Paul Merson believes there is still a stigma surrounding gambling addiction

Former Arsenal forward Paul Merson believes there is still a stigma surrounding gambling addiction as he warned about the dangers of betting around the Christmas period.

The 54-year-old made his name with the Gunners, spending 12 years at Highbury, and had spells at Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and Portsmouth, as well as earning 21 caps for England during his career before moving into punditry.

Merson has been open about his struggles with drug, alcohol and gambling addiction, but believes gambling is “the worst addiction out of all of them”, adding that a lot of people are unable to understand those who suffer from it.

“I still think there’s a stigma about the gambling, because we don’t have to put anything in our bodies,” Merson told the PA news agency.

“I still hear people go, ‘oh it’s a choice, show a bit of self-will’. Next time you get diarrhoea maybe try and stop that with self will, you can’t, it’s hard.

“A lot of adults out there have had a drink in their life, it might have been one drink, they got drunk and they never drunk again or they drink now, but they can control it.

“They can relate because they can go, ‘I’ve seen myself when I’m drunk, I can understand’, but you can understand it, with the gambling not many people have had a bet.

“I still think there’s a stigma with the gambling, there’s a lot of people out there who still think, ‘show a bit of self-will,’ and that’s not the case, this is the worst addiction for me out of all of them.”

Merson was speaking on behalf of TalkBanStop, a partnership from GamCare, Gamban and GAMSTOP that aims to offer free support to those struggling with gambling-related harms around the World Cup.

The World Cup has already been under way for just over one week, with up to four games of football being played every day in the build-up to the knockout stages of the tournament, and Merson admitted that he has been careful about which games to watch.

He said: “I’ve quite stayed away from it if I’m being honest – I haven’t really got involved watching the 10 o’clock, 1 o’clock, 4 o’clock, 7 o’clock, it’s too much for me.

“You keep on watching all these games every day, you’re going to have a bet – it’s like if I went and sat in a hairdressers for a week, by the end of the week I’m going to have a haircut, what’s the point?

“I watch the England games and watch the big games, I pick and choose now, I have to be careful.

“If I’m sitting watching a game for no reason, and there’s a lot of games out there that mean nothing to me, it’s ‘why am I watching this?’, it’s like I’m a recovering alcoholic, why would I sit in a pub?

“I think that with these games, my job is to watch football matches and I understand it, I watch one on a Saturday, but I wouldn’t watch four.

“There will be a lot of people out there who will chase their Christmas money, they will go ‘I’m going to bet this, I’ll bet that and that’ll pay for Christmas’.

“That’s why it’s worrying over Christmas time that the World Cup’s on for people who gamble because that could easily happen.”

:: For free gambling support, visit www.talkbanstop.com