Millions wagered, hundreds of thousands in debt and a pending divorce.

Joe C, a native of Chicago, fell into the depths of addictive sports gambling at the age of 23, lured in by popular betting sites and apps that make it possible to wage your life savings with just the click of a button.

Joe, who did not want to give his last name, estimates he’s wagered more than $15million on sports gambling, maxing out credit cards and taking multiple high-interest loans that amounted to $150,000 each.

Now 33 and in the midst of a contentious divorce, the former financial adviser told DailyMail.com sports betting ‘ruined my life.’ 

Joe is just one of an estimated 5million Americans who struggle with a gambling addiction – and that number has been growing since the Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports gambling in 2018, legalizing the pastime in 38 states and Washington, DC.

A study last year found internet searches related to gambling addiction increased 23 percent between the court’s decision and June 2024 – and getting help can be difficult as a gambling addiction is easier to hide, whereas loved ones often notice substance abuse and encourage the person to get help.

Joe said: ‘You can [gamble] from your phone. You can have your company split your paychecks into different accounts that you know people don’t know about.

‘[With a gambling addiction], you can’t tell unless you’re, like, a violent person when you lose a bet. Nobody would know.’

Americans bet more than $147billion on sports in 2024, a 24 percent increase from the previous year – and while the practice only lost its blanket nationwide ban in 2018, sports gambling has been around for as long as sports have been played.

Nearly four in 10 Americans bet on sports, and sports gambling addiction affects roughly 2million people every year.

Economists at the University of Southern California studied the impact online betting has on a household’s financial health.

State-by-state legalization of online sports betting increased a household’s risk of going bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent.

Joe was always passionate about sports and his family lived for going to games and following tournaments, but his love of the game turned sinister over a decade and he was soon revolving his life around gambling and betting well beyond his means. 

The first thing Joe did when he woke up was place bets on basketball games in China. Then throughout the day would bounce from sport to sport, like minor-league tennis and European soccer, blindly betting hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars until the late-night hours. 

Before 2018, regulated casinos were some of the only places a person could bet legally and bettors like Joe relied on bookies to gamble outside the law. 

Bookies are people who make the odds on a sporting event and illegally accept bets. They take wagers on Mondays and settle at the end week — paying out if clients won or collecting if they lost. 

When betting through a bookie, Joe saw an opportunity to feed his addiction – if he was winning, he had about 12 hours at the end of the week before he would get paid out and when he could bet again.

During this window, he would make additional wagers to increase his chances of winning. 

Joe is shown with his two-year-old daughter, whose face has been obscured for privacy reasons. Gambling, Joe said, ruined his life. It was a driving force in the dissolution of his marriage and a current custody battle

Joe, far right, didn’t realize until spring 2024 that he had wagered $15 million on sports betting in just one year

But when he lost and couldn’t pay the money he owed, he’d make excuses, like a delayed paycheck, and turn to another bookie to try and win back his losses.

This resulted in a cycle of debt, where he eventually owed thousands of dollars to several bookies simultaneously.

Joe told this website: ‘It was scary in the sense of owing five different people, and it was nerve-wracking.’ 

However, after the court’s 2018 decision, betting websites and phone apps made gambling easier than ever and cut out the risk of using a bookie.  

When the apps proliferated – with million-dollar ad campaigns with celebrity endorsements – he believed it would give him better control over his gambling. 

Unlike bookies, who operated on a fixed payout schedule, the apps allowed people to cash out their winnings whenever they pleased.

Joe often avoided collecting his winnings, keeping them in his online accounts, which made them available for further gambling. Or, he would cash out and leave a little left to bet on more games, only to lose it quickly.

He would end up redepositing the money he had withdrawn, continuing the cycle of placing bets – often with more money or on more games simultaneously – chasing his losses.

‘So maybe I take $2,500 back, it goes right to my bank account, and I leave $500 in there. Well, I’d lose that $500 an hour later. Now I’m kind of mad about it because I lost it so fast so I deposit all that money right back in,’ he said.

To continue to cover his losses – and continue gambling – he started taking out personal loans with 10 percent interest.

With his credit already damaged by gambling debt, he didn’t qualify for traditional loans. Instead, he resorted to payday loans – high-interest loans borrowed against your next paycheck.

His loans had 1,000 percent interest rates and he was taking out 30 to 40. Despite limits of $3,000 per loan, his total payday loan debt reached around $150,000.

A Rutgers study found the number of people posting about problematic gambling on Reddit grew five times faster following the introduction of legal sports betting in 2018

He’d gamble his paycheck as soon as he got it, even using credit cards or asking for paycheck advances. 

After betting – and losing – large amounts on obscure games like Russian table tennis, he’d resort to eating cheap food like 7-Eleven chicken wings and stress over small things, like a slight gas price increase.

All the while, his wife and family were clueless, but his addiction only got worse.

Joe said: ‘I started to recognize that I was setting rules for myself around betting. So I might say I’m only going to bet one game today.

‘I started to realize I was lying a lot about it, trying to conceal how often and how much I was betting.’

It was clear to him his betting had not set off any alarm bells and no one had reached out to check on him or recommend a break. So, his habit continued. 

Sociologists believe the rapid dopamine hit from winning a bet keeps people coming back for more, creating a cycle of betting beyond one’s means, feeling a brief rush, experiencing loss, and then placing another bet to escape defeat.

But Joe realized in April 2024 he had severe depression and was self treating it with gambling. He finally came clean to his family.

Within a week he was in a residential treatment center. It was only then he realized he had spent $15 million on his gambling addiction.

Joe is now 11 months gambling-free. 

His fondness for sports has cooled since last year. He no longer obsessively watches several games at a time or watches obscure sports teams and games.

He told DailyMail.com: ‘Gambling certainly ruined my relationship with sports.’

He once lived and breathed sports, with his family’s life revolving around games and tournaments. But gambling made every match a financial risk rather than a source of passion.

After quitting, he lost that attachment — he no longer needed to follow every team, game, or player. And while he still enjoys his hometown teams, sports no longer dictate his schedule. Though he acknowledges a sense of loss, he also finds it freeing.