{"id":81323,"date":"2026-01-07T22:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/why-my-period-made-my-gambling-addiction-worse\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T22:46:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:46:00","slug":"why-my-period-made-my-gambling-addiction-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=81323","title":{"rendered":"Why my period made my gambling addiction worse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Abbie Harvey says her urge to gamble was worse during parts of her menstrual cycle<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Abbie Harvey’s gambling addiction was so severe that she could not drive for 20 minutes without pulling over to bet – and felt the urge became worse just before and during her period.<\/p>\n
“To get over being emotional, I would use gambling as a coping strategy,” said Abbie, who lost more than \u00a320,000 during her decade-long struggle with the addiction.<\/p>\n
Abbie is not alone. Kiki Marriott, also a former gambling addict, noticed an increase in her gambling habits during the week before her period. <\/p>\n
Both women have received treatment at the Parkland Place Rehabilitation Centre in north Wales, where clinical staff say they believe the menstrual cycle can have an impact on gambling behaviours.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the University of Birmingham are now working with the Gordon Moody gambling harms charity to establish whether there is a link between hormonal fluctuations – caused by periods, ovulation, menopause and childbirth – and gambling addiction.<\/p>\n
Warning: This article contains references to suicide<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Abbie would predominantly gamble on her phone using online slots.<\/p>\n
“The scheming, the lying, it just took over my whole life,” the 34-year-old from Barry in south Wales said.<\/p>\n
“I would do it at four o’clock in the morning, I would do it at two o’clock in the afternoon. I would wake up in the middle of the night and all I wanted to do was gamble online.<\/p>\n
“I’d be driving home from my sister’s, which is like 20 minutes away from me, and I couldn’t even wait 20 minutes before pulling over and doing online slots.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Kiki Marriott says she noticed a change in her gambling habits and compulsive behaviours during her menstrual cycle<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Like Abbie, Kiki would also gamble on her phone, often for more than 24 hours until she ran out of money.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old said her gambling addiction made her feel suicidal.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t care whether I lived or died. It was like a slow and painful death,” Kiki told the BBC.<\/p>\n
“I used to pray to die and just think ‘I can’t wait for this to be over’.<\/p>\n
“Your mindset was just to do anything that you needed to do to still enable you to gamble.<\/p>\n
“I was going without food shopping, I didn’t have gas, the only reason why I had electric and wi-fi is because I needed that to gamble.”<\/p>\n
Kiki noticed her gambling habit became worse during the week before her period.<\/p>\n
“Impulsivity and compulsive behaviours are more likely to shine bright in the week before my period – and that’s when I’d make even worse decisions around that week,” said Kiki from Woolwich in south-east London. <\/p>\n
“I think there is a big connection between poor decision-making and impulsive behaviour during your menstrual cycle.”<\/p>\n
Kiki said she reached her “catastrophic point and rock bottom” when she stole a considerable amount of money from her former partner’s bank account to gamble with.<\/p>\n
“I wrote letters to the train driver, to the passengers, and apologised for the trauma that I was about to cause them by ending my life at the train station,” she said.<\/p>\n
Instead, Kiki called the GamCare National Helpline – an organisation that provides free support for anyone affected by gambling harms.<\/p>\n
“I knew that my death would have caused more trauma on other people and I just couldn’t do it,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Parkland Place rehabilitation centre in Colwyn Bay is a 16-bed rehabilitation unit which focuses on gambling, alcoholism and drug addiction<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The BBC has been given rare access to Parkland Place, a rehabilitation centre in Colwyn Bay, Conwy county, where Abbie and Kiki both received treatment for their addictions.<\/p>\n
Run by the Adferiad gambling charity, it is a 16-bed unit which focuses on gambling, alcoholism and drug addiction through group sessions and one to one counselling.<\/p>\n
Despite being mixed gender, only 25% of people arriving for treatment are women.<\/p>\n
Cheryl Williams, manager of the centre, acknowledged the challenges women could face while attending a six-week programme.<\/p>\n
“It could be that they’re the main caregivers for the children,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There’s the stigma because they’re also seen as the homemakers so they can’t then necessarily afford the time for them to come into rehab.<\/p>\n
“But actually, that’s a fraction of their life really, compared to what they’ve missed out on while they’ve been gambling.”<\/p>\n
Cheryl said the team at Parkland Place recognised the impact of the menstrual cycle on gambling behaviours.<\/p>\n
“We’ve noticed the females who are due on their menstrual cycle, gambling increases before the cycle has kicked in,” she said. “We take that into consideration while they’re here.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Cheryl Williams says it can be challenging for women to leave home in order to attend rehabilitation programmes<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The Gordon Moody gambling harms charity, which has residential treatment centres across the country, said the number of women gambling in the UK – and the number of women with gambling addictions – was at an all-time high.<\/p>\n
Dr Rosalind Baker-Frampton, clinical director of the charity, said she had noticed women were more likely to gamble in a harmful way during a hormonal fluctuation.<\/p>\n
“You’re more likely to engage in risky behaviours around the time of ovulation, so that’s when an egg is released,” she said.<\/p>\n
“That’s the time you’re most fertile. We also know of that before a women’s period, when she’s had a drop in progesterone.<\/p>\n
“That includes things like chasing losses, spending more money than they want to spend, staying longer than they’d otherwise decide to stay. <\/p>\n
“They end up spending more money and making more risky choices around gambling and not stopping at other points in their cycle.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Rosalind Baker-Frampton says women are more likely to gamble in a harmful way during hormonal fluctuations<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The charity said its research project with the University of Birmingham would take about four years to complete.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to be looking at women who come into our treatment centre in Wolverhampton, so everyone who comes in will have the option to participate in the research,” said Rosalind.<\/p>\n
The Gambling Commission, which licences and regulates commercial gambling, has said they are “always interested in new research” to “help inform our ongoing drive to make gambling safer”.<\/p>\n
Researchers will also explore whether hormone-regulating medication could help with addiction.<\/p>\n
“We have a theory that women who are on the pill or who are on hormone replacement therapy, because their hormones are at a more stable level throughout the month, may be less likely to experience these severe gambling cravings,” Rosalind added.<\/p>\n
Kiki said she now recognised her triggers and her likelihood to gamble during certain points of her menstrual cycle, and has a strategy for tackling them.<\/p>\n
“For me, it’s made a massive difference in how I handle situations in those particular weeks of my cycle,” she said. <\/p>\n
“I know I need to pour love into myself the week before my period, I know I have to use my tools more, I have to be around other women in recovery, I have to lean on my group.”<\/p>\n
She is encouraging further research into women’s health and addiction.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a hell of a lot more work to be done when it comes to your menstrual cycle and addiction and how that can correlate to making those bad decisions.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story, the <\/i>BBC’s Action Line<\/i> contains a list of organisations who can provide support.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/6209\/live\/a123fb00-ec1a-11f0-a452-c539a1a03906.jpg.webp\")
BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20251210-151139-37baf2dfdd-web-2.36.1-1\/grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"Kiki](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/55e9\/live\/bdd512a0-ebae-11f0-a370-2789d390a94d.jpg.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Parkland](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/8b59\/live\/9b9a30c0-ea42-11f0-b5f7-49f0357294ff.jpg.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Cheryl](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/8923\/live\/676d1ab0-ea42-11f0-b385-5f48925de19a.jpg.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/1843\/live\/c8509230-ea42-11f0-b5f7-49f0357294ff.jpg.webp\")
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