop can be open from early in the morning until late at night, online casinos and bingo halls never close and a person can lose every penny they have to their name on the spin of a roulette wheel by pressing a button on their TV remote control.

The Swindon membership includes plenty of people whose compulsion has been stoked by such high-tech temptations.

There’s Bill, for whom online poker in his teens led to the real thing, and whose gambling lowlights include theft from an employer, winning more than £64,000 in one poker session and gambling the lot away again within hours.

“My dad brought me here,” he said. “This room is the best place I have ever been in. To be around people who have the same addiction... it’s hard for people outside to understand.”

There’s Adrienne, who began going out to play bingo while her partner was at work, only to discover the fruit machines on the premises and become addicted. She came to GA after losing thousands of pounds. “I let everything out that evening,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect but I wasn’t frightened. Everybody was very kind. They gave me time to share my story. I was very, very upset and crying, but after I was done I felt so much better.”

  • Gamblers Anonymous Swindon can be contacted on 07909 813070.